Thanks so much for these answers and insights. This has really opened up new possibilities for me and I’m enjoying the experimentation. Appreciate your help and support
Well, you know, I try to remain hopeful. But you’re right it hasn’t happened yet.
Indeed!
This is usually the first approach taken by most, especially those who play music that falls into distinct keys. This approach too though really does benefit from using target notes and emphasizing characteristic notes as well to really bring it out, so it’s good for the budding musician to learn what that is and how to do it with the typical scale patterns.
So these I would tend to group together into the more sophisticated method I mentioned earlier, because they are more related than not. Using arpeggios that fit the type of each chord or guide/target tones (Berklee teaches to aim for the 3rd and 7th) is really a good way to add some more interesting content to solos. Viewing each chord as its own unique tonal center is popular and common in the jazz world, but also with rock players like Marty Friedman and Vito Bratta.
You know, I’m not sure they were ever meant to be strict rules, or even originally viewed that way, at least that’s my thought. I think a lot of the rules especially in the old school voice leading sense we’re really a means of making parts easier to do for vocal performers, then academically were always meant to be a study of stylistic commonality in the institutional setting only and essentially a dissection of why something works. you see the greats even in the tonal (common practice) era breaking them all the time or loosely adhering to them, morphing them to suit their needs, because they also were evolving stylistically like we do now, and wanted to write music they felt was interesting or stood out amongst a sea of others - they knew they couldn’t do that being tethered to cookie cutter “rules”. I think that just happens and seems that way sometimes when something like music or any kind of art becomes institutionalized in a scientific or mathematical context.
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This has been something I have been grappling with ever since I started playing. I studied music theory and found the ‘rules’ or the fact that there are rules, assuring. That you can learn all these rules or recipes and the result will be some good music.
But when you study your favourite artists you will see things that don’t quite follow the rules.
Vai did some weird stuff that I couldn’t fit into the music theory framework, and he went to Berkeley, but I guess he was influenced by Zappa alot which led me to study Zappa and discover a whole load of great deviations from the rules.
Then on a completely different level when Nirvana came along, Kurt’s chord progressions didn’t follow the rules either. Teen Spirit for example, I was sat there for ages trying to work out the theory behind it.
(I guess you could say he’s changing key every 2 chords to make it fit but I’m sure Kurt wasn’t thinking about that when he wrote it.
@Fossegrim, how would Berkeley teach Teen Spirit from a theory perspective?)
These discoveries led me to the conclusion that I had to think out of the box, not necessarily throw out the rule book, but go with trying to create music that sounds great, whether it’s within the music theory framework or not.
It’s important to understand though that these rules and recipes are essential to western music. You can deviate from them but there’s a reason why they work and if you deviate too much not many people will like the results.
But most importantly music is art, and the music that you create should express, represent and convey your unique feelings and unique self. If you approach it in a paint by numbers fashion you will never sound unique.
@SlyVai I think at any school, it would just depend on the course. I have been out of school on the closer end of 20yrs now, so If I were to guess, a theory class that looked at contemporary music would likely just analyze it in one predominant key with a bunch of borrowed chords from others. It wouldn’t quite get the jazz harmony treatment of crazy modulations every other beat and vast secondary functions. (I mean I’m exaggerating a little) although you could analyze it that way for sure. The thing is, these really are academic exercises in retrospective analysis, and perspective based on listener interpretation, so there might not be a correct answer, unless you have an artist specifically going into detail about it. Although it (theory in the a endemic sense) often tries at times, it sometimes doesn’t or more often can’t take into account the artistic intentions, or if the artist even understood what he or she was doing or constructing, so there is a lot of debate and speculation involved as well.
The human brain loves patterns and organization, it’s how we’ve evolved, it’s how we understand and make sense of world around us. It loves them so much, it tends to seek them out and find them even where none exist.
EDIT:
You guys really like to get into some interesting discussions on this board. When I signed up two weeks ago I had no idea this is what I would be jumping into.
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Ok @Fossegrim interesting.
