Hello revolutionary music makers, I’m Kate
Harmony, this is Ray Harmony, and welcome
to Hack Music Theory, where we help you make
great music that stands out. And if it’s
your first time here, please help yourself
to our free book “12 Music Theory Hacks
to Learn Scales & Chords”, which you can
download from our website. Alright, it’s
time to open your DAW to hack music theory.
But first… tea!
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has been rather
prolific lately, and he’s back with another
new album. “Anima” continues his journey
into electronic exploration, and contains
some mesmerising moments, like the hypnotic
bass line in album opener “Traffic”, which
we’ll be hacking in this video. What makes
this bass line so hypnotic? Two things: depth,
and syncopation (which is accenting an off-beat).
Thom creates depth in his bass line by using
a layering technique. And while most people
think of layering as adding instruments, you
can actually achieve the same effect in a
bass line alone, without adding any tracks.
You simply write two melodies that work together
harmonically, then switch back and forth between
them. And Thom assigns his top melody to beats
2+, 3+, and 4+, which results in a hypnotic
pumping against his bottom melody that plays
on the beats in between.
SETUP
Alright, now you’re gonna learn how to use
this theory to make your own version. And
for the example in this lesson, we’ll be
using our version that we made earlier. So,
start by setting up two bars of 4/4, with
your grid set to 1/16 notes, and your tempo
set to 129 BPM. And Thom’s bass line is
in G minor, so we’ll use it too.
STEP 1. CHORDS
Musical depth is created from harmony, so
when you wanna write a bass line with depth,
write your chord progression first. And the
chords in G minor that you can choose from,
are: Gm, Adim, B♭maj, Cm, Dm, E♭maj, and
Fmaj. In our progression, we play Gm for one
bar, then Fmaj for half a bar, then Cm for
one beat, and then we finish with B♭maj
for one beat.
STEP 2. LAYERS
Now it’s time to split your harmony into
two layers: a top melody, and a bottom melody.
Thom’s two layers are actually just the
same melody played at different octaves, but
we decided to kick it up a notch by writing
two completely different melodies. We used
the root note of each chord for our bottom
melody, then we filled in the harmony with
our top melody. For example, over the Fmaj
chord, our bottom melody plays the root, then
our top melody completes the harmony by playing
3, 5, and another 3 an octave higher.
STEP 3. RHYTHM
Right, the last step is to assign rhythms
to your two layers. Thom only plays his top
melody on beats 2+, 3+, and 4+, which creates
that hypnotic syncopation. So we used a similar
rhythm for our top melody, but we added beat
2 as well. And in our second bar, to spice
things up even more, we used a few 1/16 notes.
The shortest note value Thom uses though,
is an 1/8 note, so stick with that if you
want something simpler.
Lastly, we get loads of people asking how
to transition between sections, and also,
how to structure and arrange songs. And while
these are essential skills to learn, please
understand that we can’t teach them for
free, because that is our secret sauce which
we teach in our online apprenticeship course.
So, if you wanna learn how to go from a blank
screen to a finished song, then join over
700 other music makers also on the course.
And, it helps us pay the rent too, so it’s
a win-win! You can join anytime at: HackMusicTheory.com
Alright, now let’s have a listen to our
Thom Yorke inspired bass line. But just before
the playthrough, if there’s an artist you’d
like us to hack, please let us know. Thanks
for watching (or listening, if you’re on
the podcast), and we’ll see you next week!
