Do all songs have chord proggressions?

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Chili said:
nor was he thinking of the air conditioning system that most people must hear when they experience 4'33" in an auditorium. None the less, it's there and it might have some chordal structure to it.
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Actually, I think that though he may not have considered air conditioning explicitly, it would have not been out of place in the 'suite' of noises he wanted people to hear.

But that leads me to another stray thought. I once worked in the loading dock of RCA when it had a plant in Sydney. Right next to the loading dock was a plant room that processed vinyl for processing. It used to have this hypnotic hum, probably an A, that went on all day. I used to find myself humming along to it and creating vague Indian harmonies and melody lines to this tambour-like background. It whiled away the time.
 
So, as written 4:33 doesn't have a chord progression, but as performed (and in Chili's case, as heard) it might. I like it!
 
kip4 said:
I rather think most songs have chord progressions ie the sum of the parts representing the chords. even 1 chord songs with chord variations could be construde as a progression.
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^^^^^ this ^^^^^

At it's most basic chord progression simply means whatever the chords are in a song.
If there's only one chord then the chord progression is a very simple one. :D
 
VomitHatSteve said:
So, as written 4:33 doesn't have a chord progression, but as performed (and in Chili's case, as heard) it might. I like it!
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It is only in academics. The nuts and bolts of it is, 4'33" is not a song at all. It is silence; artful, but just silence.
 
Well it wasn't Canned Heat.....

gecko zzed said:
But that leads me to another stray thought. I once worked in the loading dock of RCA when it had a plant in Sydney. Right next to the loading dock was a plant room that processed vinyl for processing. It used to have this hypnotic hum, probably an A, that went on all day. I used to find myself humming along to it and creating vague Indian harmonies and melody lines to this tambour-like background. It whiled away the time.
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I had a similar experience at the last playground I worked at. It was a ramshackle dump and there was this whining electric blow heater high up on a wall. One day, I was listening to this song on the playground radio and in the last verse and runout, I noticed this fantastic eerie organ playing a single note/chord continuously. It really added to the drama of the song. But when the song ended, I could still hear the organ. I was reading at the time and after about 5 minutes after the song had finished, I could still hear it. It was that whining heater ! I can't remember what the song was or who it was by. It may be the only time I ever heard it. But if I heard it again, I bet it wouldn't sound great without the heater.
Since then I've utilized "found sounds" in songs once in a while. Very effective.
 
grimtraveller said:
Since then I've utilized "found sounds" in songs once in a while. Very effective.
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This idea has been festering in my brain for a while.

We have agricultural shows here. They have a 'sideshow alley', and each stall has its own music going. If you position yourself at the right spot, you get to hear two tunes playing simultaneously, in different keys and with different tempos. The result is an intriguing, confusing musical collage.

I've tried this a few times in musical compositions, for example playing a 3/4 song against a 4/4 beat. Every four bars of 3/4, or every three bars of 4/4 they line up again.
 
gecko zzed said:
This idea has been festering in my brain for a while.

We have agricultural shows here. They have a 'sideshow alley', and each stall has its own music going. If you position yourself at the right spot, you get to hear two tunes playing simultaneously, in different keys and with different tempos. The result is an intriguing, confusing musical collage.

I've tried this a few times in musical compositions, for example playing a 3/4 song against a 4/4 beat. Every four bars of 3/4, or every three bars of 4/4 they line up again.
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a few years back during a trip to Disney World I carried a DAT walkman everywhere and recorded everything from fountains to the ambiant sounds in large rooms to the sounds all the way thru riding the rides.
Got hours of very cool sounds and I've always kinda thought of using them musically somehow.
 
gecko zzed said:
This idea has been festering in my brain for a while.

We have agricultural shows here. They have a 'sideshow alley', and each stall has its own music going. If you position yourself at the right spot, you get to hear two tunes playing simultaneously, in different keys and with different tempos. The result is an intriguing, confusing musical collage.

I've tried this a few times in musical compositions, for example playing a 3/4 song against a 4/4 beat. Every four bars of 3/4, or every three bars of 4/4 they line up again.
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Again back to John Cage, one of his Symphony for an Invisible Landscapes was composed for 12 radios with two players each. The musicians would adjust tuning and volume knobs so that sometimes you'd have multiple songs going at once.
 
