# Chord progression, but why?



## AndreasHe (Dec 4, 2020)

There are some recommendations which chord follows best a chord.

More interesting for me is the question: why? 

Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?


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## Kent (Dec 4, 2020)

This is a very deep and philosophical question, but here is one possible (and very simplistic) answer:

In western/tonal/common-practice music, or music which incorporates many of those tendencies (like most pop), each pitch has a certain tendency. The tonic pitch is "home," and every other pitch relates to it somehow. For example, the next-most-stable pitch is the fifth above the tonic. On the other hand, a very unstable pitch is the natural seventh scale degree, which is one semitone underneath the tonic. It "wants" to resolve upward by one half-step to the tonic. Likewise, the natural fourth scale degree "wants" to resolve down one half-step to the third scale degree. 

As chords are built from these pitches, and in context from what has gone on before, certain patterns emerge. Broadly, there are three broad categories of chords: tonic chords (very stable), dominant chords (very unstable), and sub-dominant chords (somewhat stable). Based on both the individual and sum-of-whole pitches in each chord, sub-dominant chords (like ii or IV) "want" to resolve to dominant chords; in turn, dominant chords (like V or vii°) "want" to resolve to tonic chords. 

In a sense, music is a series of tensions and releases, and tonal music uses these harmonic tendencies to provide some of that propulsion.


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## GtrString (Dec 4, 2020)

Because western harmony is based on modernist philosophy, everything returns to one, and seeks that storyline with leading tones, suspended 7ths and what not. It doesn't mean that you can't use western harmony to tell other types of stories, but you have to work within that range of devices or break the "rules". Repetition is one way to make an odd (non diatonic) chord change sound familiar, and therefore becomes passable.

There are of course other types of harmony, which has other philosophical roots, and therefore has a different scope.

Root philosophy is important here, because it is the job of philosophy to come up with ideas, concepts and language to support the ideas. Philosophy conditions the conditioning - it is a meta practice. Therefore philosophy builds systems of ideas, and various cultures around the world ground their music in different philosophies, and that affects how we set up theoretical systems, and eventually appreciate chord changes ect. within our realm.


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## Noeticus (Dec 4, 2020)

kmaster said:


> This is a very deep and philosophical question, but here is one possible (and very simplistic) answer:
> 
> In western/tonal/common-practice music, or music which incorporates many of those tendencies (like most pop), each pitch has a certain tendency. The tonic pitch is "home," and every other pitch relates to it somehow. For example, the next-most-stable pitch is the fifth above the tonic. On the other hand, a very unstable pitch is the natural seventh scale degree, which is one semitone underneath the tonic. It "wants" to resolve upward by one half-step to the tonic. Likewise, the natural fourth scale degree "wants" to resolve down one half-step to the third scale degree.
> 
> ...



I say, I say, well said!


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## cuttime (Dec 4, 2020)

kmaster said:


> This is a very deep and philosophical question, but here is one possible (and very simplistic) answer:
> 
> In western/tonal/common-practice music, or music which incorporates many of those tendencies (like most pop), each pitch has a certain tendency. The tonic pitch is "home," and every other pitch relates to it somehow. For example, the next-most-stable pitch is the fifth above the tonic. On the other hand, a very unstable pitch is the natural seventh scale degree, which is one semitone underneath the tonic. It "wants" to resolve upward by one half-step to the tonic. Likewise, the natural fourth scale degree "wants" to resolve down one half-step to the third scale degree.
> 
> ...


Incredibly well said. I was trying to say the same, but could never put it so succinctly!


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## JohnG (Dec 4, 2020)

It's really just the way people have done it. Honestly I find all the "tension/release" stuff I've heard all my life to be unconvincing. I've heard the same arguments @kmaster described and conclude on the whole that they are after-the-fact pseudo-science that justifies what people simply do, because the audience (and the composers) are used to it.

I'm sure he (and many here) know that there are plenty of musical cultures that almost never change pitch centre, and many that don't use "harmony" as such. Or chords.

So what do I think?

I think it's a bit like architectural conventions. We see an element like a lintel, or mantlepiece, or arch, and we "like" it; we see a column base or capital, and we "like" it. But I think our liking any attribute of architecture, and in music, mostly appeals to us because of some echo in our lives which, in turn, often is an echo probably from at least as far back as Egypt (via Greece and Rome, the neoclassical period and so on).

So no, I don't think that pitches, or dominant 7th chords have tendencies, though I've heard many professors and practitioners use that language before. I think we are used to hearing them resolve in a certain way, so we _anticipate_ where they are going.

I read through all the Hindemith (and plenty of other) stuff in my studies and I felt then, and still feel, unpersuaded.


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## ed buller (Dec 4, 2020)

simply put physics. To us in the west we are slaves to the harmonic series. It's vibrations are deeply embedded in what we hear and how we hear it. Our brains create an acceptance and appreciation of the duality that exists in tension and release in music. whether this happens suddenly ( Katy Perry ) or agonizingly slowly ( Tristan and Isolde ) 

Best

ed


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## ChristianM (Dec 4, 2020)

A chord that pleases is most often a chord which imprints part of the notes of its predecessor, and which invites to dream


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## Kent (Dec 4, 2020)

JohnG said:


> It's really just the way people have done it. Honestly I find all the "tension/release" stuff I've heard all my life to be unconvincing. I've heard the same arguments @kmaster described and conclude on the whole that they are after-the-fact pseudo-science that justifies what people simply do, because the audience (and the composers) are used to it.
> 
> I'm sure he (and many here) know that there are plenty of musical cultures that almost never change pitch centre, and many that don't use "harmony" as such. Or chords.
> 
> ...


It's definitely a conditioned response, which is why I prefaced with (some of) the practices that use it. I don't think that in and of itself is pseudoscientific


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## jbuhler (Dec 4, 2020)

JohnG said:


> So no, I don't think that pitches, or dominant 7th chords have tendencies, though I've heard many professors and practitioners use that language before. I think we are used to hearing them resolve in a certain way, so we _anticipate_ where they are going.


I would say that these tendencies are precisely what we learn when we learn (western common practice) tonality. But we do learn tonality and you have to be taught that a 6/4 chord, for instance, "wants" to resolve to 5/3, even though we all know lots of music with 6/4 chords that does not embody this desire to resolve at all.


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## ed buller (Dec 4, 2020)

jbuhler said:


> I would say that these tendencies are precisely what we learn when we learn (western common practice) tonality. But we do learn tonality and you have to be taught that a 6/4 chord, for instance, "wants" to resolve to 5/3, even though we all know lots of music with 6/4 chords that does not embody this desire to resolve at all.


I think for most of us growing up in the west, when we hear an F played with a B above ...something inside us knows it's waiting to move...we won't know where unless we are incredibly gifted or study...but for most of us the b rising a half step and the f falling a half step is in some primeval way satisfying. That energy, momentum whatever you want to call it...in the right hands , can be manipulated and controlled to write music that brings pleasure to many people. Or it can sound like Katy Perry

best

e


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## jbuhler (Dec 4, 2020)

ed buller said:


> I think for most of us growing up in the west, when we hear an F played with a B above ...something inside us knows it's waiting to move...we won't know where unless we are incredibly gifted or study...but for most of us the b rising a half step and the f falling a half step is in some primeval way satisfying. That energy, momentum whatever you want to call it...in the right hands , can be manipulated and controlled to write music that brings pleasure to many people. Or it can sound like Katy Perry
> 
> best
> 
> e


Yes, though even within the system that tritone is itself highly ambiguous and could resolve with equal satisfaction to F#-A#. Or indeed the B could fall to A. And so forth. Even adding the G in the bass does not wholly clarify the situation, since you can resolve it as an augmented sixth. I suppose it's a question of hearing instability and whether the instability we hear is innate or learned at a very young age. 

Then, too, I was speaking of the 6/4 chord, the inherent instability of which is much more tenuous, and not even all college-aged students in music school have yet internalized its instability as a tonal intuition.


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## AndreasHe (Dec 4, 2020)

What did I do 😅

Great responses! 

I like the idea with the frequencies. Maybe I should compare the typical recommendations for followup chords and try to find a pattern. 

Means also I will simply accept that there might be a reason placed in our culture. However there must be a simple pattern which can be reused. As you may already see, I am not an experienced musician an simply want to see a reason or pattern. And I have to re-read your postings to understand better some used music terminology. Maybe it becomes then clearer to me.


