4 Chords | Music Videos | The Axis Of Awesome

On a related note (corniest pun of the day), the Australian musical comedy act Axis of Awesome made a song called Four Chords Song , which is basically a 47-song medley all using the same chord progression. [LINK] They've said that the chords are used by some of the most well known songs in the world, and their performance demonstrates this nicely, as in this clip: [VIDEO] The above link is the official video; but they explain their reasoning better in this live performance: [LINK]

Though a bit more on the "actual implementation" side of things, there's an Australian group called "Axis Of Awesome" who did an interesting song called "Four Chords". It shows the use of a set of four common chords in a lot of different songs. [VIDEO]

Heh, I just this afternoon listened to a radio show about the famously popular vi-IV-I-V/I-V-vi-IV chord progression [1]. If you haven't heard it before, the "4 Chords" medley by Axis of Awesome is a great demonstration of its ubiquity [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

Another thing I run in to a lot is people saying "I know how to program, but I don't know what to build." There is an amount of creativity involved with programminng. It's like learning how to physically manipulate a guitar and play notes, but saying "I don't know what to play." That happens a lot too, but musicians have the repetoire of other composers to play if they do not want to write their own music (many don't). With programming, recoding something is called reinventing the wheel and that's frowned upon. Ok, sometimes the analogies are forced, but I hope you get it! It's kind of interesting though, because in order to progress we have to build something new, or build on top of what we have, so the technology is forced to evolve. Music can repeat over and over and people don't get tired of it and you could argue pop music is working against the evolution of music. For anyone who hasn't seen the four chord song... [VIDEO] Wait, what we were originally talking about now?

Even before machine learning people figured out the chord pattern of most popular songs. You can probably program it use those 4 chords. [VIDEO]

Many genres of music have songs that are mostly comprised of a handful of chord sequences, or 'chord progressions'. For instance, you will hear the I - IV - V all the time in western pop. An example of this (with a different chord progression): [VIDEO] So unexpected harmonies are sequences that don;t fit in to these well-known, 'standard' progressions.

Couldn't those guys' track of success be due to cronyism in the music industry? Their songs are formulaic. I'm sure many of these 2 guys' songs are played in this video that cycles through a long list of hit songs which have the same progression (transposed into the same key so the similarities can more easily be noticed) [VIDEO] So perhaps anyone can write the songs, but not everyone has access to the pop stars (or access to these 2 guys). I'm not an expert song writer myself, but I am a musician and lover of music. Based on the fact that there's awesome music noone's ever heard of or that doesn't get as much play as some lesser quality music, I have to echo the common sentiment that the music industry is a fashion show/popularity contest with gatekeepers (still). Not saying it's not all a sham, I think the difference that comes from the human performing is huge, and I love to see and hear that.

This is a solid answer, but I'd also add - there are very few general music buffs. Maybe I'd count, with years in pro music performance, degree in Jazz and a lifetime of listing to and performing an insanely wide variety of genres... but not a buff for all styles. Computer systems are actually not a bad analogy. How many people do you know that have an in-depth knowledge of Assembly in different systems (including the oldest ones), GPUs, ML, Python, JS, Haskell, C++, Rust, ALGOL, Compilers, Hardware development, etc. Then add into the mix having an in-depth knowledge of the creators of those things, what else they did, failures, influences, their mentors. You always have the choice of breadth versus depth, within your time constraints. I think learning about a single artist or band, looking up the producer, label, members and following up on all those leads to see what else they have done - and see if you like it is a great beginning. Some genres like jazz might seem difficult to get into, and that's fine. No need to delve in until you find a hook that peaks your interest. And then when you find out about a genre (and jazz is an excellent example) - you'll find sub-genres you like, and don't and maybe you are interested in the evolution - like many people love bebop, but don't listen to "dixieland jazz" or big band swing, or modern fusion. You will never hear all the music. But depth (in my opinion) breads a lot more passion than breadth just for the sake of it. So rather tha