And that’s one of the wonderful things about music: the same basic principles can be used and re-used and re-hashed over and over and over with variations in rhythm, voicing, key, etc., and make new things that are similar but different every time. That’s why The Ramones were great, why The Stooges rocked, why punk rock survived at all.
My tip for picking out a chord progression would be to imagine you are the bass player. Try to hear the bass notes that you would play alongside the tune. Chances are, they will be the root notes of the chords. That won’t tell you by itself whether they are major, minor, 7ths, diminished or whatever, but it’s a start. In “Walking on Sunshine”, btw, it’s the verse that is I-IV-V-IV. The chorus is just V-IV-V-IV.
Anyway, I too am intrigued by this idea of “lousy white people’s chord progression”, but we seem to have several different suggestions for what it might be. Is there a definitive answer?
That is great. There’s a link there to another guy who’s pitch- and tempo-matched no less than 65 I-V-vi-IV songs! That must have been a marathon Audacity session.
Sorry to nitpick, Bo, but the distance from the I to the IV is 2 and a half steps, from the I to the V is 3 and a half steps. The numbers denote the position in the scale, not the number of steps from the I.
Sorry, yes. I didn’t know how best to notate it, but that flat goes with the III.
And, yes, Frank was talking about the ii-V-I. Its expanded cousin is the vi-ii-V-I. (Sometimes known as the “50s progression,” along with its variant vi-IV-V-I. Think of the chord progressions from “Blue Moon” or “Heart and Soul.”)
I could understand why Frank hates it (it is ubiquitous), but it’s odd to hear him call it white people’s music, as it is the cornerstone progression in jazz, very much a music rooted in African-American culture. I would certainly agree that it’s an amalgamation of African influences with Western music (the blues wasn’t a ii-V-I form), but it’s been adopted freely by musicians of all backgrounds and cultures.
You are, of course, correct. As I say, I’m a simple snowboarder, self taught from books and guitar mags for 20 years now. I know what chords to play for a given progression, and can sometimes pick it out by ear, but I’m not very good at teaching or explaining. I do try, tho, as best I can. Thank you for correcting my poor attempts.
Ah, but consider Frank’s upbringing and coming of age in the '50s, where cheesy doo-wop and white co-opting of “black” music was rampant. He both loved and hated a lot of things from the era, as you can hear on many of his later compositions. I mean, just listen to Cruising with Ruben & the Jets.
