31–40 of 218 posts
Leonard Bernstein seems to have a knack of writing simple sounding songs but with every chord in the book. I noticed the same in Tonight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
> 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 functioning as a secondary chord, which is something you figure out from context.)
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). Chords without a third are often called "power chords". You can do your entire song with power chords if you're playing rock music.
I'd also add that what chords you get as the three/four chords you need depends so heavily on genre. If you were playing blues, you might pick I7, IV7, and V7 for your first three, and then maybe bVII7 as the fourth. If you were playing jazz, you might pick something like I69, ii9, IVmaj7, V7.
Also if you have not seen Hook Theory yet, worth checking out: https://www.hooktheory.com/about
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
I'd like to see this thinking applied to John Coltrane's Giant Steps: https://perfectauthenticcadence.blogspot.com/2016/01/analyzi... > "By creating this system of cyclical patterns, Coltrane changed the language of jazz and broke the mold of ordinary jazz harmonic progressions in jazz history. (Wernick 23). The use of “Coltrane changes” is still used by jazz composers today, and has become one of the most influentia…
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…
Bingo. Sting had a quote that was something like "All chords are ambiguous until I decide on a bass note to play."
"Yeah, as time went on, definitely bass, I started to think, Wow, you know? Once I realized that you didn’t have to just play the root notes. If it was C, F, G, then it was normally C, F, G that I played. But I started to realize that you could be pulling on that G, or just staying on the C when it went into F. And then I took it beyond that..... Once you realized the control you had over the band, as we talked about earlier, you were in control. They can’t go anywhere, man. Ha! Power!"
(source: https://reverb.com/news/interview-paul-mccartney-on-his-life...)
Instead of analyzing by chords I would have analyzed by key - what keys do you need? Convention says G Major is the "people's key" and so it makes sense to learn since so many songs use it. The key of A minor is pretty popular, and so is it's relative C major. Throw in E minor (which is G major's relative minor!) and with those 4 keys you can play the bulk of all rock and popular music written over the past 50 years!
What 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…