For sure this true but it seems some people are better at recognising patterns than others. I used to decode and decipher communication protocols and streams for a living and sometimes me or a colleague would struggle to see a pattern in a comms stream, but the next guy could see it right away.
Also we would sometimes see a pattern that was completely incidental and not designed to be a pattern, that could then kickstart the deciphering process to reverse engineer the protocol.
It was meant more as a generalized statement, not so much as an individualized one, or one of individual aptitude. Of course you’re going to have that variance, but by and large…
This is a little tangental, but I gotta disagree, in two respects -
First, I don’t think Cobain was “breaking rules” - Rick Beato’s “What Makes this Song Great” series is a little inconsistent sometimes, but he does an AMAZING analysis of this song and how it works harmonically, and it’s pretty straightforward F Aeolean.
Rickis doing something else, maybe sus4ths on the 6th string chords and major on the 5th, but to my ears his performance at the start is wrong and it’s straight power chords (compare his version to 2:39). If so, the only “out” pitches are the sort of raked open strings between chords, and that’s just texture, really.
After that, 7:05 or so and he starts breaking it down harmonically, and it’s pure diatonic. And, I think this is how you would see it taught in a theory class. 13:00 is great too, when he starts walking through the chorus harmony on the piano, which frankly sounds haunting in this format.
Best part of this whole video, too, is that this is clearly a labor of love - there’s no doubt he loves this song.
Second, again, “rules…” I struggle with that framework, because what we see as the “rules” today, pure diatonic harmony, have hardly been ironclad throughout musical history and are probably followed more rigidly now than they have been for a lot of pop history. If you go back and analyze the harmony of a lot of Beatles songs, they seem to break the “rules” all over the place… but that’s because they’re coming from a more jazz harmonic place than what we now consider pop, and the fact as much music is as purely diatonic as we have today is kind of a historical anomaly.
Hi @Drew, I haven’t watched that episode of Ricks I got a bit bored of him. It’s interesting to break songs down and rationalise them but I would rather do it myself.
I always played Teen Spirit as straight major chords, which is what the majority of Kurt’s progressions were, and that’s what I mean, by playing Fmajor, Bbmajor then G#major and C#major; it doesn’t fit the diatonic 7 note scale, which has 3 major chords and 4 minors.
Of course I’m probably playing it wrong but it was just an example really, of how Kurt’s, and yes some of the Beatles, progressions made me understand that the ‘rules’ don’t have to be followed.
Another great discovery was alternate tuning as used by Sonic Youth and some other obscure grunge artists. Some lovely diverse melodies and progressions can be discovered this way. I always found it was a great tool to create unique music when I felt trapped by the ‘rules’.
Honestly, I hear you on Rick’s videos - I watched a couple early on, got bored, and stopped - but this one was definitely something special. His analysis of Kurt’s vocal melodies is pretty awesome, but honestly I think his discussion of Grohl’s drumming and how he kind of selectively rushes the 1 on downbeats at the start of every repeat is pretty stellar too, and if you spend any time doing MIDI drum programming, is worth watching for that alone.
It’s definitely power chords over major chords, though, if nothing else because the melody has a very strong aeolean/minor tonality.
but, like, a lot of music that “breaks the rules” isn’t actually breaking rules, it’s simply following a different set of rules, or rather following rules of cadence and resolution that don’t really have much to do with diatonic harmony and can exist kind of independent of it. Music theory has a ton of complexity to it, far more than simply harmonizing a diatonic scale and saying this is the set of chords you can make music from, but a lot of them are basically focused on ways in which resolving from one chord to another sounds good, and that is just as true inside a diatonic harmony as it is outside of it.
By the way isnt it great that we all seem to disagree on how to play even the simplest of riffs.
- Rick says: Fsus4, Bbmaj, G#sus4, C#maj.
- You say: F5, Bb5, G#5, C#5.
- I say: Fmaj, Bbmaj, G#maj, C#maj.
I just love how we all interpret music differently.
