British Comedy Guide

Four Chords, 36 Songs Page 6

Quote: Badge @ February 6 2009, 1:30 AM GMT

Anyway, with musos and boozos abounding, who would care to guess the songs I referred to on page one of this thread?

Space Oddity and Let's Spend The Night Together (Rolling Stones cover) start very similarly...

Quote: sootyj @ February 6 2009, 1:01 AM GMT

That it is, I especially like take your It's not easy.

Laura's good too. Aaron's fave probably :)

Lodger

Quote: Moonstone @ February 6 2009, 1:35 AM GMT

Laura's good too. Aaron's fave probably :)

Well it is now, yes. Aaron loves Laura.

You don't need to help me, I know the answer.

Boys Keep Swinging is one of the songs. The other is the opening track "Fantastic Voyage". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnhfJ3SvQEM&feature=related

Fantastic Voyage, and Boys Keep Swinging?

I did type that at the same time, honest!!

Quote: Huge Bear @ February 6 2009, 1:44 AM GMT

Fantastic Voyage, and Boys Keep Swinging?

I did type that at the same time, honest!!

No, I think you were first! I'm a slow typer.

If you hadn't said the album I would never have known. Even then it takes time to work out.

I've lost interest in this subject now.

How about we argue about the best end to slice open on a boiled egg? I opt for the big end. Not as aesthetically pleasing but more practical. :)

Quote: Dolly Dagger @ February 6 2009, 10:14 AM GMT

I've lost interest in this subject now.

How about we argue about the best end to slice open on a boiled egg? I opt for the big end. Not as aesthetically pleasing but more practical. :)

Madness. In the olden days you'd be weighed against a duck for such speak.

Quote: Griff @ February 6 2009, 10:17 AM GMT

A Swift conclusion to the argument eh?

;)

Quote: Gavin @ February 6 2009, 10:17 AM GMT

Madness. In the olden days you'd be weighed against a duck for such speak.

Or ducked in a pond.

Quote: Dolly Dagger @ February 6 2009, 10:22 AM GMT

Or ducked in a pond.

Bloody hell that sounds like an interesting an offer ;)

Quote: Dolly Dagger @ February 6 2009, 10:14 AM GMT

I've lost interest in this subject now.

Can't say I blame you but after reading through the thread I found your bit on tribal communities very insightful.
;)

re: the Bowie album above - Lodger the 24-bit remaster - there's a song on it (Red Sails) that features an almighty guitar cock-up. As he's plucking the single notes, he completely bollocks a note and it is well forward in the mix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5AYk704FyA Listen to 44 seconds in. I love the Bowie Man but :O

Loved the Goodall videos - very good.

What this discussion forgets is that critics can only crit a work after it's been created. They crit a finished product and not the creative process that produced it. They can't because they (in most cases) weren't there to observe it in action. Tags and music theory labels added at a later date do not mean that the writer consciously put them in at the time of writing and with the exact intention that the music critic suggests.

For example, the use of modulations in chorus and verse of Penny Lane to create mood shifts of elation and yet wistful distance of childhood memories (as attributed by Howard to the song structure) was without doubt not in McCartney's head as he composed it. He put it there because during the many many run-throughs he gave the song, before presenting it to the other Beatles, he stumbled on the chord sequence that intuitively felt right. That it makes brilliant use of modulation would have been irrelevant at that time. It worked, and that's what mattered in McCartney's selection of the finished patterns. Simularly Lennon's move to the Pentatonic scale, a stumble into something rather than a practical move after a theory study. Re: Plagal cadences - The Beatles were using them (despite their major survival only in Medieval or Church hymn music) because they sounded great and they gave a definite and recognisable end to a song.

I'd love to say the Beatles were aware of what they were doing when they fused old and new into something radical that changed modern music, but I can't and neither (I suspect) could the Beatles.

Also the many rules and music theories did not exist before the music itself. They were discovered by people first intuiting and then formalising their findings. "Wow, this works but WHY does it work"

So I agree with Griff, yes, it is always a good thing to know your subject and the theory behind it but I agree with Dolly in that great or little grounding in theory does not prevent a writer creating something extraordinary. But neither camp is mutually exclusive. Which is great news for someone like me.
:)

Quote: Moonstone @ February 4 2009, 6:51 PM GMT

Tis a bit of a strange thing to point out Lee.
You could use new, 'unused' sequences but you'll more than likely just get a pile of discordant shit, so what really is the point?
Sure you can mess around, but only to a certain extent, without it becoming silly, and probably then only in short phrases. And a pop song in most cases has to maintain a 'tight' structure - not twisting all over the place like a classical piece with its length and all of its movements etc.

Nothing at all wrong with a good old 3 chord trick - this has produced some fantastic songs throughout the ages, and all very different from one another.

Why is it a strange thing to point out? As a musician myself I found it fascinating, that was all. And as I said, I've been hearing this particular chord run (in many different keys) in songs for years, and was glad that somebody's taken the time and trouble to prove the point.

It's an easy thing to do of course - this collection of chords just "go" together like coffee and cream. But you're suggesting that any chord sequence other than the one presented here will result in "dischordant shit".

Which is nonsense.

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