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## cuttime (Dec 4, 2020)

I assumed from the wording of original post that you were talking western based tonal music. Perhaps I regarded the question more narrowly than I should have.


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## Gene Pool (Dec 4, 2020)

JohnG said:


> I'm sure he (and many here) know that there are plenty of musical cultures that almost never change pitch centre, and many that don't use "harmony" as such. Or chords.



Which is irrelevant since other cultures did not achieve by a huge margin the great many unparalleled musical accomplishments of Western Civilization.


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## chocobitz825 (Dec 4, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> Which is irrelevant since other cultures did not achieve by a huge margin the great many unparalleled musical accomplishments of Western Civilization.



..well that statement would take some dissecting...


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## ed buller (Dec 5, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> Which is irrelevant since other cultures did not achieve by a huge margin the great many unparalleled musical accomplishments of Western Civilization.


"Gene Pool"..kinda gives it away doesn't it ?

best

ed


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## cet34f (Dec 5, 2020)

Harmonics. That's why.


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## ed buller (Dec 5, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> However there must be a simple pattern which can be reused.


I'm not sure I understand. Are you looking for a foolproof way of writing a chord sequence that will always work ?

best

ed


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## Arbee (Dec 5, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?


While I don't disagree with any of the wise and highly educated responses in this thread, I sense you're referring more to the concept of common tones. Put simply, chord changes, particularly when modulating to another key, range from subtle (many common tones in each chord), to moderate (one or two common tones), to "crash" (no common tones). Each of those approaches has an effect on the listener's sense of anticipation when subtle, or shock when not. Is that what you're asking?


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## ed buller (Dec 5, 2020)

Arbee said:


> While I don't disagree with any of the wise and highly educated responses in this thread, I sense you're referring more to the concept of common tones. Put simply, chord changes, particularly when modulating to another key, range from subtle (many common tones in each chord), to moderate (one or two common tones), to "crash" (no common tones). Each of those approaches has an effect on the listener's sense of anticipation when subtle, or shock when not. Is that what you're asking?


I suspect THIS is much more helpful to the OP

best

e


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 5, 2020)

JohnG said:


> It's really just the way people have done it. Honestly I find all the "tension/release" stuff I've heard all my life to be unconvincing. I've heard the same arguments @kmaster described and conclude on the whole that they are after-the-fact pseudo-science that justifies what people simply do, because the audience (and the composers) are used to it.
> 
> I'm sure he (and many here) know that there are plenty of musical cultures that almost never change pitch centre, and many that don't use "harmony" as such. Or chords.
> 
> ...


To get a bit philosophical, without tension and release, without suffering and pleasure, there can be no free will. And with no free will, there can be no true life, no spiritual development, and there would categorically be no Universe, no Observation, no God.

But yet here we are.

Music and Motion are in our nature. You're a composer. Whether you say you're convinced or not, Motion is real.

That is not to say Tonal Harmony or Chord Progressions are the only way to achieve Motion. But they are one system that works and has its effect on our emotions, and that is undeniable.


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## Ivan M. (Dec 5, 2020)

Timbres, notes, chords and every possible change of these map to our emotions. How? No one knows. But that's how it is, and composition really is searching for and discovering the right pattern, and the most frequent patterns are being recorded in music theory.


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## ed buller (Dec 5, 2020)




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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 5, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Timbres, notes, chords and every possible change of these map to our emotions. How? No one knows. But that's how it is, and composition really is searching for and discovering the right pattern, and the most frequent patterns are being recorded in music theory.


I would hypothesize that it could be because our ears and brains evolved together to have a logical and subconscious appreciation of the harmonic series, and we know dissonance and consonance involve relationships to this series, and so too we derive some kind of emotional experience from motion related to it.


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## Ivan M. (Dec 5, 2020)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> I would hypothesize that it could be because our ears and brains evolved together to have a logical and subconscious appreciation of the harmonic series, and we know dissonance and consonance involve relationships to this series, and so too we derive some kind of emotional experience from motion related to it.



Could be based on rhythm too, descrete pulses:


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 5, 2020)

Ivan M. said:


> Could be based on rhythm too, descrete pulses:




Indeed, and seeing as pitch content is determined by frequency, therein lies some kind of correlation to pulses over time as well


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## Rob (Dec 5, 2020)

Arbee said:


> While I don't disagree with any of the wise and highly educated responses in this thread, I sense you're referring more to the concept of common tones. Put simply, chord changes, particularly when modulating to another key, range from subtle (many common tones in each chord), to moderate (one or two common tones), to "crash" (no common tones). Each of those approaches has an effect on the listener's sense of anticipation when subtle, or shock when not. Is that what you're asking?


my thought also... add to that the fact that if chords belong to the same set of pitches, be it a scale or other forms of pitch organization, you'll feel chords are related.


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## sinkd (Dec 5, 2020)

Start with a C major scale and play it up and down a couple of times. Do you hear any notes that suggest specific movement or continuation? If you do you might hear B "pulling" up to C or D descending to C because C has a certain central role in the C Major scale. This is because you have been listening to music that uses the Major scale and has been written with these tendencies "fulfilled" all of your life: "Three Blind Mice," or "Frère Jacques" for example. It is a stylistic consideration mostly, not pre-ordained by physics; but it also has a lot to do with the human voice. Moving melodically by step or minor third (as in the pentatonic) is easy to do when you sing, and melodies group the notes quickly into scales that tend to center around notes that sound like they "close" a phrase.

The acoustic aspect of chords does play a role. When a second or third voice is added, on different notes, we hear consonance in acoustically determined intervals like fifths and thirds. These generate triad chords and you can build a triad on every degree of the scale. Now you have consonant notes working together "vertically" that still have individual notes moving according to the tendencies of the scale.

Play the C Major scale again and then play an F/A dyad followed by G/B. You might hear a kind of building tension that is really sending B up to C. Then play F/A followed by F/B: even more tension partly because F/B is not acoustically determined (B is not a close overtone of F, which is the lower note). Resolving F/B to E/C relieves that tension and "lands" on the final scale note plus a note that is part of the C triad. Sixths like E/C we hear as inversions of the more acoustically determined C/E third interval because there is some interlocking of overtones (E is a close overtone of both E and C). But it all really gets locked in when you add roots in the bass. G/F/B (from bottom to top) followed by C/E/C sounds really convincing as a "close" in C.

But in the end, these chord progressions sound convincing only if you are hearing them in an 18th century (generally) melodic/harmonic context. In rock music, G-F-C is a really convincing progression, and is the reverse of basically anything Bach or Mozart ever wrote at a cadence. This stylistic reversal flows out of the blues and pentatonicism from folk music.

A blues scale combines inflected lower (blues) notes and aspects of the pentatonic scale (minor third skips):

C-Eb-(E)-F-F#-G-Bb-C.

It also "stabilizes" the dominant seventh quality chord built on the scale root, C-E-G-Bb. The basic blues progression supports melodic half step motions between E/Eb for example with chord progressions like C7-F7. Since the scale descends G-F#-F-Eb-C, we hear F7-C7 (which supports Eb-C in the melody) as progression closure. Progressions that center around natural minor also sound convincing without the "tendency tones" that I described initially in C Major, partly because that scale does not have a note a half step below the first scale-degree.

It all starts with melodies that sort of self-organize into scales where some notes are privileged and others are passing.

Then your buddy shows up with a balalaika and wants to join in and strum some chords... and then your sister wants to sing harmony...

--DS


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

Well, I've heard all that and I agree with those who say, "it's what we've heard all our lives." I don't think there is anything inevitable about 12 notes in a scale, just for starters.

Fortunately, those 12 notes can make some pretty good tunes!

As noted and as we know, some cultures don't use tempered scales or even half-step scales. Or any scales at all, as such -- it's mostly about rhythm. So I find it not useful / unpersuasive to use expressions like, "it's physics" or "privileged notes," or loading music with "tension and release" (how many times will we hear that one?). Even if you can point to passages of the Great One, Beethoven, and convince yourself that you are hearing it, alas he's not here to confirm or reject the hypotheses. So it remains, in my view, an after-the-fact larding on.

Besides, how many rubbish composers know all this and it doesn't help them write anything you'd like to hear?

