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Hacking Music Theory with Music Interval Theory · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:30
  Frank: If you want to be more interesting with the music you compose.
• 0:33
  Frank: I think just having a freeing approach is key, because there is so much music out there and, honestly, you won't have a career by just running into the same four chords that everybody used in the charts like 10 years ago.
• 0:48
  Frank: You won't have a career period.
• 0:50
  Dave: That's what I believe and chances are every blues musician said uh sir, actually, but that's a whole different genre.
• 1:01
  Frank: Exactly so.
• 1:01
  Frank: Again, when we talk about production and you know being interesting with sounds, for example, then you can compensate a lot for ordinary chord progressions.
• 1:23
  Dave: What is happening, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the 52 Cues podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music.
• 1:31
  Dave: Whether you're just curious about the sync industry, or maybe you're a production music veteran, I promise you you're in the right place.
• 1:38
  Dave: My name is Dave Croft and it is so good to be with you today.
• 1:41
  Dave: And if you find this episode helpful, then why don't you give it a thumbs up here on YouTube or a five star review over in the podcast app of your choice?
• 1:49
  Dave: And, while you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, because I talk about production and library music every single week.
• 1:56
  Dave: Today's episode wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our members, subscribers of 52 Cues, who not only keep our community alive and thriving, but as member subscribers they get access to extra perks and benefits like live streams, workshops, q breakdowns, weekly feedback sessions, tons and tons of video archives and the opportunity to submit to real music libraries.
• 2:20
  Dave: So if you're ready to get started on your career and make a serious push into production and library music, then why don't you join us over at 52 Cues?
• 2:29
  Dave: It's free to sign up and membership start at around four bucks a month.
• 2:35
  Dave: So how has my week been.
• 2:37
  Dave: It is week nine here.
• 2:39
  Dave: Right, I'm losing track.
• 2:41
  Dave: I'm totally losing track of the weeks.
• 2:44
  Dave: It's week eight, I'm sorry.
• 2:45
  Dave: How?
• 2:47
  Dave: How is my week eight been?
• 2:48
  Dave: Well, last week, you know, we had the Ready for Sync Live, which I have really, really enjoyed, and if you haven't checked out that episode, be sure to do that.
• 2:55
  Dave: And I am knee deep into my next project for a library that I'm working on.
• 3:03
  Dave: I for now, the sixth year in a row, I have been writing music for a documentary that comes out after the Masters Tournament, so this is my sixth year doing it.
• 3:12
  Dave: It's really interesting.
• 3:13
  Dave: It's bespoke production music, it's not scored, but it is custom production music that is used specifically for this project.
• 3:21
  Dave: And so they they the references we got, and I can't remember if I mentioned this two weeks ago, but the references that we got were from Dunkirk and the Dark Knight, and so that kind of sent us into some weird dark tension territory, which we really haven't done before in my five years of doing this.
• 3:41
  Dave: Before we haven't really done that, but it was really fun exploring that, exploring the sounds of Hans Zimmer and how he uses pulses and drones in the Dark Knight and the Dunkirk soundtrack, and I even leaned a little bit into 1917, which I know is Thomas Newman.
• 3:59
  Dave: But considering that Thomas Newman and Rachel Portman had been two really big references in the years previously, I thought that was fair game.
• 4:08
  Dave: So I used a little bit of influence from the 1917 soundtrack.
• 4:12
  Dave: Well, they have as much as they need for that.
• 4:15
  Dave: So the cue that I am playing this week for you is called.
• 4:19
  Dave: It's called a comeback and it's a little bit more uplifting, a little bit more in line with what what they're they've been using in the past.
• 4:28
  Dave: So we're going to listen to that here in just a second.
• 4:29
  Dave: But it's been a really good week We've.
• 4:32
  Dave: We've tied up some projects in the briefing room over at 52 cues, published some some albums and just this morning, wrapped up some deliverables that had been kind of lingering around for quite a while.
• 4:46
  Dave: And I had a thought in the middle of doing this and it took a few hours, like three or four hours of focused work to wrap up those deliverables for a client.
• 4:59
  Dave: Once I had those in place and when I got done with it I thought man, why did it take so long to do that?
• 5:07
  Dave: And I was kind of kicking myself a little bit, but I knew that it was going to take just like four uninterrupted hours to knock that out, and so I just kind of kept putting it on the back burner until eventually, you know, I get an email and the library is like Dave, I really really need these.
• 5:25
  Dave: So I had to push everything out of the way and focus on it.
• 5:28
  Dave: But on the other side I was like, oh, I felt really I felt kind of stupid for waiting so long to do those deliverables, and so I've done a podcast episode before on if it's your job to eat a frog it's a Mark Twain quote about eating your frogs If it's your job to eat a frog, then best to eat it first thing in the morning.
• 5:52
  Dave: Just get it out of the way and boulders and if you have a really big boulder, don't focus on the little pebbles, focus on the big thing.
• 6:01
  Dave: And that's what I really should have done.
• 6:03
  Dave: And so it was a little bit of a reminder to not procrastinate, to not do the heavy lifting until the last minute, because it's just going to loom over you.
• 6:15
  Dave: And it did it kind of.
• 6:19
  Dave: You know, the last few weeks it's just been lingering there and just chewing at me and I use this phrase often.
• 6:26
  Dave: You know, the sword of Damocles was just swinging at me and just waiting to kind of take my head off.
• 6:32
  Dave: And I'm going to commit to myself to not do that as much.
• 6:38
  Dave: And I just wanted to encourage you and I just want to share that little experience just this morning where I wondered why it took me so long, why did I put that off so when it just took a few hours?
• 6:50
  Dave: But it's done and I feel really good about myself.
• 6:53
  Dave: I feel lighter, you know, and I need to remember this feeling.
• 6:57
  Dave: You need to tell Dave Dave this is Dave Dave you feel really good when you take care of your business, so take care of your business earlier so that you don't have to worry about damaging any relationships.
• 7:12
  Dave: So that's been my week, week eight, and I've been writing a ton of these cues for this master's movie documentary and so we are going to check out.
• 7:20
  Dave: It's called a comeback and then we will talk about it on the other side.
