It s not so rare to find a musicophile,a musician or or a phylologist who knows everything about an artist.

 

It's because producers stick to what they know will work and he finesse of production lays in engineering, songwriting, arrangement, but you are right, those things are not mutually exclusive so you got your funky progressions from muse, radiohead, björk etc.

 

One of the best two-chord songs, and any kind of chord songs IMO ... so it's not the size that matters, it's how you use them!

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2021

AC are on another level, I wonder if they listened to the Beach Boys?

 

Why do most songs follow the rule of minimum of 4 chords?

Well, eventually because most of these songs you're probably referring to were made by:

• the BAD: low-level copycats "working around" previously existent "succesful musical-hooks" with absolutely nothing relevant to say/add, or even not saying/adding anything at all;

• the NOT-SO-BAD: lyricists which have something relevant to say using "made-popular musical structures" to convey their reflections upon, so what matters is the message, not the music.

All in all, song-making differs big time from music-making, having music theory background or not...

 

That means theres 1.1b retards out there that are simple minded sheep

 

Which stem directly from the recording industry. Since printed music of the singles charts started getting big 75 years ago.
It's true, yes, but I thought it was no secret.
"analog warmth of single chord songs" is nice, and funny though!

Or that the stats, and the industry, lie...
Oh, wait a minute...

 

All you need to know.

 

Hi , how are you ?

So in a key you have 3 functions.

Tonic
Subdominant
Dominant

3 chords are tonic
2 chords are Subdominant
2 chords are Dominant

So in the key of C major

Tonic function
Cmaj
Emin
Amin

Subdominant function
Dmin
Fmaj

Dominant function
Gmaj
Bdim

And say you make a pretty simple song that is mainly

[ Tonic] / [Subdominant]/[ Tonic]/[Tonic]

Then you have 3 tonic chords
And two Subdominant

Key of C maj ( just diatonic)
Tonic/ subdominant/ tonic/ tonic
Cmaj/ Fmaj/ Cmaj/ Cmaj
Or
Amin/Dmin/Amin/Cmaj
Or
Emin/Fmaj/Amin/Cmaj
Or
Cmaj/Dmin/Emin/Amin
Or
Emin/Fmaj/Amin/Cmaj

( a few examples of applying chords to the
Functional blueprint

/ Tonic/ Subdom/ Tonic /tonic
( its called the heros journey

Tonic is the hero relaxed, still , motionless, passive

Subdominant is journey, motion , active moving away from home

Tonic then we go back home

Tonic the hero is victorious

 

They can start by paying ME for all those tracks I'll never be able to write!!

 

they do it just so the audience can remember the melodies .....when the melody is long its harder for people to remember it
even tho it can still be a great song it's just harder to remember all the melodies in it .....i would say it nails done to people short
attention span

 

Your exquisite taste in music will never:
a.) make you rich
b.) find you a lover
c.) make you happy

If anything, it appears to be making you really miserable.

 

From Sideburns fanzine no.1, 1977..

 

Two is more than enough, and it helps sing along songs. It's about tension and resolution. It's also cultural and somewhat based on the meter of normal speech.

 

oh boy... thanks Gsus we have things like this:

 

The number of chords is immaterial. First they're there to express whatever there needs to be expressed harmonically.

Like Miles Davis - So What is 2 chords:

John Coltrane - Giant Steps is... fuck knows how many, there's a lot and the speed of the changes is ludicrous:

Fun piece of trivia about Giant Steps is that the pianist completely loses his shit trying to play a solo on this original recording. Sure... he was unrehearsed since he'd seen the chords the same day I think, but it was something completely new harmonically. He's a really good player but it was too much... he later did record it with a great piano solo, but it's amusing to ponder what the fuck he was thinking trying to play something