How Simple Chord Progressions Work

[Music] there's a modern style of writing harmony that can be kind of hard to analyze the soft four chord pop song type of style that you no doubt have heard plenty of before it's not difficult to analyze because of its complexity but actually because of its simplicity if you have a stack of chord extensions a mile high or chords coming in from distant scales and keys all over that is enough to draw your attention and make you think about why the composer made the choices he did but if a chord progression exists entirely in one key with basic voicings and no big surprises it can be hard to form an analysis more meaningful than saying this is in the key of f especially if the chords don't follow the established tropes and progressions of functional harmony like the 451 cadence and all of its offspring there are still mechanics at play that make these modern harder to define chord progressions work though and today i want to present to you a way to think about chord progressions that might help you make informed decisions in your own writing looking at examples written in this more modern style these examples were all requested by some of my highest level supporters on patreon and i cannot thank them and all my patrons enough for their generous support if you want to join them in helping support what i do feel free to check out my patreon page the basic idea i want to put forward is that you can break all chord movements down into three categories movement by fourth movement by third and movement by step now that might seem like too few categories but let me explain there are seven chords that naturally occur in any given key called the diatonic chords meaning that from any one chord in a key you have six basic options of where you could move next when writing a chord progression when you count the distance between the chord you're on and each option of where to move next we can sort these potential targets into pairs to make the three categories i just mentioned see when looking at a chord progression there's nothing to indicate whether you're moving up or down to get to the next chord so a c moving to an a minor chord could be seen as moving up a sixth or down a third same with moving from c to e minor is that up a third or down sixth each interval can be inverted to make another interval fifths invert to fourths sixths invert to thirds and sevenths invert to seconds and vice versa these interval buddies have a close relationship with each other in music generally and when talking about chord movements they share similar qualities movement by a fourth feels the strongest and emphasizes the chord being moved to the most movement by step feels less strong but still creates musical momentum and doesn't emphasize either chord above the other movement by a third feels the weakest and is traditionally seen more as an extension of the first chord than an emphasis of the second chords from outside the key can be seen as alterations on these categories moving up a minor third rather than a major third for example by careful arrangement of even basic chords composers can establish a key while emphasizing different chords from that key to bring out various subtle shades of color the recurring main theme of the game rainworld is constructed entirely out of triads moving one to the other out of time in a ghostly synth pad we see first some strong movement of a fourth going between a minor and e minor chords and then some softer movement of a second going from e minor to f and then back to end the first phrase [Music] [Music] it might be tough at first to hear what i mean when i'm using vague descriptions like strong or soft movement but think of how strong the ending of a symphony sounds [Music] that's a lot of fourth movement one five one five one it kind of makes your head bob back and forth with each chord like it's pulling you in a bunch of different directions now think of like a hans zimmer piece with big long slow string chords and think of how little head bobbing is involved [Music] hopefully these extremes help you get what i'm talking about on a smaller scale in these examples back to rain world the middle section of the piece is a great example of how with the right approach even a very simple diatonic chord progression can be beautiful we walk up in stepwise motion from c to d minor to e minor to f chords giving a sense of motion without putting much emphasis on any individual chord this fluidity between chords is enhanced by the way you'll see single notes in the triad move to anticipate one of the notes of the following chord or hold on to a note from the last chord after a move which is called a suspension [Music] [Music] there's not even any rhythm or melody or anything to add to the song just the pure sound of this chord progression and it is absolutely beautiful we've seen movement by fourth and by second now for an example of movement by third let's look at kentucky root zero's too late to love you it's an interactive in-game synth-pop performance where you decide which lyrics get sung in the song's verses the verses are constructed of a repeated b-flat to d minor progression with each chord layered on thick with upper cord extensions and dense synth voicings the lack of harmonic motion present in this movement of a third back and forth between