*Bah Humbug on Technique*

Even if composers write about that kind of thing and say that it underpins their music, I am still left wondering what makes it "cool?" What makes us want to listen again and again to it? There's "just something about it."

Another example -- the serialists. Most of it makes me laugh out loud and / or want to leave the room. In school, some of those guys were talked about in Holy Tones as if they'd discovered music all over again.

But who wants to _listen_ to it? Or much of it? Berg is one of my favorites but he kind of cheated (in a good way) by coming up with pitch sets that have the same kind of ache/emotional content that the 19th century did.

I still think I see "know-nothing" composers both bashed (for being know-nothings) and lionized (for being successful anyway). I worried for a long time whether my music was up to some imaginary standard of academic "rigour." I've found it much more helpful to know that stuff and dip into it, like a parts cabinet, but not to worry about any of it.


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 5, 2020)

I believe tension and release is a very important paradigm in music, essential to the efficacy of the linear, emotional flow and should imv, be a big part of a composer's understanding of musical syntax and its expressive capability. Tension and release can apply to not just harmony and line, but rhythm, dynamics, timbre (eg. expressionistic or virtuosic gestures in the musical line that will create tension within the player and exploit the timbre of their instrument), density of timbre/scoring, harmonic pacing, tempo and so on.
Exploitation of musical elements with tension and release in mind is a powerful tool.


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

I feel I've been overly harsh in some of my replies in this thread. I think it's because I am directing frustration at academic clap-trap at my friends here on the forum which is a wrong attitude, so apologies.

The source of that frustration is that I, personally, "don't get it." I, personally, don't find expressions like "tension and release" at all _actionable._ It doesn't mean anything to me that helps me, practically, write the next note.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 5, 2020)

mikeh-375 said:


> I believe tension and release is a very important paradigm in music, essential to the efficacy of the linear, emotional flow and should imv, be a big part of a composer's understanding of musical syntax and its expressive capability. Tension and release can apply to not just harmony and line, but rhythm, dynamics, timbre (eg. expressionistic or virtuosic gestures in the musical line that will create tension within the player and exploit the timbre of their instrument), density of timbre/scoring, harmonic pacing, tempo and so on.
> Exploitation of musical elements with tension and release in mind is a powerful tool.



I agree, and I'm not sure what JohnG is exactly saying but for anything to move it must have "tension and release". If it was just constant tension rising then the release would logically be what happens when there's an end of the performance, and also logically, one cannot have release without tension in the first place.



JohnG said:


> I feel I've been overly harsh in some of my replies in this thread. I think it's because I am directing frustration at academic clap-trap at my friends here on the forum which is a wrong attitude, so apologies.
> 
> The source of that frustration is that I, personally, "don't get it." I, personally, don't find expressions like "tension and release" at all _actionable._ It doesn't mean anything to me that helps me, practically, write the next note.



Maybe you are thinking too academically what we mean by tension and release, rather than abstractly :D
No, knowing it may not help you write the next note, but there has to be movement somewhere. You write using it without even knowing it, by virtue of the fact that you write - in the abstract sense. I personally am not talking about the specific "sturm und drang" art movement that academics may drool over.

Here is another way to think about it - your music is about to move along and you are about to write the next note. You can now raise the tension, knowing this will give you more room for release after, or reduce the tension, knowing potentially the opposite. But eventually the performance must end - does it wind up to a finish or wind down? Consider that could even apply to something as small as a phrase as well.


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## youngpokie (Dec 5, 2020)

Perhaps JohnG is mixing up his scales here slightly. 

The critical differentiating factor between musical systems with chord progressions and systems without them is the method used to divide the octave into intervals.

There is no other way to explain why chord progressions _as we know them_ are impossible in the 20-tone system (Indian shruti), in the 12-tone chromatic (that JohnG rightly brings up), or in 6-tone and 5-tone folk music scales and so on. The observations about tension and release, learned anticipation are without any doubt true, but - they are consequences, not reasons. 

The only musical system that makes chord progressions as we know them possible at all is when we divide the scale into 7 intervals. And the reason for that is in how we divide. 

First we divide the octave in half. Then, we use the newly created interval of the 5th to build a chain of intervals linked to each other until we have 7 intervals. This is quite a large span, so third step - we transpose them up or down to fit into the common octave on the keyboard.

It is this approach that creates the third, the tritone and the leading tone, such as the 7th in a dominant 7th chord - the ingredients that make the tension and release possible. No other system uses an approach like this and with such results. In the end, what @kmaster says is exactly right. 

However, there are several historical developments that obscure this foundational role of the 7-tone system. The first, minor point, is that the scales were "tempered" to expand access to remote keys, and the precise balance of the intervals were ever so slightly altered. 

The second, the truly confusing one, is that during the Romantic period, we overlaid the 12 tone chromatic system right on top of the foundational 7-tone system. We got more intervals and expressive possibilities and we weakened the clearly audible tonal tensions of the underlying 7-tone system.


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## sinkd (Dec 5, 2020)

Tension and release: Can you hear when a melody hasn't finished? Or completed a satisfying motion to a final note? If so then you have to acknowledge "tension and release" and to a certain extent "tendency." It is not a scientific analysis, it is built in to our hearing of scales and melodies, whether you search for a physical/acoustical reason or just attribute it to style and the music you have heard over the course of your life. I think it is a lot of the latter and some of the former.

I appreciate John's perspective a lot, and did not read his response as harsh.


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## d.healey (Dec 5, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> There are some recommendations which chord follows best a chord.
> 
> More interesting for me is the question: why?
> 
> Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?


Any chord can follow any chord. There is no best, there is only best for your particular piece of work and that is largely influenced by what sounds good to you.

I would say there is a "best" chord voicing however. This depends on the instrument(s) that will play the chord, the tempo, and the chord that came before and comes after.


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## youngpokie (Dec 5, 2020)

JohnG said:


> I, personally, don't find expressions like "tension and release" at all _actionable._ It doesn't mean anything to me that helps me, practically, write the next note.



I think there is an actionable path based on tension and release in chord progressions.

In the 7-tone system, everything rests on the relationship between the 5th, the 4th and the tonic. This means that the next chord will be playing the role of either the 5th, 4th or the tonic - there is simply no other option. And all possible chords in any key can be organized into these 3 functions.

The common chord progressions of pop music reveal this organizing principle of 7-tone system most clearly because they are so simple and "naked".

But this formula still holds even late Romantic periods. These same chords are simply made more complex with extensive alterations and substitutions but their underlying role remains exactly the same. 5th, 4th or tonic.


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## Rob (Dec 5, 2020)

to me the effect of one chord following another is a much more varied and rich sensual experience, like a kaleidoscope of musical colors, than "tension and release"... that's a too simple way of putting it. And no, when I hear an augmented fourth I don't feel the need to resolve, unless it's in a classical framework


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 5, 2020)

d.healey said:


> I would say there is a "best" chord voicing however. This depends on the instrument(s) that will play the chord, the tempo, and the chord that came before and comes after.



I don't know if there is a "best" voicing, as I can believe in a variety of different kinds of voicings and transitions - some more smooth than others, and a different effect being achieved by however the composer so chooses to write it.


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

Well, I guess the serial movement, the search for "new" scales by Bartok in E. Europe and manyl similar quests were motivated in part by the original question: "why?" And, to many of them (maybe many here too?), the possibly more important question:

"How do we escape?"

*That Guy*

How do we escape Beethoven? This central question drove many composers for at least 100 years after he died. It's one that hasn't been answered today and was compounded by Wagner / Strauss / Mahler taking ideas of tonality and wringing them to (allegedly) exhaustion.

Part of the answer is all the different scales people have played with, including what in the West is called microtonal (but in other places is called, "music"). I'm familiar with a number of scales besides major and minor, @youngpokie , and how to divide them in two -- that's not "mixing them up," if you'll pardon me. I'm using some of them right now in a battle cue. But those tropes also are not exactly new either, having been worked over by some rather good composers for over 100 years.

*Soundz*

The other search that went on besides "which notes" in the 20th and 21st centuries especially has been new sounds. I am actually stunned at how prized the tiniest innovations are in some composers' approach. "Let's use washing machine parts" for example. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- of course -- but it's kind of marginal, in my opinion.

