You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Songs With Modulation, Songs With Chromatic Chords: All Now Classics
The following sections examine the chord progressions of four groups of brilliant songs, using chord maps.
- Group 1: Songs without modulation or chromatic chords
- Group 2: Songs without modulation, with chromatic chords
- Group 3: Songs with modulation, without chromatic chords
- Group 4: Songs with modulation and chromatic chords
Recall from Chapter 2 the discussion about why there’s no such thing as “progress” in music. If you aspire to artistry in songwriting, as opposed to hackdom or fashion, then you seek to create classics, songs that transcend time, performer, and genre:
- Time Independence. People who first hear the song decades after it was written take to the song and want to hear it and play it and sing it repeatedly.
- Performer Independence. The song works well if someone other than the original performer does a cover.
- Genre Independence. A performer working in a genre other than the genre associated with the original recording can render the song in a palatable way.
With the exception of a couple of centuries-old public-domain songs, the four groups of songs coming up for chord progression scrutiny were composed over a roughly 50-year period, from the 1920s to the 1970s. Most people would consider these song to be classics.
A reminder: a chord map represents only the chord progression of a song—not the tune and not the rhythmic elements.