these two chords is accentuated by all of the extensions making both of these chords almost the exact same pool of notes with just a different bass note tacked on the bottom as a result the verses feel very static [Music] this makes the eventual move to a g minor chord in the chorus jumping up a fourth from the d minor chord that ends the verse feel like an enormous tonal shift when it is in reality a pretty simple maneuver [Music] [Music] [Music] emphasizing the minor vi chord brings a darkness to the music and gives a sense of finality to the lyrics it's too late to get back with the singer and she is not happy about it this piece is a great example of tonal ambiguity where a song delicately balances its chords so as not to make anyone feel quite like home base this song is written in a major key but still has a very dark sound and that's partially due to the way the tonic b-flat is always approached with weak third motion while the darker six chord g minor is approached with strong fourth motion but there's also another layer here this six c9 chord that follows the g minor in the chorus isn't native to the key of b flat it's a borrowed major two chord approached by fourth from the g minor it sounds like a natural progression but it also brings a brief lightness to the chorus that we weren't expecting before the following g minor to d minor plunges us back into heartbreak this c chord is a genius way to keep the song tonally ambiguous see every major key shares the same pool of notes with its relative minor key like b flat major and g minor so you'll see a lot of songs create tonal ambiguity by riding the line between a major key and its relative minor making it unclear which of the two is the definitive home key too late to love you starts off with a b flat chord which makes that the assumed home key kind of by default but with the complete lack of support this chord has and the strength of the moves to its relative minus g minor it would be very easy for this song to tip over into sounding like it's been in g minor all along this borrowed c major chord comes in just after our first resolution to a g minor chord the borrowed e natural note weakening the tune's association with a g minor key and adding a brightness that keeps the song from leaning too heavily in that direction in the end none of the chords used feel like home base none of them feel totally resolved and that's exactly what composer ben babbitt wanted in order to keep the listener hooked in but you don't have to dive into total ambiguity like this to make use of some of these techniques if too late to love you was a major key song that sounded sad sunshine coastline from ease 8 is a minor key piece that sounds happy the four chord loop that takes us through the bulk of the tune is c minor a flat e flat b flat placing us in the key of c minor but leaning towards its relative major e flat starting the loop with the c minor chord makes us think we're in c minor kind of by default but notice how the resolution to the c chord is a movement by step from b flat up to c minor whereas e flat is approached by a fourth from this a flat chord and moves by fourth to the b flat chord that ends the loop the harmonic motion surrounding e-flat is a lot stronger even if it's in a slightly less emphasized part of the phrase so the chord progression as a whole sounds a lot brighter than what you might expect [Music] [Music] the upbeat driving rock energy adds to the levity of the tune too but a handful of g over b chords slipped between d flat and c minor just a couple times throughout the tune place us definitively in the key of c minor [Music] the harmony is undeniably very simple but i think avoiding repeated strong resolutions to the tonic like this keeps a piece from getting tiring to listen to you can kind of lay back and let the whole chord progression wash over you rather than having it carry you from place to place like harmony does in a more classical setting this doesn't mean this kind of sound is only for modern toons though the burning forest from the game for the king is written in a medieval style that evokes bardic folk music and a softer approach to harmony actually works really well here the piece is not tonally ambiguous centering heavily around its tonic g minor chord but it prefers to use lots of stepwise e flat to f to g minor types of resolutions underneath its pentatonic based melody there's a great fake out here too this e flat to f that sets up a resolution back to our tonic g minor by step actually resolves down by fourth to land on a c major chord the melody even resolves to the tonic g to make this harmonic fake out even more of a gotcha moment [Music] using the major iv chord is a common way to add brightness to a minor key and it gives this piece a sense of hope especially because it came where we were expecting our much darker tonic minor chord thinking about the motion between chords and how strongly a key is being defined can help you slip in chords from outside the key in a way that feels very natural the song good riddance from hades is an excellent example of this the song starts off in c minor moving through a step down fourth down pattern c minor to b flat to f minor to e flat to b flat to a flat before moving by third back to start the loop again [Music] first of all how cool is this three bar phrase