*I Doubt There's a Word for It*

What makes music like that succeed as music (and not just government grant / NEA committee-speak) is that there is just "something about it."

And it's the "something about it" that I think eludes all the terminology, from _sturm und drang _to "tension and release" to "tendencies" to "creative genius," all terms that, to someone learning music, are impractical. 

Until someone takes whatever innovation and makes it into something that people say, "what was that? Play it again!" I think it's not too useful; it may mean something to the speaker, but it doesn't actually mean anything.


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## dgburns (Dec 5, 2020)

I need some release from all this tension. (kidding)

Personally exploring serialism and applying it rigourously to my current scoring asssignment. It’s making me avoid some overly used choices in the past. Some of it even may pass as actual music, lol.


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## youngpokie (Dec 5, 2020)

JohnG said:


> But those tropes also are not exactly new either, having been worked over by some rather good composers for over 100 years.



I didn't mean any disrespect @JohnG 

But the original question was: "_Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?_"

My point is simply that 7-tone scale is the only explanation as to why we have these pattern-based chord progressions in Western music and not in India; and to be more precise it is in how this 7-tone scale is uniquely constructed. 

It is because of the 5th, 4th and the tonic intervals that imbue this scale that some chords fit better than others and that the tension and release are even possible to begin with.

Still, I agree with you that the chromatic scale is irrelevant to chord progressions. I also agree with you that since the dawn of time and the prehistoric 2-tone system, music has always been going in the direction of expansion, including the amount of tones in a scale. 

But I don't agree that tension and release is not actionable in writing music - unless you're writing outside of the tonal system altogether. In fact, I propose it's the most easily actionable chord progression strategy.


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## jbuhler (Dec 5, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> Perhaps JohnG is mixing up his scales here slightly.
> 
> The critical differentiating factor between musical systems with chord progressions and systems without them is the method used to divide the octave into intervals.
> 
> ...


When dealing with an instrument of fixed pitch (like a keyboard, or fretted string) you are going to encounter and have to make a decision about how to handle the syntonic comma, so even with just the diatonic scale you are forced to compromise the tuning in some fashion and choose a temperament. There’s no getting around this even at the diatonic level. The chromatic system as it evolves in the nineteenth century (if we want to call it evolution) is highly dependent on the widespread adoption of equal temperament and the growing ubiquity of the piano as the standard instrument of choice for learning and hearing music. Everything in the nineteenth century passes through the medium of the piano, as most people would be more apt to have heard and learned a symphony or most other music through piano transcriptions. It was the standard music player of the time.

Equal temperament is a peculiar tuning where the fifths in particular are slightly out of tune compared to the default 3:2 ratio. Every fifth is equally out of tune. And this causes all sorts of issues for philosophical foundations of acoustical consonance that underlie psychodynamic theories of tension and release. I mean if a major chord isn’t ever “in tune,” what do we make of that inherent “tension”? Do we just wish it away with our belief in the system of tonality? Do we celebrate it as an image of the grand compromise of democracy and the arbitrary standards imposed on social life that capitalism can function more efficiently?

Then too there’s the whole problem of the minor system, which lacks any acoustical foundation at all. I‘m particularly fond of Hugo Riemann’s dualistic take on minor, which he derives by turning the major system upside down and deriving from undertones, but at the consequence of needing to make the root of the minor chord what we would call its fifth. The marvel of this system is that it actually “explains” well quite a lot of music that traditional diatonic theory and its chromatic extensions do not. And of course this in turn is the basis for neo-Riemannian theory that is so helpful for understanding the harmonic logic of third relations as functional substitutes. (In terms of seeing examples of interesting “surprising” but also characteristic progressions derived from Riemann’s theories and transformational analysis, Frank Lehman’s _Hollywood Harmony_ and the article by Scott Murphy in the _Oxford Handbook to Film Music Studies _are excellent resources.)


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## Hadrondrift (Dec 5, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> It is because of the 5th, 4th and the tonic intervals that imbue this scale that some chords fit better than others


Maybe it is no coincidence that these intervals are the ones to appear first in the natural overtone series.


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> But I don't agree that tension and release is not actionable in writing music - unless you're writing outside of the tonal system altogether. In fact, I propose it's the most easily actionable chord progression strategy.



I look at chord progression / succession a bit differently -- back to the architecture analogy. Most people can walk into a house and say, "ah, traditional," or "ah, modern," or if they are knowledgeable /insufferable know-it-alls about architecture, "ah, the Second Chicago School."

Entering such a home, we experience some coherence because the architect applied conventions and / or followed rules, or guidelines that we recognise as that style.

I think the same is true of music, which I always feel has a lot more in common with architecture than, say, painting. It's nothing more (but nothing less, either) than a lifetime of expectations we've imbibed without being taught.

I think we may be able to _describe_ a feeling of tension-and-release because we've absorbed musical associations over a lifetime so that we unconsciously and instantly recognise "what the composer is doing," for want of a better expression.

I don't really buy that there is inherent, actual tension in most harmonic language. Definitely agree there is meaning to "gets louder, then suddenly quiet" or "gets higher and higher" or "builds up to a cliffhanger -- then pause and BOOM!"

If that's what people mean by tension and release, ok. But I prefer "gets louder, then suddenly quiet."


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## youngpokie (Dec 5, 2020)

jbuhler said:


> Equal temperament is a peculiar tuning where the fifths in particular are slightly out of tune compared to the default 3:2 ratio. Every fifth is equally out of tune. And this causes all sorts of issues for philosophical foundations of acoustical consonance that underlie psychodynamic theories of tension and release. I mean if a major chord isn’t ever “in tune,” what do we make of that inherent “tension”? Do we just wish it away with our belief in the system of tonality? Do we celebrate it as an image of the grand compromise of democracy and the arbitrary standards imposed on social life that capitalism can function more efficiently?



I agree with this. 

Although to me this is less important, to be honest, than the number of intervals in the scale in explaining why some chords fit better following others.

For example, pentatonic and diatonic both start with the tonic in the middle and the chain of 5ths going in left and right directions. So, both systems already have the inherent tension built in because there is the polarity - the 3:2 on the right becomes 2:3 ratio on the left, meaning our 5th and 4th.

The defining difference comes from the number of intervals, in my opinion. Once we have 7 intervals in the diatonic scale, we introduce a semitone into the scale for the first time. And suddenly we enable the 7th chord and leading tones.


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

jbuhler said:


> I mean if a major chord isn’t ever “in tune,” what do we make of that inherent “tension”? Do we just wish it away with our belief in the system of tonality? Do we celebrate it as an image of the grand compromise of democracy and the arbitrary standards imposed on social life that capitalism can function more efficiently?



Quotation of the day!


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## youngpokie (Dec 5, 2020)

JohnG said:


> I don't really buy that there is inherent, actual tension in most harmonic language. Definitely agree there is meaning to "gets louder, then suddenly quiet" or "gets higher and higher" or "builds up to a cliffhanger -- then pause and BOOM!"
> 
> If that's what people mean by tension and release, ok. But I prefer "gets louder, then suddenly quiet."



I guess that's fine. In the example below I can hear both the clear tension in the harmonic language as well as "gets higher and higher" and the BOOM!.




EDIT: Actually, now I am wondering how we can explain the typical cadence in any way _other than_ tension and release


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## re-peat (Dec 5, 2020)

The whole tension-and-release thing doesn’t really apply if the harmonic changes aren’t imbedded in a structure the existence of which is entirely defined by tension and release. Sonata form being the best example: you start at home, you go out and wander away for awhile in the adjoining countryside, perhaps make love to a shepherdess underneath the mango tree while you’re there, continue by exploring various paths and byways that may take you far away from home, but that journey must eventually come to an end, and by evenfall you return home, put your feet up in front of the fire, have a snifter and enjoy the comfort of the familiar homey surroundings. The end. That’s sonata form. More or less. 

Musically, this translates into a sequence of moments and stretches that have various degrees of tension and release, or conflict and resolution. In such a context, (most) chords have a very specific function: to establish the main key centres, to take you away from the home key, to lead you into a moment of tension, or to lead you out of it, or to confirm some or other anchor point of the structure.

But if such a structure isn’t present to begin with — and it isn’t in most film music (and in most popular music, only the so-called ‘bridge’ can be considered a ‘move away from home’) — then the tension-and-release thing doesn’t really come into play.

