Is there a term for this, like maybe "diatonic harmony"?

[CyberGene]

I know this may also be interpreted as some type of rant, and it is, but let me also say that I used to love Coldplay. I don't dislike them now, nor the plethora of similar music, but it became a bit boring to me and I stopped listening to it long ago.

 

So, we've been listening with my daughter to some of my favorite pop songs from my youth and she likes them a lot, being obsessed lately with Kiss from a Rose by Seal. She asked Siri to play it for her and Apple Music would then keep on with playing what it considers "similar" music and played A Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay:

 

 

And I remembered why I loved them, this ethereal, dreamy quality to the sound, the feeling of timelessness, feeling light and good, etc., etc. But I also started realizing why it is boring: it seems there's no functional chord progression. Sure, there are chords but they are all interchangeable, it really doesn't matter if you play the IV or V or VI, ... or any other chord from the diatonic scale of the key it's in. I'm intentionally not calling those subdominant, dominant, etc. because I'm not sure they even feel like having a function. It's all kind of modal but I'm not sure it can be called modal music since there are proper chords all the time, only not feeling very functional. I guess to make that working, there are specific repetitive melodic patterns on top of that harmony to allow for that interchangeability (invariance) of chords. And that's how most of the music in that genre works, and a lot of contemporary singer/songwriter music for that matter too. Is there a term for that?

 

Again, I'm not dismissing it and as I said I used to love it but maybe I'm old fashioned and still like the more traditional song harmony with functional chord progressions, altered chords, key changes, borrowed chords, surprising modulations, etc. And no, not jazz, I just mean any pop song prior to the early 90s. Somehow they shifted in the late 90s into this new type of diatonic, safe and inoffensive harmony that is backed by very lush pads, long reverbs (even shimmer reverb), repetitive patterns.

[JamPro]

Call it "The Four Chord Progression".  Yes - it is very common in modern pop music that a song is composed of one long four chord vamp with one tonal center.  It is as you say boring.  But "producers" like it because it is easy to create in the absence of any actual musical knowledge (or actual musical skills).  And the repetition and simplicity is a benefit when you are using a computer to compose your music.  And of course easy to play for the musician.  

 

It is in my opinion music of convenience, not music of the heart or mind. 

[CyberGene]

@JamPro I know what you mean but I think this is slightly different. The "four chord progression" is something that is still functional, like e.g. C Am F G, or C Am D7 G, etc, etc. and the melody is made in a way that fits the progression.

 

Here we're dealing again with more or less similar chords, e.g. C, G, F, Am, however they are used in an almost random pattern and it doesn't matter which one you play, so there's no progression, the chords are used just for color and I doubt someone would know that you made a "mistake" in the chord order. I guess it's still some variety of modal music.

[Adam Burgess]

So many similar notes in the chords that it doesn't matter?

For example (in D): D, E, A, "in the right hand" could easily imply a Dadd9, G6/9, Asus4, Em7sus4, F#m7sus4…

Don't know if it has a specific name, but it's got its uses, for sure! Without the bass, it's all implied. Even with a bass note added
"is it a Dadd9/A, or an Asus4?", so, as with lots of stuff, context is everything.

[PianoMan51]

I’ve never had a clear map of this in my head, but let me try to lay out a few thoughts that hopefully add to the conversation.
 

Chord Progressions are not necessarily Harmonic Progressions.

 

 The concept of Chords is at most a thousand years old.

 

 The concept of Harmonic Progressions of Chords is much newer, probably started in the Renaissance, 500 years ago.

 

Melody, rhythm go back hundreds of thousands of years. Massively predating harmony of any kind. 
 

There are for example European music traditions that predate harmony. Think Irish fiddle tunes. If you buy a book of old Irish fiddle tunes, there’s no harmony, no chords. And when you listen to modern players adding chords to those songs the chords always suit the melody, but don’t necessarily create a classical European harmonic progression.

 

Probably the same with African music tradition as exemplified by the blues. Melodies originally created without harmony, chords or chord harmonic progressions. With chords added later, but not creating standard harmonic progressions.

 

My take is that in the US popular songs with traditional European harmonic progressions had their heyday in the first half of the 20th century, following a large wave of European immigration to the US. We call this The Great American Songbook. But starting in the 1950s the dogs stopped eating the dog food. People started to listen to other new and exotic music traditions including ‘blues’ and ‘folk music’ that used chords, but didn’t have them in strong harmonic progressions.

 

So we can debate what key Sweet Home Alabama is in. Or have to closely listen to an old James Taylor song because the chords choices are not necessarily locked into the circle of fifths. Or debate the theory necessary for a blues scale to be played over a I7/IV7/V7 chord pattern.

