It’s neither major or minor, because you need the 3rd to establish that
And nearly every punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are. It just sounds good to them. There aren’t any rules because punk is a DIY genre. If you told him he was doing a thing, he’d do the opposite just because. And it would still probably slap.
Kurt cobain was a fantastic song writer but you see these types of articles come out now and then propping him up as a genius. His own quote refutes that, and anyone who listens to punk music will agree that trying to analyze it using classical western tonality is silly and pretentious
Also part of what made him so good was how he played vocal melody and rhythm off of chords. So in some songs you might have plain power chords but the melody hits important major or minor notes.
I don’t know what your definition for genius is but the guy wrote some of the best songs in human history and did so without a primary collaborator or big production crew of cowriters and collaborators. I think we can call him a genius.
I do hate how he (and the whole generation, and some of the punks before him + no wave crowd as well) pretended that they didn't know any music theory or practice at all. That was quite destructive for so many of us who aspired to play music in our teens, especially if you weren't exposed to music theory and practice in childhood through other means.
I'm not sure if this notion of "genius" helps people appreciate music or if it just worsens the idolising/othering aspect of it. If we are going to use the word, though, can we not attempt to reserve it for the uncontroversial candidates, like Art Tatum, for example.
Somewhat true for punk, mostly incorrect for metal. A lot of metal is very analytical, deeper in musical theory than most popular genres (rock, pop, rnb…), they care _a lot_ about it. Metal is often very technical, it bred some of the top musicians in the world, it’s no surprise they give a shit about it: it’s their craft and a hard one.
In fact I remember the singer of Gojira in a French interview, saying (iirc, surely not quite remembering his point) that metal is in many ways closer to classical than rock, as it values composition so much more where rock is all about interpretation (closer to punk)
Here's a video with some analysis of "Smells like teen spirit": https://youtu.be/Xambk1JkWrE?si=aV-kCj1JsbMdM_AV&t=137
I find it really weird that people claim these are power chord even though they sound really different. In my view they are important to the vibe of "Smells like teens spirit" as they bring some dreamy characteristic as they make it a lot brighter compared to what it would be if it was played with only two lowest notes.
Power chords were quite heavily used by some of the bands Kurt liked and were easy to play, hence the stuff that sounded good when he was noodling used a lot of that. Nirvana weren't innovators in tonality, but they had great crunchy guitar tone, catchy hooks and a singer with a raspy voice - exactly what you'd expect a band that didn't care about music theory to potentially excel at, and exactly what was needed to breaking the trend in layered reverbs and guitar hero solos of the 80s ...
Also, there's nothing particularly unusual about not having any minor chords. In fact, here's a thing that may surprise some people: most African music for example has no minor chords of any kind, and we're not talking about power chords etc just only major and no minor triads. In African music it's really common to have the first inversion of the 4th degree triad function as the relative minor (so in the key of C that would be A-C-F instead of A-C-E).
R 5 R - the intervals are far enough apart that in this powerchord that they don’t clash harmonically.
R 3 5 R - the third is too close to the root and fifth, so the sound would be indistinct.
If you play the usual cowboy chords with a high gain tone, it turns to mush.
Of course, you can get around this with inversions to produce different voicings. I like R 5 3 with distortion to push the third up an octave, and keep it clear of it’s neighbours.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But also, it was just a (counter-) cultural thing to feign lack of music theory knowledge or practice at the time. Quite a destructive one, I might add.
A nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWY4YYmSTWg
I’d go through all of the chord progressions and make sure they actually match what is being played. There are quite a few errors. Happens to everyone.
Also, you and everyone else should remember that while the band is mostly playing power chords and omitting the fifths, what Cobain sings is part of the chord as it’s heard. This means that, for example, a lot of songs do sound major, Smells like teen spirit is probably in F minor.
I find determining key in popular music to be tricky. Most progressions consist of something like 4 chords, and there isn’t the teleology you see in something like Tin Pan Alley or Chopin to give the sense of where one is to arrive. Even the Axis of Awesome progression can be heard a major or minor depending on how you end the song.
I don't know why the article claims this was a Nirvana discovery. It started in the 70s. Discharge, Wire then Fugazi, Minor Threat. These people are smart, just raw, and they like blunt aesthetics.
The Ramones were pretty standard with tonality. There's a good chance that Colin Newman knows what a chromatic mediant is, but probably nobody else in punk did.