I’m with D. Healey: unless you work in a form where the chords have a distinct _structural_ function, any chord can be followed any other chord. No problem. The liberty with which you go about jumping from one chord to the next, is then merely constrained by the style — some styles welcome adventurous harmonic changes more than others — and by your own creativity and imagination.

_


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 5, 2020)

It's all context, i'nit.

This is one of those things in music that just sounds right. There are physical explanations for a lot of it, but every one of them comes with asterisks.

So in regular diatonic music, say a folk song, if you don't move from tonic to subdominant to dominant to tonic, usually something's wrong.

That is, except when [insert 50 exceptions].


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## ChristianM (Dec 5, 2020)

Hadrondrift said:


> Maybe it is no coincidence that these intervals are the ones to appear first in the natural overtone series.


Human could just as easily have refused this proximity to harmonics


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 5, 2020)

Oh, and don't forget harmonic rhythm (in case anyone has).


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## JohnG (Dec 5, 2020)

re-peat said:


> I’m with D. Healey: unless you work in a form where the chords have a distinct _structural_ function, any chord can be followed any other chord.



Do you (and @d.healey ) think that the listener has to have perfect pitch to experience this journey fully? I sometimes wonder. 

John Williams changes key quite a lot in his film music; so do I, but I've actually had orchestrators and even one conductor give me a hard time about it, as though it's unnecessary trouble. [slaps forehead]


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 5, 2020)

yeah...function or lack of is pivotal to all of this talk of tension and release as is the actual style of language used, as well as the formal and structural context. The greats will always thwart and/or exploit expectations which is why they are, well great. Those 'expectations' can also be cultural, dictating how we emotionally respond to music.
Talking in the abstract does come across as dry but understanding principles and then having them as a subliminal guide to just ignore if necessary is a good thing and the best take away from learning all the stuff in the first place.
I too think anything can be justified, but only if it sounds inevitable, that is, as a result of the musical discourse.


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## d.healey (Dec 5, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Do you (and @d.healey ) think that the listener has to have perfect pitch to experience this journey fully? I sometimes wonder.


I don't have perfect pitch so how would I know?


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## NoamL (Dec 5, 2020)

Hah... well to actually answer the original question...

The basic progression built into Western music is dominant to tonic. So in C major that's G7 (G B D F) to C (C E G) If all you do is play those chords it sounds like Beethoven.

The dominant "*prepares*" or "*anticipates*" or "*sounds logical leading to*" the tonic - however you want to put it - for five separate reasons:

*Diatonic: *all of the notes of G7 belong to the C major scale
*Leading Tone: *G7 contains B, the leading tone of the C major scale
*Dissonance To Consonance: *G7 contains a dissonant tritone which collapses to a more stable major 3rd in the C major chord.
*Root Motion: *G7 has a strong perfect 4th root motion up to C major
*Voice Leading:* all of the notes of G7 resolve statically or by a small step to the notes of C major.
What you can take away from this is if you follow one or more of these rules, you can create any number of chords that are *dominant-ISH.* These chords can be more creative substitutions for the dominant that make your music sound like ... it's not Beethoven.


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## NoamL (Dec 5, 2020)

Like this: (!)


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## Gene Pool (Dec 5, 2020)

jbuhler said:


> Equal temperament is a peculiar tuning where the fifths in particular are slightly out of tune compared to the default 3:2 ratio. Every fifth is equally out of tune. And this causes all sorts of issues for philosophical foundations of acoustical consonance that underlie psychodynamic theories of tension and release.



Not quite, but you're near the ballpark.

Even though the comma is compensated for by reducing the pure 5ths ever so imperceptibly, that's not where the system breaks down. The e.t. 5ths are only a couple cents shy of a pure 5th, and along with the e.t. 4ths (the same roughly two cents but in the other direction obviously), they are the closest to the harmonic series of any e.t. interval outside unisons and octaves.

Tests performed on average listeners (i.e., non-musicians) indicate that about 8¢ is their average threshold of resolution, and for musicians it's about 5¢, so a mere 2¢ is not the problem.

Where the system breaks down is at the third, the e.t. version being huge and ugly—about 14¢ beyond purity. It's the necessary evil that kills resonance and conditions our ears to be ignorant of the beauty of pure thirds, which is kind of a problem for tertian-based harmony. This why brass samples resolved to e.t. sound like crap, since they in reality of course play pure intervals, notwithstanding trombonists who play a short position on the 5th partial when need be, since the natural one sounds "out of tune."

The better string players make adjustments towards purity in solo pieces and string quartets—especially on thirds and leading tones—but the most resonant, pure intervals you're going to hear in Western harmony are in the high caliber barbershop quartets. It really opens up and zings when they nail those major chords, which is why barbershop arrangers emphasize major chords so much. It's a really big deal in barbershop, which they call "the expanded sound," since that's really what it does.

If you spend just a short time, say, a week at the most, listening to nothing but pure intervals, once you go back to e.t. you wonder how ever accepted this in the first place.


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## jbuhler (Dec 5, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> Not quite, but you're near the ballpark.
> 
> Even though the comma is compensated for by reducing the pure 5ths ever so imperceptibly, that's not where the system breaks down. The e.t. 5ths are only a couple cents shy of a pure 5th, and along with the e.t. 4ths (the same roughly two cents but in the other direction obviously), they are the closest to the harmonic series of any e.t. interval outside unisons and octaves.
> 
> ...


your condescension is charming as ever, and your pseudonym really does suit you. I find the beating of equal tempered fifths on the piano distinctive enough when played as an isolated sonority and I’m listening for it (personally I like the sound), though I agree that the third is more an issue. Even that compromise is not one I have any trouble accepting, and it sounds sweet enough. But that really wasn’t the point as you know very well. The point is that with equal temperament everything except the octave is out of tune from the standpoint of the acoustic ideal that underpins most theories of tonality. And the minor mode: The acoustic theory is hopeless in explaining its coherence, and the analogy with the major mode only extends so far.

The fact that performing musicians don’t always adhere to equal temperament tells us they don’t in fact have faith in its efficacy. Fair enough except that does little to shore up the foundations of the theory. And even the way you describe major chords in barbershop quartets—we are not in the realm of release after tension so much as the deployment of spectacle effects, composition that works to manifest that “expanded sound”, nearly the opposite of the account of the tonic in the theory of tonality.


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## Eric G (Dec 5, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> There are some recommendations which chord follows best a chord.
> 
> More interesting for me is the question: why?
> 
> Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?



Let's get very practical and put in the work so you can learn something for yourself.

As a beginner I would look at the site HookTheory which catalogs a lot of popular songs and their chord progressions. It is in a section of their website call Theory Tabs.

Hook Theory Tabs

Also they have two great books on Chord Progressions and how they are used in Popular music. Its only $34 for both interactive books. 

Hook Theory Books

Have fun and learn something.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 5, 2020)

How sensitive we are to pitch is also quite variable and subject to context.

If you look it up in, say, Wikipedia, you'll read that the minimum change people are sensitive to is about 8 cents (although it does say we're all different).

But try this: put a test oscillator in a DAW channel strip, then change the sine wave from 1000Hz to 1001. You'll hear a difference, at least I do and I assume every other musician does too.

However, that doesn't mean we're sensitive to that in a musical context, just that we can hear a change when it's exposed like that. Obviously an instrument that's 1 cent sharp doesn't sound out of tune. And in a chord all bets are off, because each note affects the relationships between all the notes.


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## jbuhler (Dec 5, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> How sensitive we are to pitch is also quite variable and subject to context.
> 
> If you look it up in, say, Wikipedia, you'll read that the minimum change people are sensitive to is about 8 cents (although it does say we're all different).
> 
> ...


Yes, and within certain limits, often we process detunings in chordal contexts timbrally—or at least I do.


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 5, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> ........................................
> 
> .................................
> If you spend just a short time, say, a week at the most, listening to nothing but pure intervals, once you go back to e.t. you wonder how ever accepted this in the first place.



I dunno GeneP, it's a slippery slope, I mean who here would want to have to learn a midi keyboard that looked something like this Fokker...........


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## purple (Dec 5, 2020)

Because that's what we are used to hearing.


