>>159519Hey, I'm happy you liked it! Really glad to hear it helped. I'm back for round 2 so hopefully this one goes just as well.
> What's up with "perfect fourth", "tritone", "perfect fifth"?The fact that I haven't thought about the reasons behind those names for years could probably tell you that "it is what it is." I wrote a massive paragraph while I tried to figure it out until I finally remembered the simple explanation: Take a C, and go up to a G. That's a fifth. Now, take a C and go down to a G. That's a fourth. This concept is called interval inversion, where the distance between notes depends on if you're going up, or down. 2nds invert into 7ths, and 3rds invert into 6ths. The thing about all those notes is that they switch from major to minor when they invert, ie, C to A is a major sixth, while A to C is a minor third. But the perfect intervals don't have major or minor, they invert into each other as shown above. The tritone (so called because it's three whole steps; tri - tone) divides the octave exactly in half and so it actually inverts into itself. Inversion is a little weird to understand at first so don't worry about it. It's useful but not really necessary, just bonus pattern-recognition type stuff if you're used to it. It's more useful if you get deep into harmony but that's about it.
One other thing about the 4th and 5th: they are the third simplest ratio between frequencies possible. Notes, are of course, frequencies, and so if intervals are the relationships between notes, they are also the ratio between frequencies. Two of the same note playing at once (called a unison) is a frequency ratio of 1:1; an octave, the same note but one vibrating at twice the rate is 2:1; the perfect fifth and fourth are 3:2 and 2:3 respectively. The simpler the ratio, the more consonant, the more "pure" the harmony sounds. Contrast that with a minor second at 16:15 and well, you know how that sounds. Anyway that math bit is just a fun extra. Remember that music theory started as a series of mathematical experiments.
>How does one find out about non-obvious "composition concepts"?There's a lot of those under a lot of different umbrella terms, but I still get what you're saying. Harmony, for example, is its own entire school and probably has more books written about it than any other concept. There's complex baroque harmonies, weird tonal harmonies like Tristan und Isolte, Allman Bros. guitar harmonies, power metal harmonies, barbershop harmonies... The best thing is to study what you listen to and what you like and learn how it works there. Formal, classical harmony is too dry, too stifling for me to ever care about understanding, even if I like listening to Bach and am impressed by how beautiful it can be with so many rules. But for everything else, arpeggios, trills, runs, long notes, short notes, fast, slow, it's all style, so just keep listening to what you like, study it, copy it, and develop your intuition as a writer. It takes time, but it definitely happens. I wish I could give you a link to a youtube lesson on it but this part really is just absorbing as much as you can.
>BassI... actually don't hear it in that example. Youtube keeps cutting out for me so I'm trying to listen to it in a hurry, but I keep missing it. Anyway, aside from that embarrassing fail, I do get what you mean about descending bass in general. Of course bass plays a role in declaring a mood just like everything else in a song does. What I was trying to correct in the first post was that bass determines the key and scale. It's the overall harmony that does that, but bass is a part of the overall harmony, so it still contributes, but only contributes. That's all I can say, I'm not a bassist or a writer for bass, and all the lines I have written have been pretty utilitarian and bare. I'm not even sure what direction to point you in, but again, go for what you like. Learn chord functions, dominants, tension and release, and try to apply the same concepts to writing. Signals is a great resource on that, again.
>Or is this some kind of illusion, like chords that aren't playing but which you still perceive through other ways?This is a pretty neat point to make because you can imply certain chords by playing notes from them. So if you keep hammering away at notes from the V chord, it's going to grow more tense, for example.
>Other things, like how to work with tom-toms and hi-hats, I assume should make sense to me automatically when going through that YT playlist you linked. Even if not, I feel they should be easily researchable once I got the basics down, so I will not think about those too much for now.This is the right attitude for not only drums but literally everything. Keep listening to what you like, study how it works, copy it, eventually you'll be able to copy not just what they're doing, but the concepts that they use and write your own material in the same style, and finally synthesize all those things you like into your own personal style. You definitely know enough to start writing, it's just experimentation and persistence from here on out. Go get em