• 7:24
  Dave: So that was, it's called a comeback, and I really enjoy writing these cues because you get to branch out of the standard kind of production music groove, you know two minutes, or a minute and 30 and like build breakdown, you know build button and so I can.
• 10:27
  Dave: They can breathe a little bit more and they're much more kind of underscore and I enjoy and I'm really thankful for this to be my sixth year doing those.
• 10:36
  Dave: And as far as where you can see it, I think they do air it on CBS or maybe even CBS sports network and I think I've gotten some royalties from in-flight movies before.
• 10:46
  Dave: I think this has shown up like Delta in-flight system.
• 10:50
  Dave: They track those kind of royalties Pretty sure I've seen some of those.
• 10:54
  Dave: So that's really cool and for you, friends and family subscribers, I will be doing a breakdown of this cue later this week.
• 11:05
  Dave: So for our topic today, I am really happy to welcome to the podcast Frank and TC from the Music Interval Theory Academy.
• 11:15
  Dave: A fantastic talk and, like I mentioned in the interview that's coming up, they really did.
• 11:22
  Dave: The whole theory music interval theory approach has really opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about composing and of scoring and writing production music.
• 11:35
  Dave: So without further ado, here is my recent interview with TC and Frank from the Music Interval Theory Academy.
• 11:42
  Dave: You know it's not every day that you run across a podcast which really changes the way you think.
• 11:52
  Dave: And the Music Interval Theory podcast with TC and Frank.
• 11:56
  Dave: Love you little jingle has done that for me, because being able to talk about advanced theoretical concepts and challenge your creative process was super inspiring to me, and so when I had the chance to welcome Frank and TC from the Music Interval Theory Academy, I jumped at the chance.
• 12:23
  Dave: Frank, tc, welcome, welcome, welcome to the 52Q's podcast.
• 12:29
  Frank: Many, many thanks, Dave.
• 12:30
  Frank: That is fantastic.
• 12:31
  Frank: We are very excited about this interview, this chat, and I think we have some fantastic topics that we can maybe scratch or go deeper we will see but we are very excited and, yeah, thanks for having us.
• 12:48
  T.C.: Yeah, this has been something I've personally looked forward to for a few weeks now.
• 12:53
  Dave: Yeah, excellent, excellent, excellent.
• 12:55
  Dave: And I mean we're gonna have links to TC's IMDB, which goes back what?
• 13:00
  Dave: 40 something years, almost 45 years, and we're gonna have Frank's credits.
• 13:04
  Dave: So these are pros, let's just say and I don't want to waste any time like shredding bios and everything you can check all that out.
• 13:12
  Dave: We'll have that in the show notes.
• 13:15
  Dave: But I want to start with the thing that made me really excited.
• 13:21
  Dave: I remember I was like four in the morning.
• 13:23
  Dave: I'm having my morning walk and I'm listening to episode 10 of the Music Interval Theory podcast and it is the three-step process for composing.
• 13:33
  Dave: And I'm telling you guys, it is fundamentally like oh my gosh, let's talk about this.
• 13:38
  Dave: Frank, can you unpack that a little bit?
• 13:42
  Dave: Or TC, talk about the three-step process, how it came about and how that can really be applied, whether you're a production music composer or a songwriter, or if you write music for cartoons.
• 13:55
  Frank: Yeah, well, maybe before we jump into the three steps, which we will do in probably 30 seconds, let me give you a quick story.
• 14:05
  Frank: What you don't know about me yet is that my father, he was in the German military, so he was a Lieutenant Colonel, which is high rank, and then when he came home, which was every two weeks or so, he kind of couldn't let go of his role, which means we had a lot of discipline at home and a lot of structure, which I believe is a good thing to some degree, because that made me question almost everything, since I'm a creative spirit and I developed let's call it, a healthy problem with authority, and I want to emphasize healthy.
• 14:51
  Frank: So I question a lot of these things that he wanted to enforce in the family, which also led to this compositional career in the end, because he was always against it.
• 15:05
  Frank: Now we are on the same side and I proved him well.
• 15:09
  Frank: This was a good decision.
• 15:10
  Frank: So all good on that end, and he knows about that.
• 15:15
  Frank: But, this being said, I think having a process to composition was always a thing that I was searching for for years.
• 15:24
  Frank: And you see, and I, we studied the conventional way first, which is good, no question about that.
• 15:32
  Frank: But one of the issues that I personally always had was that to some degree, you couldn't explain how to compose.
• 15:41
  Frank: You could explain techniques like, for example, this is how you write a melody and this makes a melody strong and this is a great chord progression, what that is a bad chord progression.
• 15:51
  Frank: You can label those things to some degree, but then if you talk to successful composers, most of them explain to you things like well, I just feel when it's ready, you know it is a feel thing, and to me this is not really relatable because I'm not feeling what you're feeling Right.
• 16:12
  Frank: So you can't teach that, it's not possible.
• 16:16
  Frank: And that made us think.
• 16:17
  Frank: I would say, think about how can we put this all into easy steps.
• 16:23
  Frank: And I think that is actually also the moment.
• 16:25
  Frank: Now, tc, I want to transition to you.
• 16:27
  Frank: Maybe you want to give us the three steps and what they stand for and how everybody can use them, actually not only in composition.
• 16:37
  Frank: This is part of the creative process in general, I would almost say.
• 16:41
  Frank: But, tc, please feel free to talk us through the steps and what they are.
• 16:47
  T.C.: OK, well, I'm happy to do that.
• 16:49
  T.C.: The first step is gathering.
• 16:52
  T.C.: And what's nice about gathering is you don't have to be creative to gather, you just have to search for things that are interesting.
• 17:04
  T.C.: For example, if I wanted to bake a pie and I wanted to be a berry pie, I go out into the forest looking for berries and I see some berries and, oh, that might be good.
• 17:18
  T.C.: I'm not looking for a particular kind of a berry, I just want to.
• 17:22
  T.C.: I know I want to generally to be a berry pie.
• 17:24
  T.C.: So I gather the berries and then I see strawberries and I see blueberries and I see other kinds of berries and I gather them all together.
• 17:35
  T.C.: And in the process of doing that I relax my mind and I get connected to what we call the creative pool.
