P.S. to notes about music.

In light of my previous posts regarding the overall "mood" of a song being largely based on the first and last chord, I feel that it's necessary to clear some things up. When I say that a song's mood is based upon these chords, I'm talking about the overall, general positive/negative, happy/sad, major/minor feeling that the chords convey. But it is very important to remember how many other things make up a song as a whole. The various instruments which lend their timbres to a song, the multiple rhythms and tempos which provide "groove" (yes, that is a legitimate musical term) to a song, and nowadays even the multimedia such as music videos that lend visual feeling to a song, all shape the overall feeling of a song very greatly. Additionally, there are some exceptions to this effect. Just because a certain chord progression or musical sequence has become culturally established as belonging to a certain genre, doesn’t mean that that chord progression must be used for that genre. The opposite is also true.

Below are 2 videos that demonstrate what I mean:

The first video shows parts of 36 different songs all played on the same 4 chords repeating over and over again--3 of the 4 chords are major, including the start and end chords, but one of the chords in the middle is minor. As you'll notice, the songs all sound generally major or at least not sad. None of them sound truly depressing or sad. But, there are some very great differences between the more intricate feeling of the song. Just compare Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" to Men at Work's "Land Down Under" ... they both sound major, but in very very different ways.

**at a about 4 minutes into this clip there is some profanity. Please don't watch it after the 4-minute mark.

The next video, "Blue" by Yngwie Malmsteem, is a song in the style of the the Blues genre, but uses no typical "blues" chord progressions in it.

P.S. I'm not really a fan of cheesey 80's music or classical-music-inspired guitar shredding, but these video clips are relevant to the topic and make good points.

P.S. I'm not really a fan of cheesey 80's music or classical-music-inspired guitar shredding, but these video clips are relevant to the topic and make good points.