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 6, 2020)

I always look forward to this section of tension and release when listening to this famous work. This is how emotively powerful mastery of harmony, it's movement (sequential and chromatic) and motivic work can be when T&R is musically purposed.
Listen from 34'50 as it crescendos to an unbearable, yet achingly moving emotional intensity (tension) and a satisfying release at 36'10".


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## re-peat (Dec 6, 2020)

Chords on their own don’t have any identity or meaning. I would even argue that a chord’s specific character, power, flavour, impact and/or purpose _doesn’t exist_ until the chord is heard ‘in context’, as part of an harmonic progression and/or a musical structure. A Cmaj7 can be an utter banality, or it can be a stroke of genius. The notes are the same in both instances, on paper they look identical, but within the fabric of their specific context, the resulting chords couldn’t be more different. That’s because chords derive all of their esthetic and functional value from their surroundings. When looked at on their own, they have none. Which is, by the way, why I’m also of the opinion that (having or not having) perfect pitch is of no consequence whatsoever in this matter.

A C#min, or any other minor chord, on its own, isn’t a sad chord. It can become one, sure, but only if the context sets up the right conditions for that to be so. Fmaj contains no intrinsic merriment whatsoever, and yet, give it the right surroundings, lead up to it in the right way, and it may change into the most exhilarating and joyful thing you’ve ever heard.

In one piece a G7 may suggest C as the next logical step, yet in another piece, the only acceptable chord after that same G7 would be a D7. And if you play that exact same G7 after an Abmaj7, it’ll function as a variant or substitute for Bdim, and then Bbm7 would be a very orthodox next chord to move to.
Only to say: what G7 is, whatever musical esthetic it may suggest and which expectations it creates, all of that is entirely determined by the context.

Chords, I find, are a bit like chrysalides. In that nascent state, they’re fairly uninteresting and unappealing, with no personality whatsoever and giving no outward indication of what it is they carry inside them. It’s only after being dropped into a musical context, and after that context has had a chance to shine its light on them, that they turn into butterflies of a very distinct colour and beauty. Or perhaps they turn into quite unattractive moths, if that is what the musical context desires them to be. But it’s never up to them what they’ll be, it’s always up to the context.

It can’t be stressed enough, with harmony (as with many other aspects of music), it’s all about _the three C’s_: context, context and context.

__


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 6, 2020)

re-peat said:


> Chords on their own don’t have any identity or meaning. I would even argue that a chord’s specific character, power, flavour, impact and/or purpose _doesn’t exist_ until the chord is heard ‘in context’, as part of an harmonic progression and/or a musical structure. A Cmaj7 can be an utter banality, or it can be a stroke of genius. The notes are the same in both instances, on paper they look identical, but within the fabric of their specific context, the resulting chords couldn’t be more different. That’s because chords derive all of their esthetic and functional value from their surroundings. When looked at on their own, they have none. Which is, by the way, why I’m also of the opinion that (having or not having) perfect pitch is of no consequence whatsoever in this matter.
> 
> A C#min, or any other minor chord, on its own, isn’t a sad chord. It can become one, sure, but only if the context sets up the right conditions for that to be so. Fmaj contains no intrinsic merriment whatsoever, and yet, give it the right surroundings, lead up to it in the right way, and it may change into the most exhilarating and joyful thing you’ve ever heard.
> 
> ...





To my ears and with the realisation that this is shaky, ambiguous ground, a chord _can _transmit an emotional quality in a singular, out of context way. I believe there is an intrinsic, emotionally discernible quality to any vertical stack and that some don't necessarily need companions or linear harmonic context in order to determine or justify themselves. I've also found that in more complicated dissonances, it's possible to discern a way of carrying on.
Admittedly though, this a complicated issue that draws in personal and cultural aesthetics and even tolerance levels to dissonance so I'll leave it there. There is no right or wrong in composing if it works within its genre.

I'll just also add that one might add a 4th C to @re-peat's three C's - that of Cultural expectation.


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## Per Boysen (Dec 6, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> There are some recommendations which chord follows best a chord.
> 
> More interesting for me is the question: why?
> 
> Why does some chords fits best after one? And which chord is wise (by this rule) when changing the key?


Besides all theory, I've found it creatively helpful to regard chord progressions as a foundation, or a landscape, that allows for making interesting melody lines. I've done some practicing using a monophonic instrument to play improvised melodies while in my mind imagining different chords. Thinking another chord structure can give a completely different vibe to the same melody, and melodies do imply chords. After some praxis, you start to discover "your personal tool-box" for composing.


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## ed buller (Dec 6, 2020)

re-peat said:


> It can’t be stressed enough, with harmony (as with many other aspects of music), it’s all about _the three C’s_: context, context and context.



This Is very true.......I'm in disagreement slightly about the rest. I think certain Chords/Intervals have an embedded tension. There is something at work within them. They are not totally static things. I would say a french 6th is one of these chords. As would be a fully diminished 7th But there are only a few. Many have no inherent direction in them. The "so what" chord is a perfect example of a totally static chord..

but i'm happy to accept that could be just me !

best

ed


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Dec 6, 2020)

Eric G said:


> Let's get very practical and put in the work so you can learn something for yourself.
> 
> As a beginner I would look at the site HookTheory which catalogs a lot of popular songs and their chord progressions. It is in a section of their website call Theory Tabs.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the link, very interesting & useable.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 6, 2020)

purple said:


> Because that's what we are used to hearing.


Life is about compromises.


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## jbuhler (Dec 6, 2020)

ed buller said:


> This Is very true.......I'm in disagreement slightly about the rest. I think certain Chords/Intervals have an embedded tension. There is something at work within them. They are not totally static things. I would say a french 6th is one of these chords. As would be a fully diminished 7th But there are only a few. Many have no inherent direction in them. The "so what" chord is a perfect example of a totally static chord..
> 
> but i'm happy to accept that could be just me !
> 
> ...


It’s interesting because both of those—diminished seventh, French augmented sixth—are symmetrical chords that allow for enharmonic resolution. So while I agree they each have strong tendency, that tendency is ambivalent. That is, without context they also have no inherent single direction in them.


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## ed buller (Dec 6, 2020)

jbuhler said:


> It’s interesting because both of those—diminished seventh, French augmented sixth—are symmetrical chords that allow for enharmonic resolution. So while I agree they each have strong tendency, that tendency is ambivalent. That is, without context they also have no inherent single direction in them.


no they don't...hence Tristan !...but they have a feeling that it doesn't end with them !

best

e


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## jbuhler (Dec 6, 2020)

ed buller said:


> no they don't...hence Tristan !...but they have a feeling that it doesn't end with them !
> 
> best
> 
> e


Yes, though now I want to write something that ends convincingly on the sonority of a French augmented sixth.


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## AndreasHe (Dec 7, 2020)

Now I found https://tabletopcomposing.squarespace.com/chord-relationships-and-emotion (this page regarding emotions between chords)

And it is very interesting. So I tried some experiments independend from a scale, just by those rules and an idea of feeling I would like to get at a moment to build tension and resolve it.

I am fascinated about the results. So I will do a lot of more experiments based on that and see how I could use it. It is at the moment the most promising thing I found beyond the typical "common chord progression" rules.

A question to experienced musicians: What scale would you find in that:

Cm-Eb-F-G

For me it looks like a mixture of natural and melodic Cm. Is it a specific at all or does it simply play no role?


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 7, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> A question to experienced musicians: What scale would you find in that:
> 
> Cm-Eb-F-G
> 
> For me it looks like a mixture of natural and melodic Cm. Is it a specific at all or does it simply play no role?



Mode mixture, as you said.

The page you linked certainly has some fun 'cliche' conventions on it, definitely something worth starting on and playing around with if you're just beginning to have an interest in writing music (especially for media.) It should not be considered definitive, there is always nuance in a scene and there's all sorts of exciting ways to bring that out.


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## youngpokie (Dec 7, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> Cm-Eb-F-G



This is c harmonic minor with a borrowed subdominant. It's taken from parallel major (C Major), so the originally indicated f minor became F major. 

By the way, if you like how F major sounds immediately after Eb here, try replacing G with Ab to obtain a smoother progression that can go on indefinitely without being cut through with a dominant chord.


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## mikeh-375 (Dec 8, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> The name is terrific guerrilla marketing. I wonder what's in their Mutha line.
> 
> Can't imagine how you'd write for it. Meanwhile Bach would say "Hold my beer."
> 
> ...