Yes I was gunna mention that too, how you can never really break the rules because there’s always a different set of rules that can be applied. I’m certainly no theory expert but I’m sure even the most obscure music can be rationalised and have theory applied to it in many different ways depending on the person and their understanding and musical experiences.
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Re how to hear Smells Like Teen Spirit -
Harmonic analysis can be subjective, but pitches present is generally more objective and not so much up to interpretation. Re F5 vs F major vs Fsus4, only one of these can be correct; not so much a naming issue or analysis issue.
“Music theory” is definitely not “rules” it’s a set of observations of things that have happened and approaches that have been used up to this point in time. If notes are produced from via computer generated randomization, they aren’t breaking music theory rules, and analysis can be performed on the results produced.
Ok I get it, but in the example of the computer generated randomized music, the result may be garbage and therefore not even worth analysing.
Is it worth analysing something that sounds awful ? Maybe you could just to understand what isn’t working and why I guess.
Sure you could say, whether the music is garbage or not, is subjective, but on the whole harmonies and melodies that work, work for the majority of listeners, and those harmonies and melodies are generally following the mainline ‘rules’ of music theory that have been used up to this point in time in western culture.
I know I might be riling you by calling them rules again, what else can we call them ? Guidelines? “The big book of harmonies, melodies and chord progressions for popular music songwriters” ? Haha I’m joking. Like you say they are observations but they are used over and over again and will continue to be because they work.
With the Teen Spirit thing I am generally bad at identifying chords, I’m ok with single notes and solos but chords are a problem so I’m almost certainly wrong with the Fmajor, but it sounded ok to me and other people I played it to so it worked on some level.
Just compositional techniques or compositional elements, which are which is different than music theory imo. Modal interchange is a technique, and if it happens unintentionally it’s an element that someone else can observe and then choose to use - or not use - as a technique.
I’d guess I’d ask the Q: what are you proposing are ‘rules’? From your comments on Teen Spirit, it sounds like you’re saying that for chords of a progression to not all be in the same key that it is breaking rules? Because there isn’t a rule that chords and notes of a song all need to be in the same key. Techniques for modulation, borrowed chords, chromaticism, etc, are common across most styles of western music, in most cases there’s at least a bit of commonly used language to describe what’s happening. Eg in jazz standards that were written in the 30s/40s we have a lot of secondary dominants, and modulation to new keys via dominants acting as V7 for the new key, in grunge era music we get a lot of modal interchange and specifically mixing major/minor key sounds, in early Beatles tunes there was a lot of the minor plagal cadence, yadda.
Whether techniques were used with knowledge of their name or not, eg whether the composer was familiar with common historical use of the same compositional elements, is kind of a different thing.
But for improvising over chord progressions and the involvement of music theory…my advice is usually first follow your ear…if you don’t like what you get, learn a bit about what’s going on…try some things out…if you still don’t like it, dig a little deeper. If it ain’t broke, no need to fix it, but if someone wants to improve* it’s worth exploring some of the things other people do.
*edit: that is, improve their choices of notes, rhythms, harmony, etc. There are definitely non-theoretical elements one can improve on like technique, tone, phrasing, etc
I’m thinking mainly about the unspoken rules of rock pop and blues I guess. Thats why the Beatles and NIrvana sounded so unique, because they deviated from those traditional chord progressions and melodies. This all got taken out of context I think.
I totally agree with you, I was just telling the story of how I studied rock music when I was starting to learn guitar and learnt about keys and the basic scales and modes and everything seemed to make sense, then I discovered things that didn’t fit those models. I’m certainly not saying those deviations are wrong, or lets call them developments or expansions to be precise, just it became clear to me that you don’t have to use the same key throughout the song or even throughout the chord progression or use the standard I IV V pattern for blues etc (Although the majority of popular music does follow them, but from time to time adopts a new expansion like you said).
Using your ear is the most important thing for sure. As long as it sounds good and feels good to you, that’s what matters.
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One thing to keep in mind too, is that even at the beginning of the common practice era, or tonal era, modal interchange and advanced key changes was really common. Maybe not so much in the more simple folk music of the time, but by and large it was a common occurrence and widely utilized.
