Composing music with a japanese sound

in music •  7 years ago 


Let's say that as a music composer, you are tasked with writing a piece with a Japanese feel to it. 

The fundament of the Japanese sound is the usage of the i, VII, VI and V (or V) chords of the minor scale.
Japanese chord progressions differ from Western chord progressions in the sense that the Japanese prefer using the VII as a dominant to i, rather than V to i. In other words, in C minor, you'd use the B7 chord to move back to Cm, instead of G7.

Here are some popular chord progressions:
VI, VII, v, i
i, i, VI, VII,
i, VI, VII, III

Here is a video of Marty Friedman from Megadeth demonstrating this concept:

More advanced is the usage of secondary dominants within progressions. It's quite common to modulate to the sub-dominant by going isus4 > I. (e.g. Cm to C) This will set you up with a dominant that leads into the sub-dominant, which is F in this case.

For melodies, start by incorporating the pentatonic scales that correspond with either the mode you're in or the chord you're currently using. Feel free to also include one of the diatonic notes.
Start by using almost only chord tones and then moving on the including more passing tones. Once you have a feel for this you can even write melodies that use extension tones instead of the chord tones. 


You also have to include a guy going yoooo into your work. This is mandatory.

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These were great! post more stuff like this :-D

Agreed. The Yooo is the most important part :)))

such a beautiful sound it is!

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