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The feels like it was written by someone who didn't understand music theory, but the author does discuss the 4th and 5th chords. And yet the story is written as
by bencollier49 8y ago
The feels like it was written by someone who didn't understand music theory, but the author does discuss the 4th and 5th chords. And yet the story is written as if he didn't expect to find that they show up everywhere.
Still, don't want to be too negative, it's very interesting that he used data from guitar chord websites, that's a clever data source.
- lightbyte 8y agoThey did not use data from guitar tabs: >Guitar tab websites have tons of information about the chord progressions that songs use, but the quality is not very high. >So, over the past 2 years we’ve been slowly and painstakingly building up a database of songs taken mainly from the billboard 100 and analyzing them 1 at a time.
- SomeHacker44 8y agoI came to say basically the same thing. Seems like a basic statistical analysis of songs. Anyone who has composed or even played music will find no surprises here (unless you solely loved on atonal 20th century stuff). However, the author clearly has knowledge of music theory, so I fully fail to appreciate the purpose of the article.
- rumcajz 8y agoOTOH, I was quite surprised that E minor is used more (17%) than E major (10%) in popular music. In classical music the latter is quite common and the former is very rare.
- lowercased 8y agoWith GFC being most popular, I'd expect Em more, because it more fits with those major ones. Emin vs Emaj - my gut would say Emin is going to fit in with keyboard/piano stuff easier, and there's more of that type music overall. When I think Emaj, I think guitar stuff (EAD stuff), and there's been less of that overall compared with keyboard-based music.
- elektronaut 8y agoEm is the iii chord in C, and it’s rarely used because it doesn’t really add any movement. Harmony is all about the cycle between tension and release, and there are other chords that do a much better job at filling the roles a iii chord could have. It’s useful for dreamy and somewhat static chord progressions though.
- lowercased 8y agoTrue. Was thinking more about the G - again, another common pianoish base (in my experience, anyway). D/E/A - again, ime - were always "guitarish" songs. GCF always seemed to be more "pianoish". Just my own observation/experience - it may not be true of everything, but seems to be true about much of the stuff I've listened to (and tried to play).
- elektronaut 8y agoYeah, C major (C/F/G) can be a bit awkward on guitar, the F barre chord is a painful hurdle for new players to get over. A major (A/D/E) is probably the easiest key to play. G major is arguably the most useful, because you have access to all the important chords in open position: G, Am, C, D, Em.
- ubercore 8y agoIf the most popular key is Cmaj, Emin makes more sense than seeing Emaj.
- luckydata 8y agoTechnically C major is not a key, is a chord.
- maroonblazer 8y agoIt’s both.
- luckydata 8y agoOk I checked the terminology and you're right, in Italian we call it "C natural" to distinguish it from the chord. Apparently in English you don't.
- palimpsests 8y agoContext makes it clear whether the topic of discussion is the key of the song or a type of chord. Also, in this way we can say "C major" or "C minor" to refer to the key of the song. We use "natural" when its important to distinguish from a note that has a sharp or flat - e.g. C# versus C natural. In Italian, how would you refer to the key of Db major - "Db natural"? How would you refer to the key of Db minor?
- luckydata 8y agoYou just specify the "minor", "major" is implied otherwise.
- bambax 8y agoThey transposed all songs in C in order to be able to compare chords by name (which is a weird methodology but whatever). By that measure it's only natural that Em (iii) is more common than E (which is non-diatonic to C).
- chrisweekly 8y agoOn a guitar in standard tuning (EADGBE), the Em chord can be played by fretting only two strings (the A and D), both on the 2nd fret. It's basically the easiest chord to learn to play. And if you start in Em, it pairs with G, Am, C and D -- all of which are also very simple fingerings. Correlation isn't causation, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts this is a factor, given the absolute dominance of the guitar in popular music songwriting.
- mjaniczek 8y agoThis is written with all songs converted to the key of C though. So in guitar-friendly keys you're probably looking at the key of E and there the Em becomes G#m; or key of A and C#m.
- chrisweekly 8y agoSure -- slap a capo on the 4th fret and there it is. :) (Also, songs are often written in one key, then transposed in the studio.)
- nkozyra 8y agoOh, I wouldn't slap it on the fret ;)
- ssharp 8y agoThere’s a key frequency chart and it makes sense that C and G are so popular. What didn’t make sense to me is why D and A aren’t more popular. Eb and F are somehow more popular. If this list is dominated by guitar, I’d expect D and A to be more popular since you can play I, IV, and V in those keys using open chords.
- arthurdenture 8y agoEb is probably disproportionately popular due to the common practice of tuning guitars down a half step, making Eb instead of E the natural/easy root chord. I'm not sure why F would be more popular than D and A. One hypothesis would be that it has fewer accidentals; it's not a fun key for guitars, but many contemporary pop songs aren't guitar-driven anyway.
- luckydata 8y agoNot that surprising considering natural C is the most common key for songs.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 8y agoThe Em is the "default" guitar chord --sort of like the C scale is the "default" piano scale (easiest, most convenient, etc)...
- tunesmith 8y agoMight be more interesting to analyze the progressions in the real books. Or by time period - pop music in the 70's was more harmonically advanced.
- pier25 8y agoYes, after all I-IV-V is the most common chord progression. It would have been nice if the author also had analyzed chord progressions instead of single chords. Who knows how many Pachelbel's progressions he would have found! :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
- sporkologist 8y agoHotel California seems like the coolest modern version of that chord sequence, in a minor key no less.
- baddox 8y agoThe chord progression in Hotel California doesn’t seem to me to be closely related to the chord progression in Pachelbel’s Canon.
- Terretta 8y ago> would have been nice if the author also had analyzed chord progressions instead of single chords Last heading in this first section: “If a song happens to use a particular chord, what chord is most likely to come next?”
- pier25 8y agoYeah, but that is not a complete chord progression. I meant something like I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V
- jacquesm 8y agoThat video is hilarious.
- gregmac 8y agoYou may also enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I&feature=youtu.be&t=52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I&feature=youtu.be... (I V vi IV)