Ricardo -> RE: Expanding my chord vocabulary (Mar. 10 2009 9:56:52)
|
quote:
Try this: play a D minor, a C, a B flat, and an A in that order a few times. That melodic progression, that cadence, should be instantly recognizable if you’ve listened to a lot of bulerias and tangos, and it should sound “right”, it should sound very natural or inevitable. Now, there’s obviously some theory that explains why those chords fit together like that, but I still don’t know it myself. But what I do know is that hearing and playing those chords together sounds and feels right, and that after playing them together a bunch it just becomes very natural. The hands tend to start making those chord shapes on their own without my having think about it, so they really do “stick” in that sense. In all tonal music , the point of harmonic progressions is always V-I. That means a dominant or 5 chord pulls and resolves you to a I chord. Like in C major, the G chord moves to the C. (G is the 5th note in the scale, C is the first, so V-I). Bach used chord progressions that often moved through all the possible chords in a key in a sequence, and I always thought those sections of his music sounded "right". So in a minor key, you would move the chords in 4ths (V-I) but each I chord becomes the V of the next. So in Dminor, you would have Dm, Gm, C, F, Bb,Em7b5(half diminished), Amajor, back to D. So you get that sweet colored harmony, each chord pulling to the next. To increase the pulling effect, you could make EACH chord a dominant7th before changing. That happens in flamenco alot too. The andalusian cadence is pretty much just that V-I sequence in disguise, that is why it sounds so natural. Dm, C, Bb, A, if you double time the changes and stick the other chords in, it sounds even more "right". Anyway, pretty much all tonal music makes use of this V-I thing. Ricardo
|
|
|
|