They aren't major chords, they're mostly power chords, which are neither major nor minor (no third and the third provides the major/minor tonality). They often function as minor chords because of the melody or other parts, or just because of how the progression fits together. They aren't unique or new with Cobain, he was part of a long history of punk and rock and roll.
Cobain was a good songwriter in the rock and roll tradition. He was not particularly innovative or doing something technically unheard of, and he wouldn't have claimed to be. He wanted to be a good songwriter, and he succeeded. That's it, don't make up bullshit about it.
He wasn't even that. He was a pretty bad songwriter. His music was by and large mopey, plodding monotonous work that is dreary to listen to. Apart from Smells Like Teen Spirit, I don't think he wrote a single song worth listening to.
Thank you, bigstrat2003, I'm going to throw out all my Nirvana CDs based on your authoritative statement.
What, pray tell, should I be listening to instead?
short answer: it sounds good
long answer: extra notes are added.
At some point during guitar history, some metal head was like "I wonder what happens if I turn this tube amplifier up ALL THE WAY to 11?" and... it sounded "good". Nobody really knew why at the time, but this distorted electric guitar was like, pleasing to the ear.
Sometime later, we figured out the science of why, after many many models of tube amplifiers had been designed and tinkered with.
It turns out that since electrons, are in fact waves, they can interfere with each other. As they blast across the space/time in a vacuum tube, they can interfere with each other... and if they are modulated in such way, let's say by a musical input, they happen to produce "interference bands" in a certain predictable manner as a function of the input signal.
What does that interference banding look like? Extra notes! Yep, when you slam a powerchord root-fifth at max distortion on a single-ended amplifier (the input stage to a Marshall), you produce "even order harmonics"!
If you rip A+E you'll get:
* Original A (root) * Original E (fifth) * Octave A (very forward, usually -1.5db) * Octave E (very forward, usually -1.5db) * 12th above the root (Another "5th"!) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish) * C# two octaves up (3rd) (Making this a major chord!) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish) * G two octaves up (Minor 7th) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish)
Whoah!? And the pattern continues but at some point amps filter out the series.
And guitar amplifier dudes also figured out how to make all kinds of distortion sound crazy! A 5150 produces "odd order" harmonics and makes adds totally different content. The pre-amp and the power amp sections interfere with each other, making the output function deterministic, but super complicated!
I used to think people were just being snob-ish about tube amps until I really dove into making my own guitar amp design. It's a crazy clash of music theory, functional harmony, and analog electrical engineering!
cool! That'd be via a mechanical means!
Tube based guitar amplifiers make harmonics via miniature particle accelerators (and the supporting circuitry) ;) Multiple ways to produce the same effect!
> There is absolutely nothing special or mysterious about a distorted electric guitar except that it sounds cool.
That's not correct at all in fact! Even a simple google search reveals this :) How about this? Type "what harmonics does a 5150 amplifier produce vs a single ended EL34 amplifier?" into chatgpt
I suggest reading the following:
* https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Tube-Preamps-Guitar-Bass/dp...
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/0750656948
Edit: I linked the wrong morgan book
It's also worth mentioning the way Kurt often played power chords, using his index for the bass note and barring the rest with his ring finger. This often leads to major chords when the root is on the A string and non-major ambiguous-sounding chords with the root is on the E string. It's obvious as early as the 3rd chord in the intro to Teen Spirit; it has the notes Ab Eb Ab Db (NOTE: Db, not C). It's inconsistent in Kurt's playing (edit: whether or not his strumming makes that 4th string, 4th interval sound come out), but the subtlety is a signature part of Kurt's guitar sound.
Also some of the chord analysis in the site (ex. In Bloom verse) is just flat out wrong.
The Kindle version is $3 right now.
there seems to be a minor chord every 5 seconds or so which doesn't really fit the title?
> Careful music analysis was left for other bands.
I'm sorry... but lol what.
> And it's fascinating to think that Kurt Cobain was unaware of any musical composition's rule he was following, but just trusting his musical instict (sic).
This doesn't come as much of a surprise. A good deal of my friends who are musicians (particularly those who could sing) found themselves writing music at a pretty young age before they had any real understanding of music theory.
What is the point of the thread. Github page HTML or music theory.
https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/how-to-read-sheet-music/c...
For some reason, people who don't know music theory say things like this about the Beatles because they think because they haven't heard something before it must be new.
If so, let's see what happens with Kurt's grandson.