Mutha line...lol.
That sound of the Lumatone is fascinating. Perhaps one could use seven staves with coloured note heads(!) - one for each colour to avoid any accidentals mayhem. One imagines that the performer here was just improvising.
Having listened to much Boulez and Harvey at IRCAM I can see and hear this as a great sound design tool for that genre and as a sound designy thing in media - does one even need notation???


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## iaink (Dec 9, 2020)

AndreasHe said:


> A question to experienced musicians: What scale would you find in that:
> 
> Cm-Eb-F-G
> 
> For me it looks like a mixture of natural and melodic Cm. Is it a specific at all or does it simply play no role?



In this example what do you hear as the tonic? It could also be the G chord - in which case the scale is G aeolian dominant (fifth mode of C melodic minor) and Eb would then be a borrowed VI chord, otherwise Eb would be an augmented chord. This is one of the Star Trek modes (including the borrowed VI) for Goldsmith and Horner.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Dec 9, 2020)

iaink said:


> In this example what do you hear as the tonic? It could also be the G chord - in which case the scale is G aeolian dominant (fifth mode of C melodic minor) and Eb would then be a borrowed VI chord, otherwise Eb would be an augmented chord. This is one of the Star Trek modes (including the borrowed VI) for Goldsmith and Horner.


This is why I was more comfortable describing it vaguely as mode mixture - sometimes in music theory there are multiple ways to analyze things, and often entire analysis are done to prove one way more than another, etc etc.


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## Rob (Dec 9, 2020)

Moreover, chord progressions can be composed by simply juxtaposing roots, to which then a chord "color" is assigned. This is sometimes found in rock music, where the roots describe a pentatonic scale and every chord is major. Like partials concur to the formation of timbre, chord qualities assign specific "timbres" to roots. In such cases, it doesn't make much sense to look for a generating scale... fully agree that functional relations should not be searched for in non-functional music.
This is also the case with blues, where the tonic can be a dominant chord, but it's just a color


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## cmillar (Dec 9, 2020)

Everyone should listen to some big band jazz by the late Bob Brookmeyer. He was all about tension and release in his chord progressions.


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## iaink (Dec 9, 2020)

So I thought the questions was: here is a series of 4 chords, in what scale can they be found? That obviously implies the person asking wants to think in terms of functional harmony. Pretty straight forward.

What is with all the warnings? 'Beware of analysis (right after analyzing)', 'beware of scales with names', 'beware of non-functional harmony that is only pretending to be functional'...


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## Wally Garten (Dec 9, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Entering such a home, we experience some coherence because the architect applied conventions and / or followed rules, or guidelines that we recognise as that style.



But where do those conventions come from? Are they arbitrary? If they are, then any set of musical conventions should sound as good as any other set, at least as long as you are familiar with the conventions and the music follows them reasonably well. But you yourself have said that Serialism leaves you cold. I assume that isn't because you don't understand its conventions. Something about it just doesn't work, for the vast majority of people. Leaving aside some sort of mysticism, there must be _some_ essentially mechanical reason some music feels good and other music... doesn't.

This is tricky, of course, because we don't want to oversimplify. As plenty of people have pointed out here, there's lots of good music not built on triads, etc. But I think @youngpokie is getting at something by tying it to the diatonic scale. Once you break up the harmonic series in that way (and, per @jbuhler into an equal temperament system), maybe the principles we've all learned about chord progressions really do have some inherent relationship to the acoustics of that scale.

To return to your architecture analogy -- choosing to build with wood framing, or steel girders, or glass, or straw bales, will dictate a lot about how your building _has_ to be built to be successful. It's not entirely arbitrary. You have to build it a certain way, or it will fall over. _Within_ the necessary way of building with those materials, of course, there's tremendous freedom. But you have to start with the materials and how they actually work. And to return to Serialism -- maybe it "doesn't work," at least in part, because it doesn't respect the nature of its materials (i.e., the Western 12 tones).

Just some thoughts. It could also be mysticism.


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## Gene Pool (Dec 9, 2020)

iaink said:


> What is with all the warnings? 'Beware of analysis (right after analyzing)', 'beware of scales with names', 'beware of non-functional harmony that is only pretending to be functional'...




What's with all those quotation marks? Don't mischaracterize what I said, chief.


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## JohnG (Dec 9, 2020)

Wally Garten said:


> there must be _some_ essentially mechanical reason some music feels good and other music... doesn't.



Maybe there is a mechanical reason, Wally? IDK, but in general, having read quite a number of theorists who base their ideas on the harmonic series and other scientific theories I think -- I am not buying it.

*So What's Left?*

I do think it's obvious that people respond to a beat, to LOUD SOUNDS and to quiet ones. You can see it in infants. Before they can walk they will bop around if you put on a Disco Inferno CD [shudders]. They are drawn to soft, sweet sounds and frightened by very loud, sharp ones. 

I part ways with theorists who posit an "inevitable logic" of chords. Kids born in Asia , the Middle East or even Eastern Europe don't get stuck with just 12 tones.

*Serialism -- Did They Try Too Hard?*

I think serialism can sort of work, but maybe they tackled too much at once? I certainly can understand trying to be "new," and to escape what had come before. But in so doing, they threw out _everything _ that ordinary people like about music:

1. melody
2. pulse
3. familiar harmony, and (in some cases)
4. familiar scales

I kind of don't blame the serialists. It's hard to be original, even a little original, if you restrict yourself to the same engine (orchestra) and same fuel ("functional" i.e. V-I harmony and scales) that everyone else already used rather well.

So I think I'm hearing music that takes us back to the "weird sounds" department. It's certainly a bit of an innovation but some of it is mighty gimmicky and, I fear, trivial.


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## Wally Garten (Dec 9, 2020)

JohnG said:


> pulse



This makes me wonder if you could do pop serialism -- like have a sick beat and funky syncopation, but write your melodies using tone rows?

I feel like someone must have done this.

Seriously, though, thanks for a great, thoughtful answer.


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## JohnG (Dec 9, 2020)

Wally Garten said:


> This makes me wonder if you could do pop serialism -- like have a sick beat and funky syncopation, but write your melodies using tone rows?
> 
> I feel like someone must have done this.
> 
> Seriously, though, thanks for a great, thoughtful answer.



If someone has done it, I haven't heard about it. Seems kind of like - a funny thing for a grad student at USC's music school to do?

And thank _you_ for an interesting discussion; it's an interesting topic.


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## Kent (Dec 9, 2020)

JohnG said:


> If someone has done it, I haven't heard about it. Seems kind of like - a funny thing for a grad student at USC's music school to do?



I mean, that’s basically what this is:


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## Bman70 (Dec 9, 2020)

There was this guy, excellent musician, who used to ask these kinds of questions. It just led him on like an obsessive journey to figure out what music really was. Last anyone heard of him, he had stopped writing music and would just sit for hours, flicking a piece of dried cactus that he had wired to an amplifier.


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## cmillar (Dec 10, 2020)

RE: Tension and Release and composer Bob Brookmeyer

(For people that aren't familiar with the late Brookmeyer, he was a jazz 'giant' on valve trombone and piano, as well as a distinguished composer who was fully versed in not only the jazz tradition but did serious study of every composer of the 20th century. He lead a wonderful band in Germany called "The New Art Orchestra")

Anyways, having had the opportunity myself to play in bands lead and conducted by Brookmeyer for music festivals with a week of rehearsal, and also participate in another 2 week jazz and composing masterclass that he headed up, I was able to witness him sitting at a piano working out ideas as well as hear his thoughts on music composition.

Bob would always say "I let the music lead me where it wants to go. It doesn't work if I try to force the music to go somewhere".

How? 

Well, he would sit at the piano playing a chord while adding all the 'tension' notes and alterations...like having a C7 chord with b9, #9, b5, #5 or something like that...and try to hear the 'pushes and the pulls' in the sounds....trying to figure out where the sound was leading him and what chord could come next. (and he was a masterful piano player, but forced himself to behave like music was a brand new thing to him when he sat down at the piano to write)

But, first and foremost, Brookmeyer was very concerned, maybe more so, about the 'linear' journey; how to get from point 'A' to point 'B'; but letting the music with its tensions and releases leading the way. (like Beethoven in some regard)

Also, he'd encourage everyone to perhaps just choose a 'pitch set' or something in order to limit ourselves to some simple music building blocks and just start to compose something....anything.

