Quote: Griff @ February 4 2009, 1:29 PM GMTAlso popular with those who can't play F on the guitar.
Four Chords, 36 Songs Page 2
Quote: Griff @ February 4 2009, 1:29 PM GMTG Em C and D is the same progression but for people with higher voices such as John Inman and yourself.
Also popular with those who can't play F on the guitar.
Lah lah lah lah la!!!!!!!!
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.
That was coool
Quote: Lee Henman @ February 4 2009, 12:40 AM GMTI've been boring people for years, pointing out a chord sequence that I hear repeated again and again in tons of different songs. Normally people just shrug or don't agree "No, it is different", etc...but now some clever sod has proved my point brilliantly for me with this fantastically-clever bit of YouTubery.
Check it out, and weep at our popstars' unoriginality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4_f6pfabQk&eurl=http://www.b3ta.com/links/Four_Chords_36_Songs
The 'science', if you like, behind the fundamentals of music are fascinating.
Elo's Night in the City - from Out The Blue - features an opening arpeggio that's been used to death. Using an open G chord with the root flattening to F# and then dropping to Em. I'll try and dig out some of the repetitions.
Plus compare these two and you'll realise that it isn't just the chords that get borrowed but the whole song. Listen to the bass and guitar. Weller was wise enough to change the vocal lines.
Beatles: Taxman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xnI4hXBCVE
with
The Jam: Start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdSqpT6gfDU
Quote: Moonstone @ February 4 2009, 6:51 PM GMTYou could use new, 'unused' sequences but you'll more than likely just get a pile of discordant shit, so what really is the point?
This is one of my fave subjects. I'm echoing Moonstone. Most progressions have been tried and the popular ones are the ones that sound pleasing, so they continue while less-pleasing ones get dumped. These progressions are self-perpetuating because they elicit the right Pavlovian response in the brain because, being instilled in us from childhood and adolescence, they come attached with emotions that we can't (or don't wish to) remove from the music.
There are some songs that I still can't listen to without weeping like a baby, some elate me. I play them whenever I need to reset my emotional compass. Oddly, some of those songs weren't even written when the events I associate with them, occurred. But it's not the song I'm attaching to a memory but the underlying chord structure.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 1:27 PM GMTJust off the top of my head - do the Beatles "Dear Prudence" and The Travelling Wilburys "Handle With Care" do this also? I can't remember.
Wasn't Bryan Adams - Run to You similar too and I'm thinking a Guns N Roses single maybe? If not, it also inspired or was inspired by many others.
I think this is the same chord progression I had in one of my guitar books. In the back of the book it listed a couple of hundred songs that used it.
Quote: Griff @ February 4 2009, 8:40 AM GMTAlso check out this clip where the sublime Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain demonstrate that "Life On Mars" and "My Way" are basically the same song: http://7clips.blogspot.com/2008/12/ukulele-orchestra-of-gb-life-on-mars.html
I absolutely love them! I have tickets to see them again in June.
Apparently Dave knew a chord that the Lord would applaud.
I don't like all this dissecting of music. It ruins it. It's like taking apart flowers to study them. Now I sound like a D H Lawrence character, but I can't remember who.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 4:47 PM GMTIt is kind of useful if you want to play or compose it though...
Not neccessarily. I know people who can play who can't read music and couldn't even name a note - they just have an 'ear' (or two) .
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 4:47 PM GMTBeing a cold-fish left-brain dissecty type, my heart is always gladdened when I hear rock stars talking about music theory. On stage they're all "Yeah I'm going with the flow it all just comes to me magically through inspiration" and it's great to know that even the most flamboyant of them really spend all their spare time thinking about diminished sevenths and flattened blues scales.
I'm right-brained. Probably explains it.
But I don't think it should be reduced to mathematic formulas. Music is our most basic way of summoning emotion apparently. It's like analysing sex. This reminds me of an argument I had with a German who didn't like Jimi Hendrix because he found his music "too casual".
Has anyone tried that online test which is part of some university research on musicality? It was mentioned in an epsiode of BBC One's Imagine.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 4:54 PM GMTDo you play music at all Dolly?
I used to sing alot and can pick out tunes on a piano and recorder! I'm currently learning the uke. But I can't read music; it doesn't make much sense to me.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 5:05 PM GMTIt's hard for me to pick an example, because somebody will just go "Aha I don't like so-and-so it's rubbish so your point doesn't stand", but when Paul McCartney composed "Yesterday" or Dave Gilmour wrote the amazing guitar breaks for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", they didn't just sit down at the instrument like some autistic savant and plonk away till they found something that sounds nice. If you hear them interviewed, they talk in terms of the chords, harmonies, structures they chose to employ while composing the songs.
Paul McCartney can't read or write music and yes I do think he probably could just plonk away and it would come about. The process you describe would be going on internally, sub-consciously, instinctively without the need to carefully plan it all out. My mother plays jazz and boogie woogie piano and can't read music and probably only knows a few names of chords. She has never had a music lesson in her life. Yet she can hear a tune and then start playing it. She also composes some of her own tunes.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 5:05 PM GMTI love Tom Waits. I love his music desperately. And some of it is some crazy shit that is hard to listen to the first few times. And he has the persona of a crazy tramp. But that guy knows music theory inside and out, from performing to composing to arranging, and would not have been able to create the amazing stuff he did just by deciding "Oh I won't bother with all that silly book-learning, I'll just sit at the piano and be, like, amazing".
Practice and theory are two different things, no? It's like dancing; you could learn the set steps to a ballroom dance or you can just be a great dancer without never learning a thing beforehand.
Hmm, interesting discussion.
One thing I will say though is if you're jamming with someone or playing along to a piece of music, you HAVE to know what key it's in before you start, so you can stick, however loosely (and that also depends a lot on your knowledge of theory), to a particular scale.
There is no way on Earth you can do this just by guessing or having a 'feel' for what notes will sound right.
If someone starts playing a chord sequence and you manage to play along for three or four minutes, using pure instinct, without hitting any bum notes then you are something very very special. Or just fecking lucky!! Noone untrained or inexperienced can do this, of that I am absolutely sure. Of course though that doesn't mean you can't sit down on your own and compose something on whatever instrument without any knowledge of theory.
Quote: Griff @ February 5 2009, 5:22 PM GMT(I'm very surprised to hear he can't given all the orchestral composition he has done)
Was thinking the same thing. But then he did say he could never have done it without a computer - make of that what you will.