• 17:45
  T.C.: And when you're connected to the creative pool, there is no time.
• 17:50
  T.C.: That's what happens to artists when they realize they've been sitting for three hours and wow, where'd the time go?
• 17:57
  T.C.: Well, it's because you're in a flow.
• 17:59
  T.C.: So we realized that writer's block generally happens if you don't gather first, if you don't take the time to gather.
• 18:10
  T.C.: So we gather musical ideas, not worried about whether it's good, bad, the producer is going to like it.
• 18:16
  T.C.: Even if you like it or not, it's just another idea.
• 18:19
  T.C.: And so, basically, you gather and then pretty soon you realize, oh, that gives me that idea.
• 18:26
  T.C.: And then the next step is sketch and the sketching.
• 18:31
  T.C.: This all came to me from an overwhelming amount of work that I had to do.
• 18:37
  T.C.: Personally, I used to do two shows a week composition, production and they were live orchestras, so you didn't have a full week plus they would edit and you'd have to do so.
• 18:53
  T.C.: I had to find ways to compose fast, and so this came out of years, several seasons, of realizing it's got to be a step process.
• 19:06
  T.C.: So gathering is the first step and you don't think about it very hard, you just say, well, I want to write a piece and it's in this kind of genre.
• 19:13
  T.C.: The next is sketching, but there's not a defined line between them.
• 19:19
  T.C.: So you could go into sketching looking at some of your gathering and say, wow, that gives me this idea and gives me that idea, and you develop a whole bunch of the little gathered parts until longer parts.
• 19:33
  T.C.: The secret that a lot of people forget is you can go back.
• 19:35
  T.C.: You can go back to gathering If you say, oh, I need to know a little bit more about this particular interval, because I'm at a place where I need some more.
• 19:45
  T.C.: So you can go back and forth.
• 19:47
  T.C.: So you start to sketch.
• 19:48
  T.C.: And the thing is, when I worked at Warner Brothers for seven years doing Batman, I would go into the library and look at sketches from John Williams, all kinds of main composers, and I realized I didn't know how to sketch.
• 20:10
  T.C.: How do you sketch?
• 20:12
  T.C.: And it's really quite easy, and sketches are different for everybody.
• 20:17
  T.C.: You know, john Williams and Jerry Goldsmith had eight-stage sketches, strings up, strings down.
• 20:22
  T.C.: But as you get better and better at it, you need less and less, because when you orchestrate you're developing too.
• 20:31
  T.C.: So we have gathering, sketching and development, and the development is the orchestration and this is what we teach how to do all three of those.
• 20:43
  T.C.: I hope I didn't get too far ahead of myself, no, no.
• 20:47
  Dave: I think that makes perfect sense and from the production music side of things I absolutely resonate with wow, you have to write a lot and you have to write it quickly and you are writing to briefs and you're writing to somebody else's need, Like you can't just write whatever you want to write and it is what it is and take it or leave it.
• 21:04
  Dave: You know you have a scene to fill, you have an emotion to hit, and being able to sustainably create is vital for anybody looking to make a career in music production, especially for media.
• 21:19
  Dave: So the idea for gathering for me is doing your reference work, you know, maybe listening through a bunch of patches and seeing if something kind of you know resonates with you, and the sketching is putting kind of notes in the DAW, kind of some rough ideas, and then the development, the final orchestration, like you said, into Mix and Master and Deliverables and all of that, and so I think there's plenty, plenty of overlap and I see how your experience in the animation industry completely correlates to the production music industry for sure.
• 21:57
  T.C.: Yes, I've been very lucky and blessed.
• 21:59
  T.C.: And I'm very lucky to have met Frank, because he and I met in Vienna in a lecture series and it started off where he was one of the students and the next year he was also one of the lecturers.
• 22:17
  T.C.: That's what a good composer he was already, but he was also I'll just say this quickly because I don't want to eat up too much time but Frank was the one guy out of the whole class that on the breaks would end up explaining what I was talking about to everybody.
• 22:40
  Frank: Yeah, this is kind of true.
• 22:41
  Frank: Sorry for that.
• 22:43
  T.C.: Oh, I was very, I'm very happy.
• 22:45
  T.C.: So well, no.
• 22:46
  Dave: I think any educator, you know when, when, when you find those students who are wow, you recognize it in them.
• 22:54
  Dave: You're like you know what.
• 22:55
  Dave: They've not only got the goods, but they have the drive they're, they're good to work with, they're easy to work with.
• 23:00
  Dave: You know, we were talking earlier before we started recording how being easy to work with and pleasant to be around, being good natured, affable, all of those things I mean, they are a real currency in the industry, because talent alone will only get you so far, and if you're a big jerk, you know your talent level has to be exponentially higher than if you can just get along, you know.
• 23:24
  Dave: And so having students who resonate with you, who you see, clearly, oh, there's something there you want.
• 23:32
  Dave: You usually want to keep them pretty close, so I get it.
• 23:36
  T.C.: Yeah, well, we have a very, I think, positive culture in the academy and that has a base of give more than you take, and so it doesn't matter where you're at in the educational levels, try to give back whenever possible, and that's what Frank has in a big way, and so he gives a lot and that's what all of our people do.
• 24:07
  T.C.: They try to give a lot.
• 24:08
  T.C.: So the members they learn from each other, they learn from us, and you know I'm learning from you right now, dave.
• 24:16
  T.C.: Oh, I'm still a sponge.
• 24:22
  T.C.: I love to learn from people.
• 24:24
  T.C.: So I think your podcast is excellent.
• 24:26
  T.C.: I appreciate that.
• 24:27
  T.C.: You're really great at the way you talk to the audience.
• 24:32
  Dave: Well, thank you, man, that you honor me, thank you, thank you so much.
• 24:35
  Dave: I want to change gears and Frank music interval theory.
• 24:40
  Dave: How is that different from just the music theory that I know, I learned, you know, in the, in the dungeons of music school, you know, and just sweating over staff paper and and, and, yeah, and, coronaries and ulcers?
• 24:57
  Dave: Can you unpack what you mean by music interval theory?
• 25:04
  Frank: Yeah, of course.
• 25:04
  Frank: Well, one of the of the things that I want to start with when you ask that question is the problem with conventional theory.
