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What chords do you need?

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Re: What chords do you need?

#91

Post by karmakaze »

progre wrote: post #66
jefftk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be a bit confusing as written, because the slash "/" is normally used in roman numerals to indicate secondary chords. Sorry, that's not something I'd seen. Edited the post to switch to "or". > The terminology "open chords" is also a bit unusual. The term "open chords" usually refers to chords that use open strings (strings that are not fingered). Looking some, you're totally right. I'm confused where I p…

> Calling them "power chords" in a non-rock context sounds off to me, though. Lots of powerchords in pop too. "powerchord", to me at least, implies that there is a distortion effect somewhere in the signal chain. Powerchords on their own sounds really weak.

Co-incidentally the first graph looks like a pair of 'hand-horns'.

Re: What chords do you need?

#92

Post by tejohnso »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #69
klodolph wrote: post #34

A couple notes > While it's almost always I, IV, V, and vi, we have both II/ii and III/iii, differing on whether the third is major or minor. This might be a bit confusing as written, because the slash "/" is normally used in roman numerals to indicate secondary chords. For example, the II chord may be written as V/V. (V/V is always II, but not the other way around... the "/" notation indicates that the chord is func…

In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band/piece does. An instrument might be making lots of chord changes, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is any overall harmonic motion happening. Sure in rock'n'roll the guitar player isn't hitting the third a lot, but the singer almost certainly…

> In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band does.

Maybe not directly related or as confusing, but also worth noting here I think is that you can play three notes sequentially and still call it a chord. It would be a "broken chord". And you can play just two notes simultaneously as a "harmonic interval".

Re: What chords do you need?

#93

Post by bambax »

pohl wrote: post #44
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

It's worth noting that the "4 chords of pop" observation reference in TFA (which is about how few chords you need to learn to be able to make songs) is a bit different than the 4-chord cycle progressions discussed in that Axis of Awesome video (which is about specifically using 4-chord-long progressions that repeat in a cycle) — but it is still a fun thing. If you do enjoy that, be sure to check out Patricia Taxxon's…

> Axis of Awesome video (which is about specifically using 4-chord-long progressions that repeat in a cycle)

Well yes the Axis of Awesome thesis is a bit disingenuous and the critique at the beginning of Patricia Taxxon's video is justified; just because the chords are the same doesn't mean the songs are the same! And the analogy is quite true that in visual arts all colors can be formed from the three primary colors.

Actually, I'm currently trying to make songs based on this simple 1465 progression, in that order; here are my first two attempts (the titles are a hint ;-)

Alp 1465 https://open.spotify.com/track/5TxVfIf9JUAhCEL3O5cWXT?si=86c...

Bet 1465 https://open.spotify.com/track/2ghJN1EtQwXAZZj91B5yqs?si=f16...

Re: What chords do you need?

#94

Post by jefftk »

irrational wrote: post #86
jefftk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A note is something that gives the impression of being a single pitch (frequency). For example, what you get when you play a single key on the piano, or pluck a string on a stringed instrument. Many instruments can only play one note at a time: trumpet, flute, saxophone. The standard notes used in Western music and discussed in this piece differ in pitch by a factor of the 12th root of 2 (~1.06x). This means that if…

Thanks. That helps somewhat, though it is still crazy complex. But, why is the major scale 2212221? Is there a 1212122 scale (end every other possible combination)?

A 1212122 scale doesn't add to 12, and so would not work very well. When you play through a scale, low to high, you generally want to end up back where you started but up an octave.

The main other combinations you see are the same 2212221 pattern, but starting on a different note. For example, if you start on the sixth note, this permutes to 2122122 which we call the (natural) minor scale. We call each of these permutations a "mode".

Re: What chords do you need?

#95

Post by Aidevah »

Slightly related is the question "How many different notes do you need in the bass to harmonise any melody?", and the answer was provided by Obrecht in the final section of his Missa Malheur me bat[1] dating from around 1497. The original tune is here[2]. While the section was probably written partly as a joke, it's interesting how you really only need the 1st and 5th scale degrees to cover the majority of the song tune.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLyfr_dQTBc&t=293s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrZKnEXKwn0

Re: What chords do you need?

#96

Post by jefftk »

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.

Are any of these machine readable? As long as I don't have to transcribe them by hand I would enjoy looking at them!

Re: What chords do you need?

#97

Post by tallies »

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

I find it hilarious that he concludes the Sergio Mendes recording is "the most complex pop song ever" rather than the obvious takeaway that when a song is simple enough, most of the specific notes being played aren't important. You could easily rearrange the song to be easier to play on guitar without losing "the song" (unless you're a music theorist and the ornamentation is "the song")

Re: What chords do you need?

#98

Post by tejohnso »

calflegal wrote: post #22

Trouble with this sort of thing is the subjectivity of 'what chord is this?', taking into account inversions and the like. CMaj7 has C / E / G / B? Who says this isn't Emin6 with the 6th in the bass? It'll depend on the way it's heard and its context within the song, but many approaches can impact this sort of thing. EDIT: I wrote this without carefully reading the article (oops!). Author does a great job with the "a…

Great video here talking about the name of one chord in the intro to Stairway To Heaven. Three different youtubers chime in to discuss it. Really shows how much nuance there can be and how ambiguous the naming can be. There was no real consensus. One of the suggestions was "a minor major nine" and another was "e seven flat thirteen over g sharp".

"The name is there to express a feeling. If you don't know any context it can be hard to put a definitive label on a chord." - Paul Davids

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

Re: What chords do you need?

#100

Post by klodolph »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #69
klodolph wrote: post #34

A couple notes > While it's almost always I, IV, V, and vi, we have both II/ii and III/iii, differing on whether the third is major or minor. This might be a bit confusing as written, because the slash "/" is normally used in roman numerals to indicate secondary chords. For example, the II chord may be written as V/V. (V/V is always II, but not the other way around... the "/" notation indicates that the chord is func…

In general, the conflation of "chords" and "harmony" can be just little sticky, because one implies something the instrument is doing, and the other what the composer/band/piece does. An instrument might be making lots of chord changes, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is any overall harmonic motion happening. Sure in rock'n'roll the guitar player isn't hitting the third a lot, but the singer almost certainly…

I'm not going deep into Jazz, but if I'm playing a song with something like I vi ii V, then I'm going to likely color those chords with the 7th (at the minimum) and likely additional extensions.

I picked something like I69 not because it has function different from I, but because a 6/9 chord is a common choice for a Jazz musician to play as a I chord. Or, at least, it's one of my first picks. And if you're playing I9 -> IV9, my question is whether the I IV is just comping on I or whether it's harmonic movement.

And I will say that while there is no requirement to use functional harmony in Jazz, there is a massive repertoire of Jazz that uses functional harmony, or at least uses harmony where you can get insight by analyzing it functionally. For example, I might analyze something as "bV7/V I" in a jazz song and that is both very functional and very jazzy, and in a classical piece I might see "N6 V7 I" and while N6 and bV7/V are similar chords, using the chord with dominant function is, stylistically, a jazz idiom.

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