Hi Simone, I know a youtube channel like the one you want, the author is a professional musician and he breaks down any kind of music and it gets to conclusions that will blow your mind. But it is in Spanish, if you understand Spanish here you have it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa3DVlGH2_QhvwuWlPa6MDQ

I actually never thought “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “More Than A Feeling” sounded anything like eacho other outside of their basic rhythm and this article helps me understand why. “More Than A Feeling” uses functional harmony – the chords fit together into the key of G and and there’s an Em chord – while “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is all major chords and doesn’t fit into key (if the F and B flat both became minor then it would be the key of F minor… but it’s not). So yeah, safe to say it sounded like nothing you’d ever heard before.

Did you understand that the reference to Boston is because the main riff of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is similar to Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”?

I agree that the written medium is less well suited to such audio guides, but reference clips certainly can’t hurt! I would definitely appreciate it. Thanks!

And apologies, this is what happens when you post too early in the morning – for some unfathomable reason I’m counting my strings the wrong way round…. brilliant. Hope the general point makes sense though.

My best guess is that – formal theory aside – it was written with guitar in hand as a single note riff before later being fleshed out with power chords, more for texture than harmony, and the melody came still later. It falls very easily into the hands… Bb on the 2nd string, Gb on the 1st. *Same pattern* one string across for next two bars ie Eb on the 3rd string to Cb on the 2nd. Lifting the finger for the open A string between the Cb and the Bb is then very natural.

Great observation! I thought about this too, because the Cb (enharmonic to B) and the A are each a half-step away from the target chord, Bb. But I think of “enclosure,” mostly a bebop concept, being about using chromatic *notes* above or below the target note. In other words, it’s a kind of melodic technique for smooth voice leading. It doesn’t seem to me that that’s what Kurt did with his Cb–>A–>Bb turnaround. But maybe that’s just how I’m hearing it — and maybe to Kurt’s ears, it sounded linear in some way. Certainly, he must’ve thought it sounded musical or evocative. What are your thoughts?

“Pink + White” by Frank Ocean in not too complicated. Looking at the chart, it’s basically 3 chords in a loop: Cmaj7, Bm7 and Amaj7. The chart also lists the chord A, but that is just Amaj7 minus one note.

The main thing giving this song it’s color is that it uses chords that have 4 notes instead of 3 notes, the fourth note is the 7 on the end of the notation, meaning the note at the 7th interval (major or minor) to the root of that chord. That extra note is extra color, it even introduces that there is another 3 note chord if you were to isolate the highest 3 notes that are not the root. How one describes what this feels like is personal, but I can say these chords have a “floatier” feel, that major 7 chords sound sweet and melodic in their floaty-ness, and minor 7 chords sound jazzy or like jazz-influenced R & B. I hear the color from the major 7 chords and the minor 7 chord in the song, it sounds melodic, floaty and jazzy R & B.

The chords descend from Cmaj7 to Bm7 to Amaj7, so that Amaj7 is where the melody comes to rest and feels like “home”.

The tonality of the song is not a straight up major or minor “diatonic” harmonic set of chords or scale. To understand “diatonic”, it’s helpful to understand that there is a pattern on the piano of groupings of black keys and white keys: if if you see two black keys closer together with white keys in between and then 3 black keys closer together with white keys in between, and in between those areas two spots where there are two white keys right next to each other with no black key in between. This whole pattern that repeats on the piano involves 12 keys, 5 black keys and 7 white keys. Thinking about just the white keys for now, those 7 keys directly relate to the 7 separate notes of a conventional musical scale, and you can use them to play a C major scale or a A minor scale, and others, and you can take 3 fingers and press “ever other key in a row” for 3 keys on the white keys to play a set of chords (3 note groups at the same time) starting from each of those 7 white keys, to play 7 different chords. Songs based on a those 7 chords and just using a melody based on a scale using those 7 white notes are “diatonic” they are just using that specific set of notes that harmonize together in a specific way.

Amaj and Bm7 are part of the same diatonic set, and go together very commonly. Cmaj7 in the sequence is not diatonic, but it still fits the feel of something with an R & B influenced jazz feel. The notes in each chord are as follows: Cmaj7 (C E G B), Bm7 (B D F# A), Amaj7 (A C# E G#). The notes that Cmaj7 has that are not diatonic to the key of A major are: C and G. Those notes happen to be the minor 3rd and the minor 7th as intervals in relation to A. Those are really common melodic intervals to communicate a bluesy color in a melody.

The melody of the song is not really an A major melody anyway, I definitely hear a G in that melody, even though the sequence of chords includes a G#, but that’s really not a big deal at all in R & B or Rock and Roll music. The notes I mostly hear in the melody are E, G, A and B. Each of the chords has at least two of those notes to be able to harmonize the the melody, and Cmaj7 has 3 of those notes. Also I hear the melody coming to rest on the E of the Amaj7 chord, so it’s an important note in the song and is shared with Cmaj7.