• 25:13
  Frank: For me right this is just a personal opinion, obviously is that it teaches you technique but not really how to put this all into action and the application, and this became a problem to the degree that, again, here it comes with my healthy problem with authority.
• 25:33
  Frank: I remember if I may, let me give you another quick story, and and this is really true when I started music in Cologne in Germany.
• 25:44
  Frank: Back then I had a music professor and once he would give us an assignment and that assignment was something like well, right, in the style of Bach, and we analyzed a few of those pieces and I did my assignment, my homework, I turned it in and I actually got a bad grade for that and I, well, I got to the.
• 26:08
  Frank: To the professor.
• 26:08
  Frank: They asked why is that?
• 26:09
  Frank: What did I do wrong?
• 26:11
  Frank: And he said well, frank, look at what you did right here.
• 26:14
  Frank: You wrote a tritone.
• 26:15
  Frank: We would refer to this as a six interval, because it's six chromatic steps from one note to the next.
• 26:21
  Frank: And I said yes, I know, I did it purposely right.
• 26:25
  Frank: And he said, well, this is wrong.
• 26:26
  Frank: And I asked well, why is that wrong?
• 26:28
  Frank: He said, well, bach didn't write any tritones.
• 26:32
  Frank: And then I said what, wait a second, give me one minute.
• 26:35
  Frank: And I went to my place and I found him two examples where Bach actually did write tritones.
• 26:41
  Frank: And then he just turned to me and said well, frank, you are not Bach.
• 26:45
  Frank: And this is what what it did for me.
• 26:47
  Frank: Like, okay, if that is the way conventional music theory tries to well, bring up those young and aspiring composers, I'm done.
• 26:58
  Frank: Yeah, I'm really done.
• 26:59
  Frank: I'm.
• 27:00
  Frank: I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna learn anything from that approach.
• 27:03
  Frank: So that was for me the first, the first moment in my it wasn't a career back then but in my, you know, music profession that I realized, okay, I don't want to continue that way, there has to be something else.
• 27:18
  Frank: And I was pretty frustrated at that time because I couldn't compose like all these you know great guys that I admired back then, tc being one of them, funnily enough, and I told you that a few times, tc, that I grew up on the shows that you scored, like you know, the gummy bears, duck tails, elven and the chipmunks and what, what else I'm not quite sure there are, you know, endless examples here.
• 27:45
  Frank: But the point is I listened to the music and I had no clue how to write something like that, although I went through the conventional way and then at some point I, you know, got into touch with the intervals in general, and this made me think, because of two reasons actually.
• 28:03
  Frank: The first reason was that intervals they lead to other musical places that are not easily reachable via conventional theory, because conventional theory suggests a clear path to.
• 28:17
  Frank: You know more or less the Western diatonic system that we know and and love.
• 28:24
  Frank: I still write a lot in that, in that system, of course I like the sound, but the problem is everybody sounds pretty much the same if they follow the same guidelines.
• 28:34
  Frank: And so the first thing is new musical places, which was a big point for me.
• 28:40
  Frank: The second one was it gave me something I could rely on, because here it comes, intervals, they have a nature to them, and this might sound abstract, but honestly it's not.
• 28:53
  Frank: It's actually pretty simple to put into action, because if you isolate intervals, then you pretty much realize what the nature is by looking at the harmonic series, right?
• 29:06
  Frank: So if you take a two interval, let's say that is for the diatonic guys out there.
• 29:10
  Frank: It's a major second.
• 29:12
  Frank: That's.
• 29:12
  Frank: That's the interval.
• 29:13
  Frank: It's two chromatic steps and if you play that on the piano it doesn't sound stable.
• 29:19
  Frank: It wants to move some place, right.
• 29:21
  Frank: Usually it wants to resolve in the way of the authentic cadence, and that is what everybody talks about and it works.
• 29:28
  Frank: It's a cliche and that is good, but but guess what?
• 29:31
  Frank: Everybody's gonna go that way.
• 29:32
  Frank: So let's be different, let's be more interesting in the music that we present to our clients.
• 29:38
  Frank: Right, and one thing that, for example, we can do is that you can look at the resolution.
• 29:44
  Frank: If you play a two interval and I'm gonna be a bit nerdy here the the top guy moves up by, you know, five intervals.
• 29:53
  Frank: That's part of the resolution.
• 29:54
  Frank: The lower guy goes down just one chromatic step, and that is what the authentic cadence is, this typical right in a triad progression.
• 30:04
  Frank: Now you can look at those two movements and you can reflect it right.
• 30:09
  Frank: So you can look at the upper guy, let the upper guy move up by one chromatic step.
• 30:13
  Frank: Take the lower guy, let it move down by five chromatic steps, and now you just reflected the resolution.
• 30:20
  Frank: It sounds great.
• 30:21
  Frank: But here it changes the key, the musical key.
• 30:26
  Frank: Now you're not writing in the diatonic system anymore, although the nature of the intervals is still the same.
• 30:33
  Frank: It's a resolution and it it resolves in a very acceptable way to our ears.
• 30:39
  Frank: So this is not stuff that that sounds weird in the end, since it's all part of you know more or less the observation that we have from nature right, but it untethers it from diatonicism and yet still captures the behavioral aspects of, of harmonic motion.
• 31:02
  Dave: And so, as somebody you know, my, my, my masters is in jazz and it's all about the key and what chords are you, are you in, and everything, and even as things are getting, you know, harmonically intense, you're still this movable diatonic system right, which is great and that's.
• 31:20
  Dave: You know, I've been playing for years and years like that.
• 31:22
  Dave: But what you just said, and even just now, after I've listened to all your podcasts and everything just now, I'm like oh, that's, that's.
• 31:33
  Dave: It's kind of freeing and I'm realizing that for the DAW composer, if you're watching this or listening to this, and your, your life isn't, you know, dots on a staff, but your, your life is, you know parameters.
• 31:48
  Dave: In a DAW or in a piano world, you already exist in a step, a chromatic step environment, so that you know if I need to modulate up a minor third.
• 32:00
  Dave: You don't think minor third and a key whatever.
• 32:02
  Dave: I know the interval was in minor third.