RAMI said:
True. By definition, I guess it's a progression, it does prgress somehow.

The funny thing is, even though I used that song as an example because it supposedly only has one chord, I've always thought there were 2 chords in that song. It goes down a tone on "... this is BELIEVING". Even if only one of the instruments goes down those 2 semi-tones, it still changes the chord, whether it becomes a 7th or whatever. I never understood why they always said that was a one chord song.
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I believed that a chord progression implies some change in chords leading to some perceived goal. A single chord would not progress anywhere, just remain static, whatever the melody was doing over the top of it. You might call it a unison progression? Oh I know.... how about G#, Ab, G#, Ab :D
 
Chord progressions are for real music.

Most pop music has some sort of chord progression, even if it's the three chords of a garage band, usually C, F, G.
Other thing we call "music" today such as rap and that totally awful, West Coast Thump junk that most popular DJ's play, really shouldn't be called music at all, its just some randomly triggered cuts with one thing in common--it's LOUD !.

Unfortunately, today, LOUD is in. If you want to be popular, don't worry about arcane stuff like chord progressions, just make it LOUD!. If there are any quieter parts turn up your compressor until it's all LOUD !
 
Sure, most songs have chord progressions. Even if it just goes back and forth between I and IV (or I and V or I and bVII), that's still a progression. If a song had only one chord (truly), then it would be an exception, as a chord progression is a "progression of chords." If it stays on one chord, then it never progresses.

Other gray areas include riff-driven songs. It's rare that a song uses nothing but a riff throughout the whole thing, but .. if memory serves, I think "Whole Lotta Love" does that. You could basically call that whole song E5. Sure, the riff has the B and D notes in it, but the essence of that song is just an E5 chord.
 
gecko zzed said:
If you position yourself at the right spot, you get to hear two tunes playing simultaneously, in different keys and with different tempos. The result is an intriguing, confusing musical collage.
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On the Trevor Watts String ensemble LP "Cynosure" {which was a recording of a rehearsal the band did before a gig}, there's a piece called 'Chip' that is almost like two songs in one being played at the same time. The same thing kind of happens on "Another time".The funny thing to me is that it sounds quite normal, a little wild as Trevor Watts stuff can be, but to my head, very accessible. Each sort of part is set up by bassists, a bass guitar in one channel, a double bass in the other. How Liam Genocky, the drummer, managed to bind it all together is one of the wonders of modern science. He went beyond polyrhythmic !
 
grimtraveller said:
On the Trevor Watts String ensemble LP "Cynosure" {which was a recording of a rehearsal the band did before a gig}, there's a piece called 'Chip' that is almost like two songs in one being played at the same time. The same thing kind of happens on "Another time".The funny thing to me is that it sounds quite normal, a little wild as Trevor Watts stuff can be, but to my head, very accessible. Each sort of part is set up by bassists, a bass guitar in one channel, a double bass in the other. How Liam Genocky, the drummer, managed to bind it all together is one of the wonders of modern science. He went beyond polyrhythmic !
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Interesting. Do you know of anywhere I can hear a sample of that tune? I've searched all the usual suspects (youtube, allmusic, amazon), and I can't find anything.
 
Technically speaking a song with just power chords would be a song with no chords since power chords aren't "chords"...they're just parallel movements of two tones :D

Also, even if you did play just one chord and used walking bass notes and other willie-nillies, those could still technically be classified as other chords.


Technically :)
 
I'm thinking of a song that only has one note in it.

I'm humming it right now.

Christ, it's a boring song.
 
YellowDwarf said:
I'm thinking of a song that only has one note in it.

I'm humming it right now.

Christ, it's a boring song.
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But a note and a chord are 2 different things. If you had a cool chord progression around that one note, it might be less boring. :)
 
RAMI said:
But a note and a chord are 2 different things. If you had a cool chord progression around that one note, it might be less boring. :)
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Thanks, now it sounds more like a 1 chord song.
 
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