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In pop music genres, most chord progressions are on the short side, particularly when it comes to chorus progressions. Three or four chords are all that are usually needed, and if you look at most pop songs, you don’t often find longer ones than that.
There is a principle in musical composition that says that the faster the song, the fewer (and simpler) the chords usually need to be. That’s true no matter what genre you look at, with the possible exception of certain jazz sub-genres.
But longer progressions can be interesting, and they’re likely to be more prevalent in slower ballads. The problem with long progressions is the same problem that comes from long, run-on sentences: people can lose track of what you’re doing, because the progression can wander around aimlessly, the longer they are.
Here’s how that problem usually occurs: The thing that strengthens a progression and makes it sound strong is the cadence. To locate the cadence, you usually just look at the final two chords. Take the following progression: C F Dm G7 C. The final two chords, G7 to C, are the cadence. In this case, music theory teachers would tell you that it’s a perfect authentic cadence, but that’s not important at the moment. What you’ll want to notice is that the G7 moves up 4 notes to reach the C.
That movement of an ascending 4th (or a descending 5th…. same thing), strengthens a progression and makes the C chord sound like the musical version of “home.”
But if it’s a long distance between cadences, listeners can get a bit lost in all those chords. So here’s a progression with a problem: C F Em F G Am F G Em Dm Em F Am G… You see the problem? It’s like the musical version of a run-on sentence. The progression sounds long and aimless.
So how do you fix this problem? You’ll probably try to do something that Stan Penridge did when he co-wrote “Beth“, a smash hit for the hard rock band KISS in the 1970s: you insert a cadence in the middle of the progression. That internal cadence will act as a temporary resting place for the ears, not unlike a comma or period.
There’s a ton of chords in “Beth” — 19 of them, not including a few passing chords — but what makes the progression work so well is that there’s an internal cadence that allows the ears to rest. Here’s the progression:
C F/C Cmaj7 Am F G7/F C/E Esus E ||Am G F Em D7 F Am F G C
That internal cadence happens when the E chord moves to the Am. You’ll notice that moving from E to Am means the roots of those chords are a 4th apart, just like moving from G to C in the example earlier in this post. So in a sense, moving from E to Am gives the listener a tiny image of “home”, and it strengthens the entire progression.
Part of the strength offered by that internal cadence comes from how it now resembles a journey: the first half of the progression is like a journey from home (C) to some resting place (Am). The second half of the journey starts at the resting place (Am), and wanders eventually back home (C).
Just because the progression is long doesn’t mean it needs lots of resting places. As you can see with “Beth”, one internal cadence does the job.
So if you like long progressions, but you’re having trouble making them work, it’s best to identify an internal spot that can be a resting place. It’s best to have the internal spot be a non-tonic chord (in the example of “Beth”, the chord is Am). Then work out a progression that gets you to that chord, and then another one to get you back home again.
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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.
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