Okay I hope this doesn't get downvoted. I am trying to get back to learning to write music (on the computer). I started in 2011 and having learned software, basic music theory I kept failing despite numerous attempts (I had some success but not much). I stopped about 3.5 years ago. I was hoping maybe someone could get me on the right track.
The music I am going for:
^(first track in the background here; probably 99% representative of my taste; I'd be really happy if I could compose something like that) ^(and all TF2 music)Basically, I like jazz harmonies (~70's spy jazz), psychedelic, dissonant sound. Quite a fan of the whole tone scale.
I learned basic (perhaps, sub-basic?) theory from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Computer-Musicians-Michael-Hewitt/dp/1598635034
I suppose what I learned was insufficient, for my purposes at least, since I struggled a lot. I think the theory I learned might be enough for primitive tuz-tuz house music, but not for what I am going for. At least that was my experience. What should I further learn/read?
Main problem I would usually face:
1) I could never develop an interesting musical snippet (write something complimentary to it). Would usually have to loop it. I'm very lost as to how to progress a piece (including how to transition between one idea to another) and don't understand its logic (unless it is house which where it's generally repetition of clearly delineated bars). When I listen to:
it's a mess, I can't follow what's going (same with any piece harder than a house track, although to a lesser extent).2) Once I "learned basic music theory" all chord progression/melodies I would come up would usually be much more boring for some reason than those that I had come up before I learned any theory (those weren't anything special obviously).
I also learned to play through scales, in addition to some chords. But I was slow with chords and scales didn't help much. I usually see people playing through chord progression on the fly when writing music. Is that an important skill? It seems like they're just trying out old stuff they learned, but I'm not sure. In general, I'm not interested in playing the keyboard more than necessary for writing/producing music.
Thank you.
EDIT: Here's a helpful related question: Want to learn composing and producing music with a DAW. Where do I start?