• 32:04
  Dave: My apologies to all you perfect people out there, but you know I'm going up three half steps.
• 32:09
  Dave: You know bup, bup, bup and done.
• 32:11
  Dave: That's how I think when I'm in the piano role.
• 32:15
  Dave: I'm gonna modulate this and I just, you know, up arrow, up, arrow, up arrow and it's done, and so that creates a connection point that transcends, like, the music theory aspect, because music theory can be super intimidating for folks who haven't come through a university system.
• 32:35
  Dave: You know who, maybe they're self-taught or maybe they're not.
• 32:38
  Dave: In piano lessons was a lifetime ago, but that approach applies so directly to MIDI composers.
• 32:47
  Dave: It's staggering.
• 32:48
  Dave: Now I don't, I don't know if that was on the outset, if that was the goal, but that's, that's how it's super resonating with me and this is also part of how we compose.
• 32:59
  Frank: Really I know from TC, for example.
• 33:00
  Frank: He likes to work inside a music notation program and more the conventional way most likely, I believe.
• 33:08
  Frank: For me it is Cubase.
• 33:11
  Frank: It is really just moving around dots, more or less Obviously.
• 33:15
  Frank: I do read music notation and I feel home with that as well, but it's not the way how I compose and produce.
• 33:22
  Frank: It is all inside Cubase and it's all with just moving around those colorful dots and everything.
• 33:31
  Frank: And if you are used to looking at those empty spaces between the notes, which is the chromatic steps more or less that's your grid it becomes very easy to see and you see all the opportunities that the intervals bring, like this two interval it wants to resolve, because what is also interesting at two can be part of a bigger structure.
• 33:54
  Frank: And out of a sudden let's, for example, put another five on top.
• 33:59
  Frank: Now you have a two plus five.
• 34:01
  Frank: So we have three notes, we have the two interval and the third note, which is a five, on top of the middle one.
• 34:10
  Frank: A lot of guys would refer to that structure as a sus two triad, for example.
• 34:15
  Frank: And it is valid.
• 34:16
  Frank: It's totally valid.
• 34:17
  Frank: But the problem with that is, it puts immediately the root tone into the structure and it anchors everything.
• 34:24
  Frank: It puts you on a scale, it puts you on a key and, as you said, it's not really freeing anymore.
• 34:32
  Frank: It's the opposite, actually, and sometimes that's exactly what you want.
• 34:36
  Frank: So I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, but if you want to be more interesting with the music you compose, I think just having a freeing approach is key, because there is so much music out there and, honestly, you won't have a career by just running into the same four chords that everybody used in the charts like 10 years ago.
• 34:59
  Frank: You won't have a career period.
• 35:01
  Dave: That's what I believe and chances are every blue musician said uh, sir, actually, but that's a whole different job.
• 35:11
  Frank: Exactly so.
• 35:13
  Frank: Again, when we talk about production and being interesting with sounds, for example, then you can compensate a lot for ordinary chord progressions.
• 35:23
  Frank: So there are several layers.
• 35:25
  Frank: I understand, of course, but if we stick to the notes, then it is a good thing to be more interesting and you don't have to write weird stuff all day long.
• 35:36
  Frank: So you can just use two bars of a turnaround and make this pop and then you go back to C major, f, major, whatever.
• 35:45
  Dave: Yeah, and this is also If you've ever been watching a film or you know, gummy bears or whatever, which still blows my mind, the gummy bears, it's yeah.
• 35:54
  Dave: We're sitting here with like nostalgia.
• 35:57
  Dave: Royalty here.
• 35:58
  Dave: If you've ever wondered, wow, where did those ideas come from?
• 36:03
  Dave: How in the world did they come up with this?
• 36:04
  Dave: I'm in my little diatonic box in one, six, four, whatever.
• 36:07
  Dave: If you've ever wondered how they just conjure this up, it's stuff like this, right, they don't just sit there and tinkle around on the piano and hope something works out.
• 36:16
  Dave: They have this whole box of crayons that you didn't even.
• 36:20
  Dave: It's not that you can't have it, you just didn't even know it existed.
• 36:23
  Dave: You know, you're sitting there with your four colors that I guess you got from the restaurant.
• 36:28
  Dave: You know, because they let you draw on the table and you're like I can make my four colors.
• 36:31
  Dave: There is plenty of people who have an entire career of coloring with four crayons and that's fine.
• 36:37
  Dave: And in the production music world we have to be careful that we can't go so far off the grid and off the map that now suddenly it's pulling focus.
• 36:47
  Dave: So there is a balance there.
• 36:48
  Dave: But if you're looking for how do you get to that next level.
• 36:53
  Dave: You listen to something you're like where in the world did that come from?
• 36:56
  Dave: It's stuff like this.
• 36:59
  Frank: It's stuff just like this and that connects strongly to the three step process.
• 37:04
  Frank: Because if you look at the three steps and just to remind everybody here, it was gathering, sketching and developing.
• 37:10
  Frank: So if you look at gathering and sketching, that is a big part where you trust your emotional decision making.
• 37:17
  Frank: You're not judging the idea, just put stuff on the table that resonates with you emotionally and then in the developing phase, this is the moment where you can bring in skills like, okay, let's orchestrate this, let's write this out as a SATB choir, whatever.
• 37:36
  Frank: And this requires skills for sure.
• 37:39
  Frank: This is more the logical side of your decision making.
• 37:42
  Dave: It's the craft.
• 37:43
  Dave: It's what I call the craft.
• 37:45
  Dave: There's a creative, artistic side, and then there's the craft work Not a German EDM artist, but there's the craft work of the muscle memory, of doing the things repeatedly, over and over and over.
• 37:59
  Frank: Yeah, and one of the big secrets that revealed themselves to me by following this process and this is also not a joke, I'm not making this up is that the moment you write, or you compose and edit at the same time, you create a big problem for yourself, and that is what I used to do for years.
• 38:20
  Frank: Without knowing, without knowing so, I would spend, let's say, three hours on working on just four bars and those four bars.
• 38:29
  Frank: After those three hours, they sounded fantastic to me, fantastic Well developed and with a lot of details, and everything was in there.
