Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What chords do you need?

jefftk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 218 posts

Re: What chords do you need?

#11

Post by LtWorf_ »

laGrenouille wrote: post #8

Interesting quantitative take studying chord distribution. The basic takeaway seems to be that if you re-phrase a song into a different key you can play a lot with just a few chords (I IV V), and even more with a few others. While I would agree that you'll be okay playing any major scale in C major (or whatever other major key choose to learn), playing a song in a minor scale on a major scale just doesn't sound quite…

But A minor is the same notes as C major.

The chords in the key of C major will be the same chords in the key of A minor, although their patterns might be different.

Re: What chords do you need?

#13

Post by moron4hire »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

Cheech & Chong: "and I only know 4 chords!" Its amazing how sparse a representation of a song can be recognizable (and enjoyable!) The mapping of musical meaning is due for a new look; the way we talk and write about sound needs to be rationalized before we can progress further in understanding why and how it works.

I don't know. After watching a lot of Adam Neely videos on YouTube, I get the impression that music theory has an incredibly rich language to describe music and does have a good understanding of why certain songs sound good, why certain arrangements sound better than others, especially regarding specific emotional cues they are trying to convey. That's one of the things I love about his videos, he does an excellent job of translating that language to a lay audience. But as with anything, full mastery of the field takes significant, prolonged effort, not in any small part due to competition driving the bar ever higher and higher.

Re: What chords do you need?

#14

Post by codazoda »

This is super interesting, especially his work on those foot pedals. I like to make music but only just know a tiny bit about playing. Maybe having foot pedals would help. I also created a random chord generator that you can run in your browser to get ideas for chord progressions.

https://chords.joeldare.com

Re: What chords do you need?

#15

Post by bambax »

The obligatory video is of course "Four Chords" by Axis of Awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8

The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPh3bTglak

Re: What chords do you need?

#16

Post by tarentel »

analog31 wrote: post #12

There's also a huge pile of chord charts published online for the jazz standards and the Great American Songbook, that would be interesting to analyze.

Probably instead of I-IV-V being the most common you would see the ii-V-I chords being the most common.

Re: What chords do you need?

#17

Post by Sharlin »

Heh, I just this afternoon listened to a radio show about the famously popular vi-IV-I-V/I-V-vi-IV chord progression [1]. If you haven't heard it before, the "4 Chords" medley by Axis of Awesome is a great demonstration of its ubiquity [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%9...

[2] https://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ

Re: What chords do you need?

#18

Post by tarentel »

LtWorf_ wrote: post #11
laGrenouille wrote: post #8

Interesting quantitative take studying chord distribution. The basic takeaway seems to be that if you re-phrase a song into a different key you can play a lot with just a few chords (I IV V), and even more with a few others. While I would agree that you'll be okay playing any major scale in C major (or whatever other major key choose to learn), playing a song in a minor scale on a major scale just doesn't sound quite…

But A minor is the same notes as C major. The chords in the key of C major will be the same chords in the key of A minor, although their patterns might be different.

This is only partially true. The chords in A natural minor will be the same but it's much more common to hear a dominant fifth using the harmonic minor so you would change the Em to E especially in classical and jazz music.

Re: What chords do you need?

#19

Post by circlefavshape »

laGrenouille wrote: post #8

Interesting quantitative take studying chord distribution. The basic takeaway seems to be that if you re-phrase a song into a different key you can play a lot with just a few chords (I IV V), and even more with a few others. While I would agree that you'll be okay playing any major scale in C major (or whatever other major key choose to learn), playing a song in a minor scale on a major scale just doesn't sound quite…

If you know I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi in C then you'll be able to play tunes in A natural minor. Add III to cover A harmonic minor, and II to cover A melodic minor

In real life though the key usually depends on the singer's vocal range, so you won't really get away with learning just one key

Re: What chords do you need?

#20

Post by drcongo »

bambax wrote: post #15

The obligatory video is of course "Four Chords" by Axis of Awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I Rick Beato has kind of the opposite video about "the most complex song ever": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8 The song in question is Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes; plenty of videos exist of it; here's one live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPh3bTglak

That Mendes song makes all sorts of twists and turns that your brain doesn't expect (want?) it to. Personally I find it deeply uncomfortable to listen to, it might as well be four songs playing at once.
Post reply on HN