Lastly, the rhythm of the song feels like it is in 6 (multiples of 3 have different feels than multiples of 4). So there is a kind of swing that something in multiples of 3 can have, like a song in 6. But, when the song hangs on the Amaj7 chord, one of the piano keys starts to syncopate against the pulse of 6. I hear that as a polyrhythm of a straight ahead pulse (something like 8, 4 or 2) pulling against the 6.

That’s all for now. If it sound complicated, it’s probably a barrier of language and concepts. Summary is it’s basically a 3 chord song, with 4 note chords, one chord is not diatonic but fits the melody, the rythym is in 6 and there is some polyrhythmic syncopation to that comes in on one part of the cycle.

I used to be an anti-Grohler, based almost entirely on “Times Like These.” Not a fan of most Foo music. HOWEVER, I’ve come to realize that Dave Grohl has always been cool, from this early ’90s video to his amazing run with Nandi!!!

We’ve had a whip-round and bought you a paragraph.

Not to try to say anything you don’t know, but just needing to push the notion of academic rules: the idea of rules and the conventional functions come from the conventional way that classical music has been taught at an academic level. There is a certain utility in having a language to describe intervals and the relationships between chords, and the source of why these combinations of vibrations sound musical and relate together has to do with the harmonics of vibration, overtones, and ratios of frequencies. Yet, clearly these rules don’t limit what sounds musical or even consonant. What was done with classical music, in terms of function, is just one possibility of context. Really what our ear is hearing is a lot of comparison, sympathetic vibration, relative pitch, and steady pulses against our internal pulse. As a musician, given that every note has a relationship with every other note, simultaneously and in sequence, one develops that recognition, not on paper in terms of a set of rules, but the color and flavor of those relationships, not just what a scale or chord does functionally, but how it sounds and feels, which doesn’t limit us to only certain sets or moves. There are many more flavors of musical relationship in harmony and melody than tension and release, consonance and dissonance, so we need never be shocked or surprised by something that is not operating by expected rules of classical music. I actually remember first learning music, and theory is good to get one started, to be able to play in key, and it’s a gift to access so many songs that can be played with 3 or 4 chords in rock. I also remember looking at the chord charts of Nirvana, but also the Pixies, and the Beatles, in a different way, and trying to figure out what was going on. I also remember learning how to solo and that much of rock music involved playing minor intervals over major chords (like playing a blues scale (minor intervals) over a blues progression (major chords)), but furthermore that basically all modes are available to us all the time, like you don’t need to stick to one, if you want to bring in some color from another. The part in this essay about Kurdt or Aretha using the minor and major thirds of a chord built on the same root relates to this. Diatonic scales and chords can sound great in their own sets, but bringing in chords, notes and intervals outside those sets or in different sequences can sound great also: they are only going to sound like what they are in relationship. Also, I learned the circle of 5th and you can use it to change keys and modulate, but also you can change keys by just jumping to the key you want to change to and move around there in a progression with a cadence that is “as if” that’s home now, of which there are many (not just V-I or IV-I), how subtle or how jarring it is just how far from home you want to go, how quickly, it’s only really tricky if you want to modulate back to where you were before and have it feel like home again, then you need a cadence that says that root is home again. There’s also some trial and error in all of this, I would say both Nirvana and the Beatles prove that “sounds right” is more important than “looks right on paper”. While many of Paul’s progressions and modulations seem very considered and smooth, I sense especially John Lennon was coming up with a lot of his chord sequences from a combination of mimicking what he liked elsewhere and experimenting by intuition, and this is also what I sense Kurdt Kobain did. I also think it’s important to keep the melody in mind as the voice of the song, so the chords, wherever they are going, support a melody that is intuitive and expressive. Where coloring outside the lines tends to start to lose me is like a lot of 20th century modernist classical or even a certain type of highly technical jazz, where the chromatic movement and dissonance obscures any kind of melody that a human voice would intuitively produce. That said, the human voice is capable of all kinds of microtonal and modal melodies that are not straight up major or minor scales, and contain all kinds of colors, ambiguities, tensions and suspensions, but they all make some sort of cultural sense within the human voice. Even metal music that is striving for certain kinds of dissonance ends up having a certain voice with a lot of harmonic color in it’s guitars in particular. Nirvana’s music did leap out of the radio like nothing else at the time because of the rich harmonic color in the guitars, but above all because of how that sound supported Kobain’s expressive voice and melodies.

Side note, I always thought that there was a country influence in grunge that can be heard in the vocals of Nirvana and Alice in Chains, it’s like a twang in the way their voices crack. This also makes sense why post-grunge bands that were hated in hip urban areas, primarily Nickelback and Creed, had huge followings in Middle America.