If you don't know his music, check it out. "The New Art Orchestra" and Brookmeyer. Or, listen to what he did with the 'Village Vanguard' big band from New York from years ago.


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## youngpokie (Dec 10, 2020)

Personally, I think tension and release is a vague and overused term that's hard to define and yet nobody has come up with anything better to describe what's behind it.

To me, this tension and release, the wolf comma and equal temperament are all part of the same phenomenon, and it's somehow related to the leading tone in the 7 step diatonic scale.

Not the 12, not the 24 - but 7.

I explain this phenomenon for myself by comparing the impact of the leading tone to the process of tuning an instrument, like a violin or guitar string. As you tighten it, you get this almost visceral reaction (tension) until it's in tune (release). The famous THX slide music is another good example of this sensation.

And to me, the leading tone is like a tonic that's borderline out of tune, screaming in dissonance to get resolved.

Back when this scale was still young and dissonance was something to be avoided at all costs and when even the interval of the 3rd was not acceptable (imagine those days!!!), I guess you could really hear very clearly this out of tune-like effect of the leading tone that demanded resolution. In our time of celebrating dissonance, creating new scales and mixing them up with diatonic, it's really hard to hear. 

But it's still there, and together with the rigid 5th that made it possible it is the reason why we have our ear-worm chord progressions and they refuse to go away not matter what we try to be original


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## PeterN (Dec 10, 2020)

The modern concept of "chord progressions" is something we threw out, so that composing stays in the hand of the selected few, who dont fall for it. A bit like philosphy is luring some intelligent people in a trap, so that they dont become too creative and develop too much wisdom. Its controlled. You can even buy "chord progressions" like in a hamburger bar these days. A bit like printing out a sketch and then adding some colors to it. Meant to lure 99,.9& of the composers so they dont come annoyingly near the real stuff. Stay around the "chord progressions", we take care of the rest.


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## JJP (Dec 10, 2020)

It could also be that we have cultural conventions which are based on the physics of sound.

It's a bit like language. We have structures to which everyone agrees because it facilitates communication of ideas. In English we have the basic structure of subject-verb-object along with some rhythmic and pitch inflection. That's not the only grammatical structure that can be used, but it is by far the most common and widely understood structure in English.

Similarly in Western music we have certain basic harmonic structures mostly tied to the overtone series which are widely used and understood within the culture. We base many of our styles, melodic ideas, etc around these basic structures.

Other cultures base their systems on different structures, say the division of a rhythmic pulse, the divisions of a string, ornamentation of pitch, and other things.

I think it's also important to remember that like language, musical conventions are not universal and can change over time. Also, just like language, it's rare that any one person or institution can force wholesale change on the basic structures. Change is often gradual over generations.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 10, 2020)

JJP said:


> I think it's also important to remember that like language, musical conventions are not universal



Absolutely, and at the same time music itself is a universal language. Even pets sometimes respond to it!


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## JJP (Dec 10, 2020)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Absolutely, and at the same time music itself is a universal language.



You'll like this. When I was at the U of Michigan, all incoming freshmen were required to take a musicology class taught by a well-respected ethnomusicologist. (Every year the State Dept. invited him to give lectures to new US ambassadors about music in the countries where they would be posted.) He required all students to memorize this statement:

"Music is not an international language. It consists of a whole series of equally logical but different systems."


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## re-peat (Dec 10, 2020)

JJP said:


> (...) Also, just like language, it's rare that any one person or institution can force wholesale change on the basic structures. Change is often gradual over generations.



True. Can I, in connection with this, say something about the birth of serialism? Serialism wasn’t born out of a desire “to be new” or to try and be original. Its chief architect, Schönberg, was in fact a surprisingly traditionalist and non-revolutionary musical mind. 

As is nearly always the case in all art: the biggest and most radical strides forward are invariably the work of those steeped strongest in (and with the profoundest love for) tradition. ‘Salon revolutionaries’, on the other hand, cause, at most, short-lived ripples of upset that have little or no lasting consequence. 

When you look at what led up to (the thinking behind) serialism, Schönberg’s ideas are the entirely logical, inevitable next step in an evolution that began with late Liszt and Wagner (and perhaps even as early as late Beethoven): an ever increasing ‘chromatization’ of all the vertical and horizontal elements in music, slowly but surely eating away at the diatonic foundations of Western music. Add to that a further weakening of diatonic principles by Debussy and his generation (which was, indirectly, also a Wagnerian influence), the increasing use of non-diatonic, non-Western scales and ever more ambiguous, vague harmonies, etc. … and, looked at in hindsight, something like serialism — the ultimate equalization of pitches, pitch relationships, note lengths and timbres — was bound to occur. Had to happen, one way or another.

Where, still in hindsight, the serialists perhaps went off the rails a little (or a lot, depending on one’s views), is that the post-Schönberg schools of serialist composers elevated the system — as humans are wont to do when someone hands them a set of seemingly new guidelines — to a doctrine of very rigid rules and principles that had to be followed religiously. The whole thing quickly became extremely dogmatic and theoretical and the movement was, regrettably perhaps, also populated by too many composers for whom the growing, and by now unbridgeable, distance between themselves and the audience(s) was considered a badge of honour rather than a breakdown of communications. (Which also explains, in part anyway, the almost militant disdain of the dodecaphonic school for all things neo-classicisist or any other manifestation of music that wasn’t averse to incorporating comfortable, time-proven familiarities.)

_


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## JohnG (Dec 10, 2020)

Maybe that's why Berg is so fun to listen to compared with some of those who followed?

IDK. I like Berg and a lot of the stuff we had to sit through in classes -- did not like.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2020)

re-peat said:


> When you look at what led up to (the thinking behind) serialism, Schönberg’s ideas are the entirely logical, inevitable next step in an evolution that began with late Liszt and Wagner (and perhaps even as early as late Beethoven): an ever increasing ‘chromatization’ of all the vertical and horizontal elements in music, slowly but surely eating away at the diatonic foundations of Western music.



And then that led to minimalism, which is the exact opposite!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 11, 2020)

JJP said:


> You'll like this. When I was at the U of Michigan, all incoming freshmen were required to take a musicology class taught by a well-respected ethnomusicologist. (Every year the State Dept. invited him to give lectures to new US ambassadors about music in the countries where they would be posted.) He required all students to memorize this statement:
> 
> "Music is not an international language. It consists of a whole series of equally logical but different systems."



Imperfect analogy: comparing Newton to Einstein to quantum physics. All of them are correct, depending on what questions you ask!


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## borisb2 (Dec 13, 2020)

JohnG said:


> I look at chord progression / succession a bit differently -- back to the architecture analogy. Most people can walk into a house and say, "ah, traditional," or "ah, modern," or if they are knowledgeable /insufferable know-it-alls about architecture, "ah, the Second Chicago School."


I really liked how simple Norman Ludwin split any chord in his book Modern Harmony (which is based on Persichettis book) basically into only 4 groups: first he groups into either with or without sharp dissonance (min second / maj seventh) and then each group gets further split into containing a tritone or not. A chord that does not contain a tritone is considered stable, a chord that does is considered unstable (obviously). Applying that really lets you shape any chord progression. So to get a tonic more unstable, just add #4 (or 7), to get dominant more stable, leave out the 7 (obviously), to get supertonic more unstable, add #6 (dorian) etc. .. nice way to shape progressions like this


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## JohnG (Dec 14, 2020)

borisb2 said:


> I really liked how simple Norman Ludwin split any chord in his book Modern Harmony (which is based on Persichettis book) basically into only 4 groups: first he groups into either with or without sharp dissonance (min second / maj seventh) and then each group gets further split into containing a tritone or not. A chord that does not contain a tritone is considered stable, a chord that does is considered unstable (obviously). Applying that really lets you shape any chord progression. So to get a tonic more unstable, just add #4 (or 7), to get dominant more stable, leave out the 7 (obviously), to get supertonic more unstable, add #6 (dorian) etc. .. nice way to shape progressions like this



Interesting. Maybe you have heard also of Hanson's pmnsdt system for analysing chords? I find that fairly useful, particularly if you're heading off the "regular" map.


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