How to Come Up with B Sections?

Posted Sa., 05.12.2020 - 03:12

I find it fairly easy to come up with main themes for various short ambient (etc) pieces. But I hit the wall when trying to come up with relevant, related B sections. Partly this is due to my limited experience with Synfire.

Is there some shortcut or preferred method to make this easier?

I know Synfire makes it easy to throw together various phrase pools and chord progressions, but that all seems rather brute force, hit-or-miss.

I'm specifically looking for a way to find chord progressions that are more likely to fit well with the main theme. So it would still be a matter of matching things up, but with perhaps a better chance of finding material that actually works well in the context of my project.

Also, is there a source for a large collection of chord progressions that could be easily imported into a Synfire library? I know there is already some stock content, but I mean other than that.

I think I have one or more VSTs (Captain Chords etc) that will create chord progressions that I can then drag and drop into my DAW, and from there I could export them as MIDI, then import them into a harmony library. But would this be taking the long way around?

Thanks.

andre

Sa., 05.12.2020 - 17:12 Permalink

What goes well as a B section mostly depends on genre and personal style. This is more a question of culturally established patterns, than a technical one that could be answered with some diagram or formula. As you seem to be talking about Ambient, literally everything is possible, IMO.

I find it always inspiring to listen to examples of music I like and figure out what it is about a particular harmony twist that makes for a great listening experience. It often turns out to be simple, rather than complex. Sometimes it's just a jump into nowhere that slowly resolves back to where you came from. Like storytelling, musical narration has its equivalents of flashbacks, exposition, climax, etc.

The Palette is your friend. Try circling some narrow region of it for your A section, then move to another region for your B section. Finally do a V-I closing that either takes off into another key, or comes home to the tonic of your palette.

There are different types of progressions:

Slowly wandering around, seemingly without aim ('Open')
Bouncing back and forth between two chords ('Pendulum')
Cycling three or four chords over and over ('Riff')
A single chord, merely changing extensions, vertical scales and gender ('Modal')
A few chords connecting two of the above ('Bridge', 'Turnaround')

This list is by no means complete. The terms in parentheses are just my personal choices. These types however all invoke a specific effect and mood. The Palette was created exactly for the purpose of exploring these kinds of progressions and to put them into relation visually.

I recommend using a live sketch based on your actual patterns when you try out any of the above, so you'll get an idea how your instruments and rhythms will sound against a particular harmony.

Oh, and don't underestimate Type 4. That one works great with rhytmically dense patterns and simply switching to one other chord after a while will pass as a section B ;-)