Does anyone know how to get started making music that doesn't suck.
I've got a 32 key toy keyboard that I don't know what to do with, and I know that to get started in beepbox with something slightly better than stupid painful noise what you do is look up a chord progression and then click in the relevant notes for that chord progression in a random-ish pattern, then make a random melody out of notes that are found in that chord progression. a random drum pattern or two and boom, it's a 20 second, repetitive, bad song-like thing instead of total random noise. that's what, 10% of the way to a 3 minute track?

As for the keyboard, well, that's most fun when you play the melody (chords are miserable to play and there aren't enough keys to do both chords and melody) but the melody isn't anything without the chords at this stage, so it's still useless. you can look up recognizable versions of commercial songs that are just one-finger-at-a-time melodies, but composing one? forbidden knowledge, apparently.

Lots of people seem to be into making music, but I can never find explanations that really click for me. I guess because they over-do the theory instead of just showing what sort of patterns I should be looking for so I can understand visually what I'm doing. Anyway, if anyone here knows what they're doing I'd appreciate it if you could help me out here because I don't have whatever gene they have that lets them intuit it.
Thanks

Learn theory. You should be building music from melodic and/or harmonic ideas you came up with, not copy/pasting chord patterns you don't understand. The thing that will help you the most is learning to play music that's actually good. Modernist musicians are all niggers.

>>4353
The problem with building from melodic ideas is that i cannot transcribe a melody, and theory's never helped me get closer to that. I can hum a little tune i've made up on the spot, but i cannot for the life of me then translate that into clicking down the correct notes in the correct order to replicate it. That's why at the moment I work backwards from chord progressions rather than forwards from a melody.

As for learning theory, it's not that I refuse so much as that I hold out hope someone's made a good practical guide or can write a good practical explanation for someone who doesn't already have an intuitive sense for these things. Everything I know, I've got from reading theory, but usually it feels like banging my head off a wall until a random bit of knowledge clicks. Often, it feels more like learning Italian than learning about music.

The #1 thing I can recommend is learning to play good, simple, melodic music from memory. There is absolutely no better way to learn the patterns than that. In my opinion, the best for this is ground bass / variation pieces, Buxtehude and Pachelbel's passacaglias and chaconnes are very good and not too hard to learn (though many will be unplayable on your 32-key keyboard). Some Bach is good too, but his ground bass pieces usually have a more complicated ostinato.

I should probably explain what that is. A ground bass / variation piece (you will hear them called both but these aren't really synonyms) is based on a simple, 4-bar (usually) melody. By "based on" I mean that the melody could be playing constantly, the entire duration of the piece, usually in the lowest voice. This is like using a 4-bar chord pattern, but it's better because it's not as restrictive or boring.. Take Bach's passacaglia in c minor, the melody that is played by itself before the piece in most recordings, and is played in the lowest voice throughout the piece is the ostinato. The great thing about the ground bass is that the ostinato dictates the harmonic pattern, but indirectly. Take Pachelbel's f minor chaconne. There, the ostinato is a 4 bar melody that's basically as simple as any melody can be. (F, Eb, Db, C) (Each note lasts the entire bar). The brilliant thing about the structure is that it IMPLIES but doesn't force you into one in particular. In Pachelbel's case from the final variation we can glean that the main chord pattern is Fm, Cm, Dbm / Bbm (on the third beat) C.

Honestly, I've only rarely been able to transcribe a hummed melody. That's just not how it usually works. I know saying "learn theory" is completely unhelpful, because you don't know enough to know what resources are good. The only resources that you'll easily be able to find are autistic pseudo-intellectual Jacob Collier types on youtube. That definitely sucks. For me, learning about polyphony is what made it make sense, because the relationships between the notes are the focus, they're important. Not something you just kind of hope happens. Zarlino's "Le Istitioni Harmoniche" (You will usually see this under the title "The Art of Counterpoint," which is book 3 of the original text) was the resource that helped me the most. He talks a lot about things that aren't really technical but I think are still helpful. As I said before, the best thing is to learn to play good music from memory. That's what will make you recognize patterns and be able to invent variations on the spot better. I would stay away from BS "exercises" or practice apps that try to "gameify" the whole thing or "rewire your brain" somehow. Those are pretty much fluff, and if you're someone who wants to learn, they won't hold your attention most probably.