( “Achy Breaky Heart,” anyone?)Īnyway, since the shift hit multiple genres around the same time, I’d speculate that its causes transcended any particular style of music. country music and electronic dance music - but as far as I can tell, neither of these genres has typically been known for complex chord progressions either. I wish I knew more about two other genres that were popular in the U.S. The chorus and verse of “Smells like Teen Spirit” are so different that you’d never guess they shared a chord progression. With a loud chorus and contrasting melody that uncovered new relationships in the chord progression, who needed new chords? Fortunately, his melodies were quite inventive. Borrowing from The Pixies, Kurt simply stomped on the distortion pedal in the chorus, making it bigger by making it loud. In particular, the songs on Nirvana’s Nevermind tend to have the same chords in the verse and the chorus. Vocal harmonies and flowery melodies were out, and so were songs with lots of chords. Suddenly, rock musicians who wanted to be commercial had to sound raw and unschooled. In 1991, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the Seattle sound burst onto the charts and changed commercial rock forever. In 1997, The Verve’s international hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was based around a sample of, of all things, an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time.” (After a legal battle, royalties from this international hit ended up going to Allan Klein, Rolling Stones’ former manager.) And this sample-based and sound-based way of working extended to non-hip-hop-influenced music as well. Historically, songwriters distinguished the bridge section by exploring a new tonal area - but now they could achieve clear textural variety (and a bit of street cred) by bringing in a rapper.
Producers also now created songs on computers instead of recording them to tape, making it possible to tweak sounds endlessly and layer tracks with abandon, and they became more interested in exploring this vast new potential than in getting creative with harmony. Even producers and songwriters who didn’t use samples often built songs around an instrumental riff that was treated and repeated like a sample, like “Are You That Somebody” and “No Scrubs.” In the 1990s, as the sounds and attitude of hip-hop permeated the Top 40, so did hip-hop’s way of building a song around a sample ( “I’ll Be Missing You”). (Though there are notable exceptions, such as the music of Kendrick Lamar.) While of course, the song could change to a new sample in the chorus, or change the chords by changing the bass, this is not generally characteristic of a style which originated with an MC rapping over a breakbeat. This way of working limits the ability to change to a new chord progression. Rap songs are generally built around a single sample which repeats during most of the song, as additional layers are added or removed. The Day the Chords Went Awayįirst, though why did this change? It helps to note that this chord density decrease occurred in hip-hop, pop, and rock, in parallel. And about a single-progression song from the 2010s which, I fear… ends up falling flat. Without it, some songs fall flat.Īnd so I want to talk about a song from the 1980s, where a subtle tonal shift for the chorus is a vital part of the song’s magic. Though of course you can create a fantastic pop song with just one chord progression, I do think the ability to change chords is a vital element in the songwriter’s toolbox. In the 1980s, the hit parade included numerous songs that were packed with chords - like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Automatic” - alongside single-progression songs like “Born in the U.S.A.” and “When Doves Cry.” By the mid-1990s though, the emphasis had shifted to songs with fewer chords, often single-progression songs, like “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Steal My Sunshine.” I haven’t discovered a proper study chronicling the change, but I believe it happened in the early 1990s, as alternative rock and gangsta rap moved into the U.S. When did multi-progression songs fade away? The point is, multi-progression songs have become rare - and I miss them. For convenience, let’s call songs like this “single-progression.” Songs in which the chord progression changes significantly, we’ll call “multi-progression.” (This is why I get the big bucks.)
By this, I mean that the same pattern of chords repeats from the beginning of the song until its end. These days, a typical Top 40 song is built on a single chord progression. This article originally appeared on Ben Morss’ Rock Theory blog.
Guest post by Ben Morss of Soundfly’s Flypaper
0 kommentar(er)