• 38:38
  Frank: I even started the mixing process, I believe, for the four bars, and then you transition into bar number five.
• 38:45
  Frank: That is completely empty.
• 38:48
  Frank: There is nothing in there, and now you start that fear inside you how can I catch up to the four bars?
• 38:56
  Frank: Those are brilliant, and I have literally no clue what to do in bar number four.
• 39:02
  Dave: That's like an author writing a completed book one chapter at a time, not just write the book, get it edited, send it off, publish it, get the cover art done for one chapter.
• 39:15
  Dave: No, I'm totally in agreement.
• 39:17
  Dave: I think the creative process and I did a whole episode on right brain versus left brain I know the science on that is a little squirrely, but let's just fathom the concept, the process.
• 39:28
  Dave: There's a creative flow, state process, tc, what you were alluding to and then there's the analytical, the editing process, and those should be somewhat separated lest you run the risk of pulling your flow to a screeching halt.
• 39:43
  Dave: It just grinds it down, it slows it down.
• 39:49
  T.C.: Yep, that's right.
• 39:50
  T.C.: I'd like to address what you had asked before, just to unpack the difference between inner volic thinking and diatonic thinking.
• 40:01
  T.C.: Volic thinking starts outside of diatonic, so you're outside of a key, you're free and you learn how to get into a key.
• 40:18
  T.C.: Diatonic theory takes probably 20 times longer, but they eventually learn how to get out of it, like a jazz musician eventually learns how to get out of the key.
• 40:31
  T.C.: So it's much quicker to start free and learn how to get in the key than it is the other way.
• 40:39
  T.C.: And so that's, I would say, just in a general statement.
• 40:44
  T.C.: We start outside and get in instead of starting inside and get out.
• 40:50
  Dave: Which is funny because my very first theory lesson that I remember is whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half.
• 40:57
  Dave: Two, two one, two, two one.
• 41:00
  Dave: So we started out inner volically.
• 41:02
  Dave: But as soon as we understood the little pattern, now it's like key keys and you're looking at all the same notes are on the page, but this one has a pound symbol, this one has a little B in front of it.
• 41:14
  Dave: What does all that mean?
• 41:15
  Dave: Right, for my little drummer brain, 18-year-old drummer brain, sitting in a music theory class for the first time ever, it was mega-overwhelming.
• 41:23
  Dave: Not to mention, you get stuck into this keyboard To this day.
• 41:28
  Dave: I think this is why I have such a hard time with guitar and I did an episode a while back on.
• 41:35
  Dave: Hey, I'm learning guitar and I suck at it and that's okay, because guitarists just naturally think inner volically and you can just go up a step and it's all.
• 41:44
  Dave: You shift your whole hand up and yeah.
• 41:46
  Dave: So I could see this being a huge benefit for guitarists and TCM noticing some fine instruments hanging behind you right now.
• 41:55
  T.C.: Oh, yeah, I have a lot of them, but I want to address something that you just said.
• 42:00
  T.C.: Okay, because you said whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step, right.
• 42:05
  T.C.: So I want to give you a theoretical look at that.
• 42:09
  T.C.: The reason why that sounds like the Ionian scale or a major scale is where the ones are in relation to one another.
• 42:21
  T.C.: Okay, so if I were six apart, if I change that and make them five apart, I change my tonality and I'm in a whole new Ionian by just looking at where the ones are, the ones meaning half steps, right.
• 42:37
  T.C.: So between, if I'm in C, E and F is one, and B and C.
• 42:43
  T.C.: If I change that to E and F and I move the B and C down to B flat and A, I'm at a completely different key.
• 42:53
  T.C.: Just by moving that one, I don't even have to know what the other guys are, and you'll hear that you're in a new tonal center, and so that's kind of what I mean by we start on the outside and learn how to get in.
• 43:05
  Dave: I feel like I feel like Neo seeing the matrix for the first time right, and it's no longer like there's this, like you could see the code behind it and I could understand.
• 43:15
  Dave: I could understand why this is so kind of freeing.
• 43:20
  Dave: Now my question for you is and TC, I'll ask you, as someone who has written a ton of music for media, film and TV, some of these can yield some well, let's just say, some really chromatically bonkers stuff.
• 43:38
  Dave: So how do you, how do you work in the music interval theory process and yet still stick to where it's usable.
• 43:49
  Dave: It's not pulling focus, it's not so far out that suddenly it's not working for TV.
• 43:55
  Dave: How do you balance that?
• 43:58
  T.C.: Well, you start with simple ideas and I way I work is I use for guitar.
• 44:06
  T.C.: You're good, you want to learn how to play guitar.
• 44:08
  T.C.: I use matrices on the guitar instead of chord shapes and matrix.
• 44:16
  T.C.: For example, if an interval combinations, an interval combination is just two different intervals.
• 44:24
  T.C.: So if I tell you, because you're a jazz musician, so I would say, if I have a B flat, 13th chord, I want to try it on top.
• 44:33
  T.C.: So I have an A flat, a D and a G.
• 44:37
  T.C.: Between the A flat and the G is an 11.
• 44:41
  T.C.: Elevens resolve to nines.
• 44:45
  T.C.: So if I know that I can play that chord and see a resolution in there without having to learn another chord, I can see the resolution because the G will resolve to the F and that gives you a nine from the A flat to the F.
• 45:01
  T.C.: So what happens is that you learn where the tonal centers are in certain things and by knowing the interval.
• 45:14
  T.C.: For example, if I say what is the root tone between C and D flat?
• 45:19
  T.C.: It's D flat.
• 45:20
  T.C.: What's the root tone between D and E?
• 45:23
  T.C.: It's an.
• 45:26
  T.C.: E.
• 45:26
  T.C.: Intervolically it's an E and that's because of where it occurs in the overtone series.
• 45:32
  T.C.: So if I just have those two notes and Prokofiev did this a lot he would use two notes to get to another tonality, and that's one place that I started waking up to how to use interval thinking.
• 45:47
  T.C.: It doesn't mean you can't be diatonic and tonal, just means that you see other options, gotcha.
• 45:55
  Dave: Gotcha.
• 45:56
  Dave: Yeah, don't mind me, I'll just be over here, mind blown.
