Nowadays chord loops are all around us. They can be addictive to listen to and play. But making a good chord progression loop is difficult. So how do you make one that is interesting, original and recognizable? Let’s dive in and let’s get creative!
Nothing beats a hypnotic, spacious and ambient piano loop or guitar loop. You can use them in any genre or style of music. But what is the music theory behind them? And how should you process them from a music production perspective?
Normally I only show music notation and the TAB. But for this one, I will also add pictures from the piano roll (MIDI). This lesson will have two main sections:
Video Tutorial: How To Make Great Chord Loops
This article is quite long and goes very deep. If you want to hear the loop with real music or if you need some extra explaining, check out my full video tutorial.
The Music Theory Behind Chord Progression Loops
Let’s break down the music theory of making a chord loop into 5 steps. These are the chord progression, the note spacing, writing a melody, finding the most interesting rhythms and choosing the right register. Once you learn this you can apply this to any type of instrument or arrangement. So you can just as easily create guitar chord loops and piano chord loops.
Finding the right chord progression
Some chord progressions are more suitable for becoming a loop than others. Traditional and tonal chord progressions build tension and are goal-oriented. There is a game of tension and release.
But when it comes to chord loops, you want the straight opposite. You don’t want your progression to be goal-oriented. It needs to float. There is no need to build up tension.
What is tension and release?
When you build tension, inevitably there will be a moment of release. This release creates an energy drop. This stops the music in a way. There is a pause or new beginning because you need to start building up the tension again. A chord progression that is not goal-oriented will float and never rest. The ultimate chord loop creates an endless circle.
So how do you translate this into a chord progression?
You want to mainly use chords that are a third or a second apart. Especially the ones before and after your first chord. Also, when it comes to movement, switching between going up and down works well. So one chord moves in an upward direction and the other one goes in a downward direction.
Progressions that you want to avoid are obvious dominant progressions such as the 1 – 4 – 5 – 1 that you saw above. Or the 1 – 7 – 6 – 5 chord progression in natural minor. Because these are very goal-oriented.
The note spacing in each chord
On the piano in Pop and Dance music, it is normal to play fifths instead of full chords with the left hand. There are multiple reasons why this is so popular. Here are two good reasons:
- When I play full chords in the lower piano register they sound muddy. When you only play fifths the sound becomes clear and stable. It cleans it up.
- When you only play fifths you leave everything open for the melody in the right hand. You now have complete freedom to play any melody note, making chords major, minor etc.
How to create a melody for your chord loop
Making a good melody for a loop is tricky. Why? Well, that’s because it needs to be easy, and recognizable enough for people to sing it. But on the other hand, it should not be too distracting. This is because often the chord loop is not your main element. It provides a basic layer of sound to which all the music happens.
Because the left hand is only playing fifths on the piano we don’t have full chords yet. You can accentuate the thirds of each chord with the melody. You can apply this same chord spacing and note order to guitar chords. It will sound amazing!
Apart from the chords sounding create, this already creates some melodic outline. Now you have a starting point. To find a melody you can start to circle these notes up and down. This will make sure that the melody has some sense of growth going up and down.
And what I did with my melody is the following: my loop is 4 bars, but the melody is 8 bars.
The fact that the melody is longer than the chord progression creates interest! They renew or switch at different phrase lengths.
A word about rhythm
In my melody, some notes are repeated, while others come just before the beat. Some of the melodic lines lead directly into the next chord. All these techniques create rhythmic interest. This way you can avoid the loop sounding boring and unoriginal.
What creates a lot of interest, is to have an upbeat or syncopation before some of the chords. This works especially well with the last chord before the loop repeats. This syncopated rhythm is good with a note that is one step up or down from a note in the chord you will play next. In this example, from the melody on the F chord, the B wants to rise to the C of A minor.
Also, syncopated note repetitions and triplet rhythms give the necessary rhythmic variation.
The register of the loop
One more tip before we continue to the music production part. Don’t forget that the register in which your loop is played is very important. For example, how would this piano loop sound if you played it two octaves higher? To me, it sounds happy like fairytale music. But the same goes for playing it in a register that’s too low. So choose wisely!
Music Production
There are many ways that you can process your chord progressions for looping. Either compress, filter or even destroy them with distortion. No matter what instrument, the following sound design steps can be applied to any type of instrument loop. So you can also do this with your favourite guitar chord loops.
The piano, EQ and side chain explained
It’s needless to say, but for any great piano chord progression loop, you need good piano samples. I used Noire by Native Instruments. The next two plugins that I use are Neutron and a volume side chaining plugin. In this tutorial, I used Kickstart from Nicky Romeo, but Shaperbox from Cable Guys is even better.
EQ: I use this to shape the sound of the piano a bit. I added a high shelf from 3k to add extra air to the piano. A high pass filter from 60 Hz to make space for the kick drum. And a dip in the low mid frequencies around 350 Hz.
Volume shaper/Sidechain: I put the mix on around 50%. I found that if it ducks the volume 100% then parts of the melody are missing. Also, I just find it to sound a bit unrefined.
Adding reverb on an Aux track
Often I prefer putting reverb on a send track. I explain this in more detail in this reverb article. I prefer this because I have more control over the sound. This way you keep your reverb and dry signal on separate tracks. Then you have the flexibility to take out frequencies or process your reverb signal in any way you like. This technique is also called parallel processing. When you parallel process things, you want the plugins to be on 100% wet.
Reverb: I love the Valhalla reverbs. They are cheap and sound great! For this tutorial, I used the VintageVerb set to concert hall, with a decay time of 5 seconds and 31 ms. predelay.
EQ: Almost always I filter frequencies from the reverb signal. Reverb can very easily muddy your entire mix. That’s why you especially want to filter out the lows. And if you want the reverb to sound less splashy you filter out some highs. I chose a high pass filter at 453Hz and a low pass filter at 18kHz.
Adding a pitch shifter on an Aux track
I send the processed reverb signal to another aux track. And on this aux track, I have multiple plugins, but the main goal is to get a nice pitch-shifted sound. I do this to add extra high notes/octaves to my piano loop. When you finish processing this track, you can add volume or make it softer by lowering the volume. For example, I gently added the pitch-shifter aux track to the mix.
EQ: Again you filter out frequencies that you don’t want. In this case, I filtered out quite a bit of the high frequencies and the low frequencies. This prevents the bass frequencies from muddying up the signal. But also when you have too many high frequencies pitch-shifters tend to sound very digital and fake.
Compressor: I added a compression plugin to stabilise the signal. I do this because I want all of the pitch-shifted piano notes to sound equal. Not for some notes to stick out too much.
Distortion and saturation: To add extra volume and a rough bite I added the decapitator plugin from Soundtoys.
Pitch shifter: The last plugin on the channel strip is the ReaPitch from Reaper. This is just a stock plugin. And all it does is shift everything up one octave. Don’t forget to set the plugin to 100% wet.
