I like fat chords, I cannot lie.
What chords do you need?
111–120 of 218 posts
Re: What chords do you need?
#112What this data shows is G Major truly is the "people's key." For those not familiar with music a 12 bar blues uses 3 chords: the so-called I, IV, and V chords (the first, fourth, and fifth chords in the key). In the key of G that would be G (I), C (IV), and D (V). Look at the most popular chords. Instead of analyzing by chords I would have analyzed by key - what keys do you need? Convention says G Major is the "peopl…
> What this data shows is G Major truly is the "people's key." Unless you have a keyboard in your band. Then it's C.
Hopefully the keyboardist can manage a single sharp.
Re: What chords do you need?
#113Completely tangential to the actual content of this blog, I really (really really really) appreciate the look. Simple dark text on light background. Obvious hyperlinks. Charts and tables that tell the story without distracting. Effective minimalism. I wish more of the internet looked like this.
Interesting, I really disagree. I do agree the page is refreshing compared to a lot of the internet these days, just because it has no ads and no glitchy, laggy SPA animations or slow loading times.
But it's pretty extreme to pretend that none of basic design practices adopted over the past 30 years have any merit whatsoever. This design is not good. The black text on white is too much contrast. The default browser text of Times New Roman is less readable than more modern sans serif fonts (this is arguably a problem with Chrome's default value though, not just this site). The graph titles are not text but rendered into the images, and the images have no alt text to help with accessibility. The double solid border on cell boundaries in the tables looks crazy and does distract from the content. The page content is much narrower than it should be on desktop, it could use an adaptive width. There is no dark mode to make the page easier on your eyes in low light.
The design here on HN is a much better example to strive for, it has a similar minimalist aesthetic but addresses most of these issues.
I wish more of the internet behaved like this, but I do not need it to look like this.
Re: What chords do you need?
#114Earlier 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 Even jazz musicians call them powerchords
Every guitar player calls them powerchords. I've never heard of another term. Unless OP is referring to double stops. But, those are more of an embellishment, and usually never played on the low E or A string.
Re: What chords do you need?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of stuff is fascinating to me, that we can react so differently to music and specifically to various chord progressions. Of course personal taste is inscrutable in some sense, but could it also be about conditioning? E.g. if you listen a lot to certain types of jazz you might get used to some stranger chord movements. I have a lot of friends who cant stand Steely Dan progressions for example, though I love…
For me, the difference between that Steely Dan song and the Mendes song is like the difference between a seemingly-inscrutable really thick scottish accent and an ESL speaker trying to affect a native accent and kind of flowing between several different accents. However uncomfortable the Steely Dan song might be, it has a nice consistent construction to it, and, once you get into the groove, it becomes straightforwar…
> It sounds built out of all sorts of fairly standard bits and pieces, but thrown around completely haphazardly.
I found a similar feeling in Shostakovich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDeJeBvln6E But I enjoy this challenge. It's a beautiful yet strange and twisted music.
Re: What chords do you need?
#116What this data shows is G Major truly is the "people's key." For those not familiar with music a 12 bar blues uses 3 chords: the so-called I, IV, and V chords (the first, fourth, and fifth chords in the key). In the key of G that would be G (I), C (IV), and D (V). Look at the most popular chords. Instead of analyzing by chords I would have analyzed by key - what keys do you need? Convention says G Major is the "peopl…
Side note, from a usability perspective: G major is arguably the easiest key to play on a guitar, which is used heavily by both popular music and songwriters. The I/IV/V maps to G, C, D, which are all easy open chords to finger, plus Em is also simple (two fingers). (Many of the other options include either B major or F major in the I/IV/V, and those are considerably more difficult to play)
The key of G (G,C,D) is really easy to play on guitar and so is the key of C (C,F,G). A lot of beginning guitarists struggle with an F if you play it as a barre chord on the first fret of the low E string. My favorite option for playing an F is to play an FMaj7 using just the D (3), G (2), B (1) and e (open) strings which is an open chord. If you ask me to play an F chord that's what I'm going to play. I've also heard it referred to as the "rock 'n roll" F.
Re: What chords do you need?
#117Basically, if you know a scale, for example the D major scale you can play anything.
Not if the song contains any modulations, secondary dominants, borrowed chords, etc. It's not uncommon.
Re: What chords do you need?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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")
I don’t think that’s the obvious takeaway. The specific chord voicings are complicated, sure, but the complexity he’s talking about are the key changes and unexpected tonal choices. You can’t remove those without fundamentally changing the feeling of the song. When I was learning the guitar, I frequently would skip passing chords and simplify voicings I didn’t know how to play. As a result, my covers were pretty bori…
How complex is a song that can be played on entirely different instruments without re-interpretation?
When I think of complexity I think of unreconcilable elements that force the transposer to make tough decisions ("intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it").
Re: What chords do you need?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo. Sting had a quote that was something like "All chords are ambiguous until I decide on a bass note to play."
Playing rootless triads really brings this home. It allows jazz guitar players to have greater better mobility by offloading the bass to the bassist, but if you play a rootless ii-V-I exclusively on the guitar, the chords loose all their color/character.
Yep, the hardest thing about learning to comp is that you can't do it alone.
Re: What chords do you need?
#120Cheech & 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 j…
Most of Neely's stuff is just wrong or misleading. I once tried to watch his video about why minor chords sound "sad" and major chords sound "happy" and it was just laughable how unsupported his claims were.