New answers tagged chord-progressions
1
That article does not seem to say "every chord in a chord progression is always three notes...." The article is talking about triadic harmony; you can spell chords by taking every other note from a scale, but you can take four, five, six, or even seven notes. Further, you can add notes willy-nilly (more-or-less) to the fundamental triads.
Any collection of ...
0
If we want to look for larger groupings, it would be well to look at the melody, whose smooth movements make up for the jerky chromaticism of the harmony.
In the A section, the melody is diatonic in G natural minor. The Bbm7 might be heard as a neighbor chord to Gm7, since just 2 notes move by half steps and back (D-Db; G-Ab).
In the B section, the melody ...
3
Here’s my take on it based on playing chords and scales over it and feeling the tonic. The written key signature (two flats) doesn't reflect the key changes.
Gm : i of Gm
Bbm7 : i of Bbm
(repeat)
“Dbm7” : i of C#m, or iv of G#m
Fm6 : i of Fm (the “6” is just extra flavor, Cm feels wrong, but Fm6 - C7 - Fm6 is OK)
F#m6 : iv of C#m, or i of F#m
(repeat)
If ...
0
The I-IV-V progression is just in "twelve bar blues"; that doesn't represent all of blues. Blues cannot be separated from jazz.
The actual progression goes like this, among other possilities (each bar is 4 beats):
I | I | I | I | IV | IV | I | I | V | IV | I | V
|<-- -->| <- Blues turnaround
(Here we don'...
0
Jazz uses more varied chords, substitute chords, altered chords, modulations, modal interchange and all sorts of harmonic tricks, just like it uses more varied rhythms and rhythmic tricks. It feels nicer if music isn't too obvious, and if it tickles deeper layers of understanding. Some people feel that it's intriguing when art isn't completely self-evident, ...
4
First of all the I IV V is also very common in Classical music, not just rock and other modern pop genres. It is a very old progression that I see in pre-classical era music. From a chord substitution perspective the ii is (relatively speaking) the relative minor of the IV, as the iii is to the V, and the vi to the I. So in a very real sense ii-7 --> V7 -->...
1
Possibly misinterpreting the question here!
The first five categories are more mainstream, generally speaking, and tend to use the primary harmonies, which are easy to follow, easy to play, and easy on the ear.
Jazz doesn't merely use ii V I. That's a simplification. Patterns tend to be more complex ('sophisticated' if you like!) and use more chord changes....
4
Although it sounds like the speaker may be saying "lockup" and "lockdown," he is actually saying "walk up" and "walk down." The chord progressions are "walking up" when they seem to ascend melodically, and "walking down" when they seem to descend melodically.
This "walk up/down" terminology refers to a root motion that ascends or descends a scale by step, ...
1
It's not a guessing game, exactly, but it's also not like there are hard and fast rules either. Your skill as songwriter manifests in choosing what to do.
That said, there are some useful guidelines and rules of thumb to help you think about the choices.
In my experience as music listener, musician and songwriter, I have found that composition ultimately ...
5
In one sense the questions are "clear" (as you say) but in a more important sense any answers are somewhere between misguided and irrelevant.
Looking at a collection of musical works and identifying some common characteristics of them is what musicologists do for a living, and if what they find is something that a typical listener can actually follow just ...
1
Yes, I realise OP already finished the piece, but I'll explain this anyway for future curious readers.
I'm going to answer to explain why I think B♭ also makes a lot of sense:
Dm C Bm (?) A D
D minor: i VII ♮vi (?) V
I see a pattern here: The roots! D, then C, then B, then (?), then A. Play just those root notes, and one can immediately hear the ...
3
Don't try to relate E♭ major to C major in a functional way. Just accept that a sudden shift of tonal centre to just about ANYWHERE is an acceptable and common device in today's music. And don't try to explain the return to C from Eb as a dominant-tonic. It's just a return to where we started. That naturally will be 'satisfing'. There is a world ...
4
Think of the piece as being in C minor for a second, rather than C major. E flat major just fits right in as a diatonic chord, as do A flat major and B flat major.
"But wait, it's clearly not in C minor!". Well, in general, once we become accustomed to 'blue' thirds and sevenths, some of the distinction between major and minor tonality arguably falls away. ...
4
In music, we usually reserve the term "dominant" for the chord built on the fifth of the key, but there are a few exceptions to that, tritone substitutions being one of them. However, I've never heard an example where I felt that modally mixed/chromatic mediant chords were functioning as dominants, except for secondary dominants, which obviously doesn't ...
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