Every age, in the western world brought about a change in music that was hailed as new original music; In the sixteen hundreds, the composer J.S. Bach had a number of sons who also became composers. คอร์ดเพลง One of Bach’s composer sons wrote in what was called the ‘new music.
In our present age, we are informed about new music every other week it seems; jazz was new and then rock, new wave, punk, hip-hop and so on. Still, many people ask the question; ‘when is the next big thing going to come?’ And, curiouser still, we see more and more lawsuits over copyright violations; claims that someone else has stolen another’s musical idea.
Well let’s take a very simplified look at music structure because, no matter what you’ve been told, it is quite simple. Music is written using a scale and, although there are many scales, the most used scale structure is simply seven different notes. Now you can build a chord (three notes stacked on top of each other) on each note of a scale, giving you seven different chords within a scale.
Now in a musical composition such as a song, for example, you can use chords from other scales and you can add notes to the chords and you can modify the chords slightly, giving them a different quality. We’re not going to go into all that because here’s the thing; there are three chords that get used the most.
In classical music parlance, these are called the Primary Chords. In pop music they are known as the Blues Chords and these chords are all over music practically from day one. These chords are simply the chords that are built on the first note of the scale, the fourth note of the scale and the fifth note of the scale.
What’s so special about these chords? Well, you can’t end a piece of music without the chord on the first note of the scale. It would just sound wrong to try and end on any other chord.
The other two chords tend to want to get back to the first chord, especially the chord on the fifth note of the scale. These chords operate as a team then and, to the majority of ears, music just doesn’t work without them.
Did composers never try to get away from this? Well, yes they did. Around the early nineteen hundreds some composers had enough of this always going for the first chord. Their efforts are identified as ‘modern music,’ something which is now over fifty years old but no longer heard very much.
The Primary Chords came back into style, or one could say that they never fell out of style. Probably the most successful efforts at being creative about this are still creative uses of the other chords in combination with the Primary Chords. A good example of this would be the Beatles.
I had a professor in music school whose favorite hobbyhorse was saying that J.S. Bach was the culmination of western music and everything that followed was just a reiteration. Looking at this from the chord point of view it is hard to argue with but there are many other factors that make up music and looking at it from a strictly chord point of view is rather a surface look, in my opinion.
The other factors in music include rhythm and phrasing. Rhythm is a big factor that operates to effect phrasing and this has an effect on the rate of chord change.
In some music, like the music of the late eighteen hundreds chords changed rather quickly, sometimes nearly every beat. In other music chord changes come slower; every four beats, for example.
In conclusion, I would say the Primary Chords are here to stay. Composers either want to please their audience or they really have no problem with the Primary Chords.
I have no problem with them myself. I did try to write a piece once with no Primary Chords and, even though I feel it was pretty successful, it was stressful to do and I probably won’t bother much in that direction again.
It is, afterall like trying to paint without the primary colors. I think, if composers really get creative with rhythm and using other chords we will still have a good shot at new original music.