How can more songs have V than I?
Because of the regularization I'm doing. For example, some are in the relative minor and mostly use iv and V.
What chords do you need?
191–200 of 218 posts
Re: What chords do you need?
#192Earlier 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…
Jazz sounds too complicated, but it is not. More than 90% of it is just a set of 2,5,1 sequences disguised in clever ways.
I agree with the sentiment but not the 90% figure here.
Re: What chords do you need?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rick Beat is trying to deceive you. If you really believe that this Sergio Mendes song is complicated, you need to listen to some older pop songs. For example, Stevie Wonder is a good composer to start.
Yes and no —- it’s definitely pretty far out there for a mainstream 80s pop song, and a bit more fiddly at first glance than your average Stevie Wonder song. I think the trick is that it’s bossa nova, which tends to have a lot of those semitone shifts that Rick highlights. The Girl from Ipanema is the classic example. I love that they seem so complex when you look at the individual chord movements, and yet the melody…
Not that anyone cares, but noticing that this song is a cover rather than a Sergio Mendes original, I was curious whether the earlier recordings had the same tricky structure or if Mendes (being a Bossa Nova guy, among other things) added them in.
And they do! The Dionne Warwick and Stevie Woods versions have the same chords (and nearly the same arrangement); so it comes from the original songwriters (Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann), although it’s a perfect fit for Mendes’ style.
That reassures me that the chord structure is really integral to the song (as I’d like to believe) and not just tacked on afterwards to make it sound cooler.
Re: What chords do you need?
#194The 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.
And they called it "easy listening", haha. But it's really typical of lounge to do lots of weird complex things and still make it sound like it's no big deal. I believe Girl from Ipanema has a couple of YouTube videos about its weirdness as well.
Re: What chords do you need?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have never heard such a complaint about his videos. Most? There are enough musicians in the world, on YouTube, and in my family that they would have called it out. I call shenanigans and say it is you, sir, who are wrong or misleading
Most musicians are ignorant of the deeper music theory - even jazz musicians like Neely, except on a standard level (which any jazz musician does). You need a trained composer and/or musicologist for that. Neely himself is not some music theory guru, he is a Berklee alumni who plays jazz, those are a dime a dozen.
Re: What chords do you need?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song. That’s what the word “pop” is being used for in “the most complex pop song ever”. Rick Beato is giving an example of a literally popular song , one that somebody suggested they perform an impromptu concert because it was in the charts at the time, and which sounds totally mainstream, and yet has a very unu…
I agree it's a good anecdote. It clearly still resonates with professional instrumentalists. But popular music has progressed so much since then that 'jazz theory' is unequip to grasp the complexities of modern recorded music. Beato in the video says modern pop music is getting simpler, but he's just using the wrong tools.
I guess he really means "less complex harmonically". You're definitely right that a lot of modern music has features that would be unimaginable or impossible to achieve 40 years ago when this song was written, both through new tech and stylistic innovations. But I think his view is still very defensible if you focus on pop songs, singable vocal-led pieces that you might attempt in karaoke.
There was a long period where jazz influences were very big in popular music -- jazz itself was actually popular! -- so there were a lot of very harmonically interesting pop songs. I agree with him that that seems generally less true nowadays (thinking of big mainstream singer-songwriters like Adele and Ed Sheeran). But I'd be interested to hear of good counterexamples.
Re: What chords do you need?
#197Earlier 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…
Wow, I have completely the opposite reaction! I’m not saying you’re wrong, of course; it’s just fascinating how reactions differ.
To me, the jazzy changes in the Steely Dan song are very in-your-face -- the song is built around them. It’s pleasant enough but feels very random and meandering to me.
The Mendes song, as you say, is “built out of standard bits” -- it feels like a “proper” soul ballad. For me the unusual changes work because they’re used a bit more sparingly, and each one comes as a little jolt, either to elevate the emotion (in the conventional “go up one key at the end of the song” way) or alternatively to ease off the pedal a bit for a change in lyrical tone. It’s like the whole song consists of final choruses and bridges, which are often the best bits of a good song. :)
Re: What chords do you need?
#198Interesting how rare the minor iv chord is. Offhand I can think of only 2: Creep by Radiohead and Space Oddity by David Bowie.
It's also used in Hotel California. Maybe it doesn't show up much in pop/rock/country, but it's not uncommon in jazz.
And I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie.
Re: What chords do you need?
#199What 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.
And here I always thought it was E! That’s probably more of an amateur hard rock thing -- E is the very easiest and best-sounding chord on a guitar.
Re: What chords do you need?
#200I wonder what he would make of _I Am The Walrus_, which uses every note-named major chord (A, B, C, D, E, F and G major).
I was thinking about that one too. In case you haven’t seen it, Alan W Pollack’s analysis is great: https://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/iatw.shtm...
Despite the complex chords, the bulk of the melody is that ultra-simple two-note semitone riff (IIRC Ian MacDonald’s book says it was inspired by hearing a police siren). When John Lennon said someday they’d write a one-note song I always figured this was what he meant -- that I Am The Walrus is a “two-note song”.