mumble

Yeah man, and really there is no end to what you can learn about music or production. It's up to you how far you want to take it. If something is in a "key" of C, it means that it uses mostly notes from the "key signature" of C, which includes the notes of the C major scale. It also usually means that the "tonal center" of the song is C, the "home base". So yes, you pretty much have it. The thing is that most interesting music strays from a strict key by employing notes that are not in the key. Some interesting ways to do this are by playing other "known to sound good" scales (of which some are these "modes" that we're mentioning, phrygian) over your C key chords, or whatever. There are a million ways to break the rules. Good music is about breaking the "rules" in a way thats pleasing to the ear. :-) It's really a long road so for now just have fun with it... make a song with E phrygian using all white keys starting on E and ending on E... or in Am (A minor) using all white keys from A to A.... read about it on the net in your spare time and figure out how the hell these could be the same notes in C major, which is C to C all white keys.

I thought about trying to decode that for him but learning modes before major/minor scales seems strange don't you think? It is where you want to end up next though, zee. That and stuff like mixing melodic/harmonic/hungarian minor and diminished. Could try starting with phrygian too ... if you just stick to the notes in the scale...

Phew, such an open ended question. Everyone who knows anything about theory has been where you are now. Because of that fact there are an incredible number of free resources on the internet to learn what you need. Music theory (which is what you want to know about, to some extent), can be very deep and complicated, but there are simpler things you can do to start. I'm not going to give you a deep explanation about theory here because it is covered countless times on the internet. Just go to google and search for something like "music theory lesson", "scale lesson", or "chord lesson". I recommend if you're going to make psy and you want that "mysterious" sound, to start by learning one or two "minor" scales, which are a set of notes you should play and not stray from (until you learn a little bit more, then all rules are off). There are many types of scales, and some are heard in psy more than others, but for that introspective, moody, sometimes sad, sometimes dark sound, minor is an easy way to start. Major would be for your carebear psy. Of course major and minor are actually related, but thats too much for now... :-)

I'm a Logic user, ES2 is a nice synth, but some things it doesn't do as well as it could, like high filter rez. Still plenty nice though, I always use it for something.

Hiya, First post - woot. OhmForce Quad Fromage http://www.ohmforce.com