• 46:00
  Dave: That's fine, and I hope listeners, viewers, I hope you're getting as much out of this as I am.
• 46:04
  Dave: This is just a personal lesson.
• 46:05
  Dave: This is what it is.
• 46:06
  Dave: I'm just filming a coaching session.
• 46:08
  Dave: Appreciate it, guys.
• 46:09
  Dave: Thank you guys.
• 46:10
  Dave: Well, speaking of coaching, this isn't just a podcast that you guys put together.
• 46:16
  Dave: You have an entire academy.
• 46:18
  Dave: Let's talk about the academy, what some of its goals are and maybe how folks can get in touch with you if you, like me, are resonating with this.
• 46:30
  Frank: Maybe in the beginning, let's start with, there was not even the idea of creating an academy, right?
• 46:36
  Frank: Because you see, you and I we met, as you said, in Vienna at one of those lecture series.
• 46:41
  Frank: It was in 2015.
• 46:43
  Frank: And back then it was an exchange of ideas.
• 46:47
  Frank: Nothing, nothing more.
• 46:49
  Frank: I wanted to learn from you and I was bugging you every night after those lectures like please give me some more and please can I look at the score that you presented today and stuff like that, and you would give it to me.
• 47:01
  Frank: And I spent half of my night analyzing these things.
• 47:05
  Frank: And the next morning I came back to you and was presenting my ideas, which was more or less the analysis of what I assumed you did, and you looked at this and you said, well, frank, this is great.
• 47:18
  Frank: I have no idea if that was my initial thought of how I composed it, but let's try it.
• 47:25
  Frank: Let's try it.
• 47:26
  Frank: And why don't you compose a piece following the guidelines that you have recreated out of the score?
• 47:32
  Frank: And I did right.
• 47:34
  Frank: So every time we exchanged some of those ideas, we had plenty of materials that came out of those scores and musical examples.
• 47:44
  Frank: No text at that point.
• 47:46
  Frank: It was not designed to be teaching material.
• 47:49
  Frank: This was just my desire to finally learn something that would get me out of my own frustration, honestly.
• 47:55
  Frank: And we ended up with a lot of these musical examples and we showed it to the class.
• 48:01
  Frank: And then I believe the whole class, which was 15 guys or something they all came to TC and asked how they can continue, because this one week in Vienna has ended, and they were thrilled about well, this is great, we want to learn more about that.
• 48:21
  Frank: And then TC, you told me I can remember this Well, frank, why don't you turn this thing into some teachable materials?
• 48:28
  Frank: And we did this and we started giving Zoom sessions.
• 48:32
  Frank: Again, it was not the idea of creating an academy or even creating a business around the academy, it was really just Well, this was interesting and some other guys wanted to learn more about that.
• 48:45
  Dave: So just organically growing out of what was already happening 100%, yep, 100%.
• 48:52
  Frank: And then at some point we decided that, since it took up our whole day for I don't know how many months and years, and we tried to organize all of these findings into lessons so that they didn't go over an hour on Zoom back then, because it took a ton of time and we talked to not quite sure about seven, maybe sometimes seven guys a day and tried to explain those interval theory techniques to them.
• 49:25
  Frank: And at some stage we decided, ok, this can't be the way we do it most efficiently.
• 49:32
  Frank: This is not scalable, it just eats up all of our day and we don't get to compose music anymore, which was very sad right Boy.
• 49:40
  Dave: do I understand that?
• 49:43
  Frank: Our goal kind of never shifted from.
• 49:45
  Frank: We wanted to become and turn into the best versions of ourselves.
• 49:49
  Frank: So, yeah, that being said, we thought about a business model and how to let this continue without our days being filled with Zoom sessions, because that is obviously something that you want to reduce over time.
• 50:05
  Frank: Everybody who did a lot of those will agree, I believe.
• 50:08
  Frank: So, yeah, we came up with those with a platform.
• 50:12
  Frank: Obviously, first it was just a website and then it became more and more like all of the lessons turned into video lessons.
• 50:21
  Frank: But, funnily enough, the Zoom sessions they didn't stop Now.
• 50:26
  Frank: They just moved from teaching sessions into implementation and feedback sessions, which is fine.
• 50:33
  Frank: We do these things up to this point.
• 50:35
  Frank: The last one we had yesterday at the Creative Campus, which is also a part of the Academy, which was a very organic branch almost, and this is more or less like our virtual space for the members and everybody who's interested.
• 50:52
  Frank: This is not member limited.
• 50:54
  Frank: Honestly.
• 50:55
  Frank: Everybody can visit the Creative Campus and we do those sessions still up to this point, and it is such a fantastic experience, I have to say so I can't imagine doing something else.
• 51:09
  Frank: It's a perfect split of the time between still being pro composers and work in the industry and do gigs like the usual thing that composers do and still passing on some of those intervallic findings to those who are interested in new methods and in breathing new life and life and new colors into their creations.
• 51:34
  Frank: I think that's the whole point.
• 51:36
  Frank: So it got to the point where we seem to attract very organically the quote unquote right people who are open to trying something new, maybe even getting out of their own frustration and overcoming problems and issues that they had for years and decades.
• 51:57
  Frank: Sometimes that is what some of the members really tell us.
• 52:01
  Frank: If you get to talk to somebody who retired out of the music business and this was a recent case I won't give any names, of course, but he wrote me an email like a week ago and said well, frank, I'm following the YouTube channel for two years or so and a week ago I retired.
• 52:20
  Frank: Now I made the decision to join the Academy because I believe this is just fantastic and a fantastic addition to my musical education.
• 52:27
  Frank: I never heard about interval theory before, but this piqued my interest and I think the way you present these ideas, this is just a nice way for me personally, obviously, to get a fresh perspective to music theory and to music in general.
• 52:46
  Frank: So half of the members they are performing musicians as well, so it's not just like that.
• 52:52
  Frank: You have to be a hardcore composer to get value out of this.
• 52:55
  Frank: This also works on any instrument like the piano or the guitar, and to see, that's maybe the moment also where I want to give everybody the opportunity to learn a bit more about how these things can be applied to the guitar, because that is what you specialize in and created a ton of materials over the last few years, and that is fantastic.
