• Timbre & Production: In many pop songs, harmony is deeply intertwined with timbre and production techniques. How do these elements support or influence the harmonic language of a pop song in ways that differ from acoustic Western art music?

• The "Axis" Progression: Listen to the "4 Chord Song" by the Australian comedy band Axis of Awesome. This song provides comedic commentary about the ubiquity of certain chord progressions in popular music, here the I-V-vi-IV progression. 

  • • Does using a common chord progression like this diminish the originality or authenticity of a song? Why or why not? Can a song be "original" if it employs widely-used progressions, motifs, or rhythms? How do artists use other musical parameters to differentiate songs with similar harmonic structure?

    • This progression is common across various time periods, genres, styles, and artists. Why do you think this progression (or similar variants, like vi–IV–I–V) is so prevalent in popular music? 

    • Why do listeners connect with songs that have familiar structures or progressions? Does predictability in harmonhy play a role in the "catchiness" of a song?

    • To what extent might commercial pressures from the music industry influence artists to use tried-and-true chord progressions? How does the balance between artistry and commercial success play into harmonic decisions about songwriting? 

Activities

• Analyzing Corpus Data: Take another look at the tables and examples that David Temperley presents in Chapter 3 of the reading. These are summarized on the handout here. Take some time to study each of the examples in groups.

  • • What are the most common chords in rock music based on this corpus study? Do you see any chords that stick out as common here that might be less common in  common-practice "classical" music? How does Temperley summarize this?

    • Take a moment to summarize the harmonic successions presented in Unit 6-2 as a class. How do these compare these to the harmonic successions summarized in the 3rd figure on the handout? As an example, based on this data, IV goes to I about twice as often as it goes to V. How do these progressions compare to "classical" harmonic progressions? 

    • Go through some of the common pop schemes presented in the Open Music Theory reading. What elements of Temperley's data do you see here. Consider the chord correlations that Temperley points out in the 4th example on the handout. Do you see these reflected in the schemas?

• Find Examples of Pop Schemas in Repertoire: Go to Hooktheory's "Trends" page and follow the directions below to find one representative example of each of the pop schemas outlined in the reading from Open Music Theory. 

  • • Check that the dropdown selector (top left) is set to "Rel" and "major" or "minor" so that you're working with Roman numerals. 

    • Click on a starting chord in the chord diagram (e.g. IV). Then, select the second chord for your progression, then third, etc. The percentages show what the likelihood of the next chord is based on the repertoire in the Hooktheory database. 

    • Once you've input your progression, search through the examples. Click on a song to see the chord progression. Click the play button to hear it. Click on the song title to see the song in context. Be sure to listen to each example to check that the chord analysis is correct.  Many of these examples are based on crowd-sourced submissions, so you'll need to use your ear!

• Explore Variations in the 12-Bar Blues: Prince's song "Kiss" uses a variation on the 12-bar blues pattern. Discuss what the basic 12-bar blues pattern is, then analyze the song. The worksheet here is provided as a template for your discussion. 

  • • See the score here. 

    • Find the audio here on Youtube. 

Want to learn more? 

Explore a list of popular chord progressions and listen to each on Wikipedia's Chord Progression page. 

Or, check out Drew Nobile's chapter on "Harmonic Syntax" in Form as Harmony in Rock Music (available online through the library) for a function-based approach to pop harmony.