I may have raised this point elsewhere in this thread… but I don’t know if I would agree that the Beatles deviated from “traditional” progressions and melodies. I think a historical footnote worth keeping in mind here is that in their earlier gigs the Beatles were playing a mix of original compositions and pop-music-of-the-day, which today are songs we would recognize as jazz standards. And, accordingly, because they were pretty well versed in that cannon, they themselves tended to write a lot more non-diatonically than we might associate with pop music today, but in ways that would have sounded pretty familiar to pop music listeners in the mid-60s.
Nirvana… again, I don’t know if I would agree fully, either, for different reasons. Kurt loved the Beatles and clearly got a lot of his melodic sensibilties at least in part from them, but he also drew pretty heavily from punk, which WAS more diatonic. Running through Nevermind, Teen Spirit was entirely diatonic, In Bloom was diatonic, Come as Uou Are has some chromatic passing tones but the “bones” of the riff are diatonic, Breed was diatonic, Lithium is maybe the first time you hear something non-diatonic, with the inclusion of the C in what’s otherwise a E (down a step, so sounding Bb in D) major song, and that sort of major-to-minor-for-tension move is as prevalent in folk as it is anywhere else - it’s not like Kurt was writing flat-5 substitutions here or using voicings much more complex than power chords or standard bar chords.
Either way - I thing the important takeaway here is writing with harmonic movement that extends outside vanilla diatonic harmony 1) can sound “normal” and not call attention to itself for being especially “jazzy” and 2) is worth experimenting with because given how heavily into diatonic harmony pop music has gotten in recent years, even just dropping in a half-step-up key change for effect at some point can make a song “pop” in the jumping-out and not genre sense.
Thinking out loud, the internet has been an awesome resource for learning music theory. But, I also wonder if it’s maybe been a little bit of a curse as well as a blessing, as it’s never been easier to learn the underpinnings of diatonic harmony and then when you do, think, “great, this is the set of rules I need to make chord changes sound good,” and it may in part, paradoxically, be responsible for at least some of the dumbing down in harmonic complexity we’ve seen in pop music, augmented by the last real wave of new music before the rise of the internet was heavily influenced by punk bands, which took dumbing down of harmonic complexity as a badge of pride and a bit of an assault upon the musical establishment.
Yeh I may be trying to simplify it all a bit too much, I didn’t study Music Theory like some of the cool people on here, I wish I did, I would of loved it for sure, but anyway, for sure I didn’t hear anyone else using those Teen Spirit or In Bloom or Drain You type chord progressions.
They may be diatonic (well, not if you treat them all as major chords), but they are different to the other pop chord progressions and hard rock riffing and blues that were so prevalent before. Sure there will be plenty of examples of non-diatonic popular music that came before, a lot of prog rock for example, after all experimentation was the whole point of that movement, and punk I guess, but some of the Nirvana and Beatles chord progressions, melodies and harmonies were quite unique, and certainly opened up my mind that there were other possibilities.
Hey, it’s never too late o start, especially if you’re a Vai fan where you’ll probably get a ton out of it. Just make sure you don’t stop at harmonizing diatonic scales into chords.
There’s always more to learn too - I think it was someone here who pointed out to me that before “Kind of Blue” and Miles Davis’s modal period melodies (and in turn improvised soloing) tended to be more arpeggio-driven than scale driven, but whether it was here or elsewhere that’s another one of those historical notes that I take for granted today - that prior to Kind of Blue, jazz - and from it pop - tended to work on pretty tight chord-resolution-based frameworks and melodies based on those chord tones, and after it, a looser, more linear and scale-driven melodic structure (ironically not all that dissimilar to the blues, just with very different scales) became the de facto way of thinking about music and harmony.
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Thanks Drew,
that’s all very interesting.
Studying music full time would be a dream come true for me, I should of pursued it in college, but around that time Grunge happened and it sort of put me off learning music in a structured way. It really pushed me into a DIY teach yourself frame of mind I guess.