it feels so fluid and natural and weaving the end of the phrase to the beginning of the next with this weak third motion from a flat to c minor almost blurs the line between the two phrases keeping things rolling in this really smooth way despite the odd phrase length repeating this phrase sets our expectations up to hear these six chords on a loop but on the third phrase this is not quite what we get we start off the same with our step down fourth down pattern bringing us to an e flat chord but now we continue to move down by step starting a big long walk down from f minor to e flat to d flat to c minor wait a sec d flat that's not in the key you might not even notice because stepwise motion doesn't place much emphasis on any of the chords in a figure over any of the others but composer daryn korb expertly slipped this flat 2 chord in here on our way down to our tonic c minor it's smooth but the flat 2 still lends its darker sound to the music in a noticeable way this flat 2 1 d flat to c minor resolution pairing perfectly with the lyrics to give the listener a real sense of just how weary atlas's bones must be [Music] again this is not a complicated chord progression the voicings of each chord are just a simple open triad and the melody is really very simple too sticking mostly to the fifth or third of each chord depending on which vocalist you happen to have singing it this song is a perfect example of how you don't need complicated musical structures to create a great emotionally resonant piece of work as long as you're careful about how you balance all the elements and pay close attention to how you're going to evoke the feelings that the song is trying to get at you might not always want your chromatic chord choices to feel smooth though and paying attention to intervallic movements between chords can help you hear too in the main theme from the game evil genius the music evokes this great sort of silly spy thriller tone through the use of chromatic chord jumps starting off in the key of d minor we see this section move through a very modern pop sounding progression d minor to b flat to f to g d minor to b flat to f to c we emphasize first the d minor then its relative major f chord through fourth motion tipping back and forth between the relative minor and major sounds in a more brute force approach to tonal ambiguity [Applause] this last c chord though jumps up a half step to a d flat chord which kicks off our spy thriller section d flat to a flat minor to e minor back to a flat minor d flat to a flat minor to e minor to b flat moving by a third between two chords that clash with each other tonally is called a chromatic mediant relationship and i think part of why this works is that the lack of motion of the third interval helps soften the jarring tonal shift between the two chords [Music] the fregato map theme from the game fregato and friends uses chromatic mediant moves to sound more hectic and complicated than it actually is the tonic b minor is expressed as a b minor 9 chord and this minor 9th harmony is shifted down in thirds moving from b minor 9 to g minor 9 to e minor 9 to c minor 9. there's plenty of clashes between each of these shifts but if you zoom out a bit you'll find that this really is a big move from the one chord to the iv chord b minor to e minor the chromatic mediant transitions occur on just the fourth bar of each phrase doing the exact opposite of smoothing out a transition it's deliberately introducing chromaticism in a parallel way to throw the listener a curveball so they lose their bearings harmonically [Music] this section is balanced out nicely by the tunes b section which uses diatonic chords and strong fourth motion almost exclusively for a very sweet functional harmony sound [Music] both sections move between the one and four chords of their keys b minor and d major respectively but the method of travel between these chords makes all the difference in the world this method of harmonic analysis isn't necessarily going to be helpful on every piece of music you encounter because there's a lot of factors that go into making harmony work and it's just not necessary for understanding older more functional approaches to harmony but i've found this way of thinking helpful when looking at tunes that i otherwise wouldn't really know how to understand particularly music influenced by modern pop sounds where the harmony doesn't play as visible a role as it would in say a spicy jazz composition even in these more basic settings composers still have to make decisions of what chords go where after all anyways i promise we'll get back to our sharp elevenths and tritone subs soon hope you enjoyed the video huge thanks to jason uloa alexander taylor dennis antonov love f red hollow nick shadell jude ken hat vgm crouch and sebastian simon for their requests and for their continued generosity thanks again for watching and i'll see you guys in the next one [Applause] you

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 214,235

Keywords: ys VIII, Frogatto & Friends, Kentucky Route Zero, Too Late to Love You, Evil Genius, video game music, For the King, Burning Forest, how to write chords, pop chord progressions, simple music theory, how to write music, composition, 8-bit Music Theory

Id: a8XoR0KY3e0

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022