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Nevermind, an album on major chords

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Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#31

Post by quesera »

wyclif wrote: post #8
tptacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Nirvana as much as the next 90s kid but there is no way these are the best songs in human history, or even in rock history, or even in "modern rock" history.

It's because the fans who like Cobain's songs overpraise him or praise him in the wrong terms: "OMG Kurt Cobain is a genius songwriter." I think, and as this post suggests, it's much more the case that "Kurt Cobain had very good instincts for someone completely untutored" which is a different thing altogether.

I'm not sure how to differentiate "very good instincts in an untutored person" from "genius".

I am very clear though, that "genius" and "intelligence" are unrelated but sometimes coincident.

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#32

Post by bryceneal »

cue_the_strings wrote: post #10
thisismytest wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just not true. Off the top of my head Lithium, Dumb, About A Girl have critical minor and major chords. Also part of what made him so good was how he played vocal melody and rhythm off of chords. So in some songs you might have plain power chords but the melody hits important major or minor notes. I don’t know what your definition for genius is but the guy wrote some of the best songs in human history and did…

Yeah, that's definitely 'the' Kurt thing, vocal melody completing power chords. I do hate how he (and the whole generation, and some of the punks before him + no wave crowd as well) pretended that they didn't know any music theory or practice at all. That was quite destructive for so many of us who aspired to play music in our teens, especially if you weren't exposed to music theory and practice in childhood through…

Going back all the way to the '60s, if you listen to interviews with Paul McCartney of The Beatles he states very plainly that he knows no music theory, and can't read music.

I suspect this is true of many great songwriters, maybe even most of them. I would even argue that studying music theory may even make you a worse songwriter, because the most innovative songwriters don't seem to follow some clearly established rulebook, but rather they bend/break the "rules" unknowingly because their focus is on what they are feeling/hearing rather than something more analytical.

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#33

Post by sunrunner »

Biganon wrote: post #28
sunrunner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Melodies will be in a key, using a set of notes. That’s kinda unavoidable. Schoenberg has entered the chat.

Atonal music / serialism is insufferable pretentious bs that no one has ever listened to with pleasure, ever. It's a purely mathematical study, orthogonal to art.

I don't disagree regarding "listened to with pleasure" and I only remember actively listening to atonal music as part of a required syllabus. I do think it's perhaps a useful lens to use to look at 'traditional' tonal music through however, even if just to re-affirm that _some_ kind of order and structure is an important part in making something palatable to the ears (or the brain).

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#35

Post by seanhunter »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

Kinda like the Beatles there are clasically "wrong" chord progressions that just work. (EG V-IV-1). Just a classic punk album.

V-VI-I is a plagal cadence. It's most definitely not classically wrong. Take any old hymn, Bach corale etc if they do a big "Amen" that will be a plagal cadence.

https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/how-to-read-sheet-music/c...

For some reason, people who don't know music theory say things like this about the Beatles because they think because they haven't heard something before it must be new.

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#36

Post by spacemadness »

mingus88 wrote: post #3

Pretty much every chord he played was a power chord. Thats just a root and a 5th. It’s neither major or minor, because you need the 3rd to establish that And nearly every punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are. It just sounds good to them. There aren’t any rules because punk is a DIY genre. If you told him he was doing a thing, he’d do t…

[dead]

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#37

Post by jsphweid »

As other posts point out, leaving out the third takes away the major-ness.

It's also worth mentioning the way Kurt often played power chords, using his index for the bass note and barring the rest with his ring finger. This often leads to major chords when the root is on the A string and non-major ambiguous-sounding chords with the root is on the E string. It's obvious as early as the 3rd chord in the intro to Teen Spirit; it has the notes Ab Eb Ab Db (NOTE: Db, not C). It's inconsistent in Kurt's playing (edit: whether or not his strumming makes that 4th string, 4th interval sound come out), but the subtlety is a signature part of Kurt's guitar sound.

Also some of the chord analysis in the site (ex. In Bloom verse) is just flat out wrong.

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#38

Post by williamdclt »

mingus88 wrote: post #3

Pretty much every chord he played was a power chord. Thats just a root and a 5th. It’s neither major or minor, because you need the 3rd to establish that And nearly every punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are. It just sounds good to them. There aren’t any rules because punk is a DIY genre. If you told him he was doing a thing, he’d do t…

> punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are

Somewhat true for punk, mostly incorrect for metal. A lot of metal is very analytical, deeper in musical theory than most popular genres (rock, pop, rnb…), they care _a lot_ about it. Metal is often very technical, it bred some of the top musicians in the world, it’s no surprise they give a shit about it: it’s their craft and a hard one.

In fact I remember the singer of Gojira in a French interview, saying (iirc, surely not quite remembering his point) that metal is in many ways closer to classical than rock, as it values composition so much more where rock is all about interpretation (closer to punk)

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#39

Post by epcoa »

sunrunner wrote: post #33
Biganon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atonal music / serialism is insufferable pretentious bs that no one has ever listened to with pleasure, ever. It's a purely mathematical study, orthogonal to art.

I don't disagree regarding "listened to with pleasure" and I only remember actively listening to atonal music as part of a required syllabus. I do think it's perhaps a useful lens to use to look at 'traditional' tonal music through however, even if just to re-affirm that _some_ kind of order and structure is an important part in making something palatable to the ears (or the brain).

I will continue to abstain from eating dog shit to convince myself that a ribeye tastes good.

Re: Nevermind, an album on major chords

#40

Post by anton-c »

mingus88 wrote: post #3

Pretty much every chord he played was a power chord. Thats just a root and a 5th. It’s neither major or minor, because you need the 3rd to establish that And nearly every punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are. It just sounds good to them. There aren’t any rules because punk is a DIY genre. If you told him he was doing a thing, he’d do t…

They probably didn't care what they were but when you pull them apart it's usually some variation of a 1-4-6-5 with occasional chords on the 2nd or 7th scale degree. Generally it was diatonic. I think most musicians listen to enough to know when something doesn't sound "right"(beyond welcome subversions of expectations usually found in more sophisticated genres, musically. I love and played punk for the record)
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