• 53:19
  Dave: So I think it's a great opportunity for all the musicians to get a fresh perspective If they feel that this would enrich their musical life and, like I said, it's not limited to just film, scoring, their applications across instrument and whatever your career goals are, if you want to be a production music composer film games, television commercials, jingles, I mean this really does have far reaching implications and just gives you a whole new way to think about music theory.
• 53:54
  Dave: So I would say, if you're feeling kind of stuck and for the record, this is not a sponsored right, you're not like paying, this isn't a 45 minute commercial for me to but I just really really believe in what you guys are doing and, as somebody with a graduate degree in music theory or in music, being able to hear whole brand new ways to think about things from a perspective that you hadn't before is super refreshing and exciting, and so I, every time I listen to one of your episodes, every time I watch a video, I come away inspired, and so just congratulations.
• 54:34
  Dave: I wish you guys all of the success.
• 54:36
  Dave: If folks want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
• 54:43
  Frank: I think the easiest way is to come to the website, because it almost works as a hub to all the other media streams that we put out, and that is musicintervaltheoryacademy.
• 54:58
  Dave: Super simple Musicintervaltheoryacademy.
• 55:00
  Dave: And of course, we're going to have links to all of that in the show notes.
• 55:05
  Dave: And if you're listening to this podcast, as soon as this episode is done, go listen to their episodes.
• 55:12
  Dave: It's really, really good.
• 55:14
  Dave: And that little jingle.
• 55:14
  Dave: I want to ask you all about that jingle that's so crazy.
• 55:20
  Frank: May I give you some nice background information about that jingle, because you mentioned this and we wrote it together.
• 55:28
  Frank: You see, we wrote this one for the podcast and in there this is a quick tip for everybody listening.
• 55:35
  Frank: And this is also true whenever I don't know what to write like not to write us blog, but I don't have a clear idea yet.
• 55:43
  Frank: I always start with a chromatic line, and that is not a joke.
• 55:47
  Frank: I always start with a chromatic line and in that jingle the chromatic line was the mental baseline.
• 55:53
  Frank: You're not hearing it right Because it's just the voice on top and the piano and stuff, but still, if you get to see the score and we have it actually, maybe we will do a little teaching session on the jingle at some point.
• 56:08
  Frank: But it is a mental root line.
• 56:11
  Frank: I wouldn't call it a progression, even because it's a cycle.
• 56:14
  Frank: The root cycle is just more or less the chromatic line, but this holds the whole jingle together.
• 56:20
  Frank: So again, jazz theory right, and it sounds super like.
• 56:24
  Dave: What do you see, Anne Frank?
• 56:25
  Dave: You land on the one.
• 56:27
  Dave: It feels resolved.
• 56:28
  Dave: There's tension, there's resolution.
• 56:29
  Dave: All those things that Bach did you guys are doing Just so you can go tell your music instructor or your professor from way back in the day that we're using tritones and we're not even sorry.
• 56:45
  Frank: And I'm proud of that.
• 56:46
  Dave: That's right.
• 56:46
  Dave: Well, tc and Frank, thank you so much for joining me today on the 52 Cues podcast.
• 56:51
  Dave: Really really appreciate you and what you are bringing into the music education space and I just want to encourage you keep up the good work.
• 57:01
  Dave: Really really great having you today.
• 57:04
  T.C.: Thank you, Dave.
• 57:06
  Frank: Many thanks for that, and, dave, maybe at some point we can welcome you at the Music Interval Theory podcast as well.
• 57:13
  Frank: This is maybe the invitation already.
• 57:17
  Frank: We will stay in touch, so if that is something that you might be interested, we are all open.
• 57:22
  Dave: That's already a yes, that's an automatic yes.
• 57:25
  Dave: Sir, I will see you over in Mida, happy to join you over there.
• 57:29
  Dave: Well, dave, many thanks.
• 57:33
  T.C.: Thank you, Dave.
• 57:35
  Dave: Once again, a huge word of thanks to Frank and TC from the Music Interval Theory Academy for joining me on the podcast today and, of course, we're going to have all their links in the description below.
• 57:44
  Dave: Also a huge word of thanks to the family, friends and neighbor subscribers of 52 Cues who pay their actual real life money to keep all of this going.
• 57:53
  Dave: You notice you didn't hear any embedded ads for meal plans or mattresses or earbuds, but the Mida folks, they didn't pay for this.
• 58:02
  Dave: I just think they're a great idea.
• 58:04
  Dave: So that's not a sponsored segment or anything.
• 58:06
  Dave: No, we are supported from viewers, listeners and subscribers, just like you.
• 58:12
  Dave: So if that sounds like something you want to be a part of, help support the channel and get all of those subscriber perks like workshops, live streams, hours and hours of video archives, new breakdowns, and our briefing room allows you to pitch to real music libraries and head over to 52Cuescom.
• 58:29
  Dave: It is free to join and subscriptions start at around four bucks a month.
• 58:34
  Dave: But that is going to do it for me this week.
• 58:37
  Dave: You definitely want to tune in next week because I'm afraid.
• 58:39
  Dave: I'm afraid we need to talk about AI again.
• 58:44
  Dave: We talked about AI before and about.
• 58:46
  Dave: Is AI coming to take our jobs and it's still not time to sound the alarm.
• 58:51
  Dave: I don't need to pull the fire alarm, but, man, just this past weekend, open AI released Sora and some video clips which were jaw dropping, and I think it would be naive to not have a sobering discussion about what that means and the implications for us in the production music world.
• 59:12
  Dave: So you definitely want to tune in next week.
• 59:16
  Dave: So I hope you've had a great week eight and I know that you, my friends, are going to have an amazing week nine.
• 59:22
  Dave: How do I know that?
• 59:22
  Dave: Because I trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans just for you.
• 59:28
  Dave: Until next time, peace.
• 59:30
  Dave: The 52Cues podcast is copyrighted 2024 at 18 Studios.
• 59:36
  Dave: All Rights Reserve.
• 59:36
  Dave: The music played on the podcast is copyrighted of their respective owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only.
• 59:42
  Dave: For more information, including joining the community or becoming a member subscriber of 52Cues, head over to 52Cuescom.