Transposing music to make it sound "darker"

How would i go about making a darker sounding "YMCA" by The Village people? I'm trying to play it on the piano. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hmmmmm can't say I love your taste, but if you make YMCA sound darker then maybe it could sound good. Not sure what sort of key it is written in but you could always try transposing it to a minor key if the original is major.

you could also try changing instrumentation, tempo and other factors. having a "dark feel" is more than just which chords you choose.

To defend my taste in music i'll start by explaining that this is for an editing job i was asked to do. They asked me if i could also compose the music....to do this type of rendition to this particular song is not by choice. I am an audio engineer...I can play music somewhat well by ear, but not well enough to do this type of work without some help.

Great suggestions....i found that whenever i played along with the original track with different synths or organs, it definitely changed the mood of the song.

How do i transpose to minor? I don't even have the exact chords down yet.

Retnincal: Think of the very melody. It sounds happy, right? (or bright, or how ever you might describe it)

What makes the melody a melody sound happy or sad? Its the distances between the notes and the harmony.

You can take a "happy" melody and make it "unhappy" by giving chords that are "unhappy" sounding and vice versa. You can't really make a melody change the quality though as its largely dictated by the harmony. (this isn't completely true but for most simple things it is and no need to over complicate things)

What you have to do is change those intervals in the harmony and melody so that it gives you your minor sound. Sometimes this is impossible to do without making major modifications in the melody and/or harmony because there are some subtle difference between the major and minor tonal systems. For the most part they parallel each other though.

For example, the melody in the YMCA song is a descending min3rd then 2 descending maj2nds in row. In the Key of F it would be

C A G F

and continues

C A G F G A C ...

All over an Fmaj chord.

If we want to make it minor, then we turn the Fmaj chord into an Fmin chord and use Ab's instead of A's(because that A is the 3rd of Fmaj and ab is the 3rd of Fmin(thats how we got Fmin in the first place)). There has to be some relation between the melody and harmony so usually when you change one you have to change the other so they "harmonize".

So the above melody, for a minor sound, would be

C Ab G F G Ab C ...

all over an Fmin chord.

Now its more complicated because there isn't necessarily a 1-1 correspondence between major and minor(although there is with Aeolian but if the original is functional then it will probably sound stranger if changed to modal).

You don't just change all maj chords into minor and vice versa. Use your ears and you should be able to get something close.

I did an example of the first part of the melody. I used some midi from the net and my midi synth sucks so the sounds are crappy but it will give you an idea.

YMCAMajMin.mp3

All I did was essentially change all the maj 3rd into min3rds. I didn't even worry about any 6ths or 7ths with also might need to be changed(I don't think there was any but didn't thoroughly check).

Basically in major you have something like

C D E F G A B

and in minor you have

C D Eb F G Ab/A Bb/B

and the / means variable. i.e., it the note choice depends on the function. usually it means if the note is resolving upwards then you use the "raised" version and if its falling then you use the lowered version. Its known as the melodic minor scale.

But again, it can get quite complicated in some contexts and in all reality it doesn't matter much cause its music and not math or science. Just note that in minor there are many more possibilities and ways to go. If you always use the lowered 6th and 7th then you have aeolian or the "natural" minor. It will be distinctly different than if you use the harmonic and melodic versions.

I don't know how much you know about theory but I think if you play around with simple songs you can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Its actually pretty fun too when you play a song in its opposite mode(e.g., major to minor and v.v.). Sometimes it just doesn't work out well directly so you have to make some modifications.

(BTW, technically its completely up to you. You could change just the melody into minor and keep the harmony in major. This might sound bluesy because of you are using both the min3rd and maj3rd but changes are it will just sound like crap. But you don't know that until you try. It could sound really cool)

In woodwind instruments, you can transpose a phrase so that is has many more sharps and flats for all the instruments. For woodwinds, the keys with many sharps or flats sounds darker due to the fact that the fingering as not natural and the notes are very pure with the pitch of the instruments. A clarinet playing in written Db or Cb major will sound a lot darker in tone that if playing in C major.

In writing for strings, string players can play higher up on the fingerboard. Writing 'sul tasto' instructs them to bow higher on the fingerboard and this dampens some higher harmonics, thus making the sound seem darker. Also, a string player can use fingering higher up the fingerboard. The closer to the nut, the brighter the tone, so in higher positions the sound is very 'dark'.

On piano..... well, it's an equal-tempered instrument unlike the others, so a change of key wouldn't change the tone at all (provided it's a well tuned and adjusted piano). The most you could do here is add more lush chords and transpose everything down just a little. The lowest range tends to sound murky and muddy, so if you just inch everything a little closer, you'll get that.