Using "4 Chords"-Is It A Bad Thing?

[kat2457]

Hey all,

So I would really like an opinion on this. I'm sure most people have seen Axis of Awesome's "4 Chords" and if you havent, check here: 

 

Basically, it's a medley of all these different pop songs that use the same chord progression.

 

Because I know that so many songs use this chord progression, I generally tend to steer away from it. I really like messing around with different variations of the chords, eg B7, Caad9, Dsus2 etc etc and I get a whole bunch of things. One of my latest songs is actually Em, Bm7, Caad9, D (or G, haven't figured it all out yet haha).

 

But my question is, and I want your opinion on it: Is it bad to use this cliche chord progression when writing a song? Do you tend to avoid it? And if you don't avoid it, is it easier to match a melody to it?

 

This is really going off the assumption that people start with chords, then melodies, but if that's not how you roll then by all means you can reply as well. I'd love to hear your opinions on this.

 

Kat

[Rudi]

I used to work that way, and occasionally still do.

 

I had plenty to say about this on another thread, but the thing is lots of chord patterns occur in very different sounding songs.

 

It wouldnt bother me using a cliched progression. It could even be regarded as a challenge.

[Alistair]

It's a great prgression though! The test for me would be first, is it a good song? Second, does it sound so much like something else that it distracts the listener? If yes to the first and no to the second I wouldn't worry about it.

 

They are easy chords to play so no wonder they are popular

[James Austin]

I don't see it as a problem, personally; if that's all it takes to express the music then that's all you use. The problem arises when people see it as an excuse to get lazy.

 

As a punk-trained bassist I work mostly around the root, the bread and butter four notes. Music afficionados will tell you that that's too simplistic, and they've got a point: you can learn it in about a week with no prior experience.

 

But people don't appreciate that 'four notes' isn't just 'four notes:' tuning, frequency, accompaniment, multiple frets, and even what you play with (personally I use my fingernails) all make a massive difference, and I make it a point to consider each of them when composing. Many others don't, and cite 'four chords' or 'punk, amirite?' as an excuse to cut those corners.

 

It's their loss, but it is a shame.

Edited December 10, 2013 by James Austin

[MikeRobinson]

My favorite on this particular topic is a youtube called Pachelbel's Rant – by a kid who played cello at school.  ("You know what the cello part is?  blah, blah, blah, blah ... repeated fifty-seven times.  I counted.")

 

Nevertheless:  it's not "the chords," it's what you do with them.  

[KidCanary]

Nevertheless:  it's not "the chords," it's what you do with them.  

 

Exactly. A great song isn't going to suddenly become bad just because you used a common progression, nor is a bad one going to be good just because you used a very uncommon or complex progression. As long as whatever progression you used lets you get across whatever you wanted to convey then it really doesn't matter.

[MikeRobinson]

And if you feel like having your mind blown about the possibilities, buy a copy of Jimmy Webb's Tunesmith.  (Fair warning:  the center section is a textbook!)  He talks a lot about "chord substitutions" and how to do them (manually).  Of course, there are also software plug-ins that will help you with possibilities.  There are endless possibilities.

 

Easy ways to spice things up:

 

• Add "7ths," "9ths," "11ths," and so on ... simply making the chord span more than one octave.  Also try flattening or sharpening notes ... "diminished" and "augmented" and even "minor" chords are wonderful by-accident.
• Take a note of the chord and move it up or down an octave ... instant "inversions."  Also, try intentionally leaving a note out!
• Take the chord and arpeggiate it:  play the notes in sequence.  Any sequence!
• Pick a different chord that has two or more notes in-common with the one that you intended to use.  It will work.

[Mythic]

I wouldn't worry about it at all. Nearly everything in popular music is cliched in one way or another anyway, I guess it's how your personality breathes life and uniqueness into your own music. There are however, alot of ways to turn a extremely cliched sequence into something better sounding, MikeRobinson pretty much nailed it in a simple manner. Messing around with every chord you know is a really good way of getting a feel of how you can change up chords. Take a 5 string chord, and just try and change a note on each string of the chord, see what sounds good while still remaining true to the original chord in some sense, you might only end up with 1 or two note changes but it can make a world of difference, and once you mess around with it enough it becomes intuitive (almost).

[MikeRobinson]

... and something that I am just now fooling around with, ever since Santa App-Store gifted me(self) with a copy of Logic Pro X, are the "Scale Quantize" features that are right there on the piano-roll screen.  Want any one of those modes, or something even more exotic?  "Poof."  Done.

 

If you really are a "music geek" ... ... then you can find that it's now possible to "dream up" stuff that some music-geek thread like this one at LogicProHelp.com is talking about, but you don't have to exactly know, yourself, how to work the magic.  If it's a regular transformation of notes that can be described in terms of a computer algorithm, as many of these things certainly are, then, if you poke around enough, you're gonna find out that the computer can do the heavy lifting for you.  (I'm such a geek that I read the entire LPX main manual stem-to-stern.)

 

Sometimes the simplest variations on "4 chords" sounds "unexpectedly wonderful," leaving you to wonder just what happened.  And there might well be a very-geeky explanation for it, which they talked about in music theory class on a day when you were sound asleep.  But the computer can now allow you to reliably fool-around with those things, without the pain or the final exam.

 

There are lots of threads out there (like the one I quoted) where some geek points out how "geeky knowledge" was used and applied in a well-known tune, and it sounded cool and here they are now showing you what the trick was and how it was done.  These are so often tiny variations ... but, if you know that the hidden-door is there ...

Edited February 11, 2014 by MikeRobinson