The stacked 4th vocal harmony interval is not all that unusual, you just gave a bunch of examples, and one can find that interval in a common major chord, if the harmony is arranged so that the fifth of the chord is below the root. It’s has a different color than thirds or 6ths, but bluegrass, country, folk and certain types of rock and roll do that all the time for effect.

There’s definitely a lot more of the ‘slide chord shape up and down the neck while constantly strumming’ going on in 90s rock, whereas the 80s stuff has more varied picking and riff work going on.

Generalizing of course.

Whatever it is they do throughout ‘No Excuses’ is fantastic.

Boston is a good reference here, if only for its stark contrast to Nirvana. Tom Scholz demonstrated incredible skill and cleverness with functional harmony, channeling the greats like Bach and Rachmaninoff, while injecting all kinds of surprises into the harmonic movements. Using the example cited by above by stereogump: on “More Than a Feeling,” Scholz used a chromatic mediant modulation at the end of the chorus to go from CMaj to EbMaj (minor third up), and up chromatically to Emin7, and then up a fourth to Aadd13. Over this surprising sequence, Brad Delp sings the note G, a common tone that ties these disparate chords together — and all in the service of deftly pivoting key centers from GMaj to DMaj (and eventually to D Mixolydian). This is master-level song craft using functional harmony, where every move has a purpose. It’s like a musical Swiss watch where each chord and each note makes sense and works perfectly.

It’s quite the opposite of Nirvana, who created enormously evocative music by throwing so many of these ideas overboard. It’s as though Kurt Cobain was operating within an alternate system of musical rules (or lack of rules?). Both are great for different reasons.

For me, alternate guitar tunings are a means to an end, a kind of tool that allows chord voicings to fit comfortably under my fingers. Alternate tunings can also be a great way to break out of ruts or formulas, and to discover new musical colors, textures, or harmonic patterns. But when I listen to music I usually don’t notice things like what kind of tuning the guitarist is using, and I don’t think it affects how I hear melodies. Same goes for effects. Does it for you?

And I wasn’t familiar with Alan Pollack’s site — so, thank you for linking to it. I’ll check it out.

My faith in humanity just got a booster shot.

That messed up circle of 5ths Vivek uses to outline the song’s harmonic structure is priceless.

Yeah, great article even if I ultimately understood very little of the theory it was super interesting to read about. And the overall point comes across loud and clear. And I really enjoyed seeing that video again after all these years. Also ice to be reminded that Dave Grohl was once cool

That’s quite a subject, isn’t it? The iconic sound of Layne Staley’s and Jerry Cantrell’s vocal harmonies comes, in part, from their use of stacked perfect 4th intervals. It’s pretty unusual, as we normally hear 3rds or 6ths in 2-part vocal harmonies.

Use of parallel 4ths is a marvelous melodic technique used in modal jazz (“quartal voicing”) — e.g., Miles Davis’ “So What” or Coltrane’s “Impressions.” You can also think of it as inversions of parallel 5ths (which can be traced back to Medieval Gregorian chants). You can hear “stack of 4th” chord voicings all over Steely Dan tunes. It’s a great sound, and one I use often in film scoring.

Thanks Simone. I don’t have a youtube channel with music theory breakdowns. But your point is well taken. Maybe there’s a way, for future articles, that I can include audio reference clips that isolate or focus on specific concepts. I’m not sure if that would make sense in this medium, but do you think it would be helpful? I hope the song references already included (like Aretha Franklin, Goldfinger, etc.) do help in communicating the ideas.

I appreciate the feedback!

P.S. As you invoke the Beatles here, are you familiar with Alan Pollack’s epic analyses of all their songs:

https://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml

Yeah man, I know… I was… nevermind.

But also maybe because there were a ton of comparisons. Never thought about Goldfinger and In Bloom, but you don’t have to explain music theory to have somebody nod their head in spark a little light bulb with that comparison. Then they can figure out what a flattened second is if they want to, or they already now, so it works in a couple levels. And says much more about the music if you say explain the ambiguous thirds as an arabic, aretha franklin or ives thing. It’s not saying he invented something, but that’s a wide range of past sources that have nothing to do with rock music doing similar things. Again it just says a lot more than having to explain all the theory, because somebody with no beginning to put into language can probably pick out that similarity just be listening, and that’s how they begin to learn words to put it into language.

One other weird thing I always thought was that after 1991 sus4 and sus2 chords were fair game almost like shorthand jazz chords for alternative rock music, just because nirvana done it. Like the chorus of come as you are is Esus4 and G. But the Esus4 isn’t actually suspended because it never resolves, so really you should call that Eadd11 or something. You would if it was steely dan, but it’s nirvana so you don’t. But that seems the biggest difference to me between 80s rock and 90s rock is those types of chords becoming common. Which I think is what the start of the article tries to get at.

Well, shit. That didn’t work. Nevermind.