[Reezekeys]

It's boring because it's repetitive. Some of us are used to songs with verses, ramps (pre-choruses), choruses (where you'll probably hear something called the hook), then imagine this, a bridge – which usually takes you to a new & different harmonic landscape. Then, back to a chorus, etc. There's none of that in 90% of today's "top xx" songs! Ramps create tension that "releases" when you hit the chorus. Where's any of that in the song posted above? When you have one or two short chord progressions repeated ad nauseum the entire length of the song, it's impossible to create that "tension & release" feeling.

 

I really feel like the tail wags the dog in most current pop tunes - you can come up with a 2 - 4 chord progression that spans one or two bars, then because it's in a DAW why not cut & paste that sucker 100 times – there's your song! Now get off my lawn! 🙂 

[CyberGene]

1 hour ago, Jazz+ said:

I like the feeling of the music not the chord progressions

Fair point. I also feel the same and as I said I used to love Coldplay for the same reason. But boredom is sometimes a result of cumulative exposure, at least that’s what happened to me.

[MathOfInsects]

There are a couple of things going on. One is that we tend to be pretty selective in our memories when we talk about this kind of thing. Pop music has had plenty of periods of harmonic stasis. Today's "four chords" are the same four, in a different order, as the foundation of about billion doo-wop songs in the 50s. (We have I, V, vi, IV; they had I, vi, IV, V.) Before and after the 50s there were long periods of pop songs built around I, IV, and V. So it's not really true that a ton has changed harmonically. We just knew the outliers from back then better, because that was "our" era. Our parents thought that all sounded the same, too, and lacked the sophistication of their music.

Another is that we do tend to form our aesthetic around whenever our first and longest exposure was. Even though that's entirely random and completely a matter of circumstance, most people think of their first exposure to something like music, as the default.

Obviously, times change. Today's music does tend to be more loop-based, and to rely on vocal emphasis more than harmonic development. There are outliers now too, of course. But neither is "right" or "better." It's neither here nor there, in the end. Both are just circumstantial. My kids' generation often finds harmonic density in pop music to be inauthentic and contrived--sorta "cute" but meaningless. Older folks tend to find loop-based music unadventurous and limited. We're both right and also both wrong. It's just a passing preference, for both generations. 

 

On the other hand, the older folks didn't really complain about harmonic stasis when it was "Satisfaction" or "Take Me to the River" or "Feelin' Alright" or about 50 different James Brown tunes or any of about a smurfillion other one, two, and three-chord looping songs from previous eras. Those were just the loops we knew, not the ones that came around after our prime. 

On the whole I find today's songwriters generally more committed to saying something true in their lyrics; in the past, the commitment tended toward saying something clever or ambiguous. 

FWIW, I quite like the I-V-vi-IV progression. It turns the plagal cadence into something almost as weighty as V-I; anything other than a I after that IV would feel practically like a fake-out. (The blues also does this, depending which version of the form you're using.) Don't get me wrong, I'm way tired of it by now, but I think it's harmonically deft. 

FWIW2.0, hip-hop beats (backing tracks) have been harmonically interesting and all but ignored by the older folks for decades. They've stretched the ideas of tuning and included all kinds of untraditional harmonic twists. People have sometimes just had a hard time getting past other things about it that they don't like (or don't know). 

[Al Quinn]

I like Coldplay. I’ve been exposed to a lot of their music by my daughter. To me they sound sincere and original. Chris Martin is cool. Simple, repetitive chords don’t bother me as long as they serve the song well. 

[Tusker]

I would call it diatonic harmony. The 19th century European apotheosis of "the perfect cadence" is not reflected in all modern music. Perhaps that is not a bad thing. There is still time to redefine and expand harmonic vocabulary.

 

Digging some Coldplay now. Totally ignorant of them and grateful to this thread for expanding my hearing.

[CyberGene]

When I first discovered Coldplay I couldn't get enough of them. As already said, there's something really pure and dreamy about their music and their sound. Maybe that diatonic harmony also contributes to this airy quality. Of course the arrangements are also part of why it feels like that. I think before Coldplay I found some similarities in the Division Bell by Pink Floyd.

 

I feel guilty for bringing up the side notion of not listening to Coldplay anymore and being bored. They are great and are certainly not boring per se. I just used to listen to them ad nauseam in the past and that's a guaranteed recipe for overdoing any music 🙂 Do not listen to me and listen to Coldplay 😀

 

But I am still interested in the theory behind this "diatonic harmony". Once again, it's not about how many chords there are. It's more about the interchangeability of them. You can play I, IV, V, vi in any order in that particular case and it won't clash with the melody. The "chords" are there to create variety rather than serve a function. And that's not a critique, I'm just wondering if it has been analyzed and how it's called.

[Reezekeys]

29 minutes ago, CyberGene said:

You can play I, IV, V, vi in any order in that particular case and it won't clash with the melody.

Correct. With any chord progression that uses only scale-tone chords, if the melody notes are all in the major scale of the key the song is in, they're guaranteed not to clash! That's basic theory.

[CyberGene]

10 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

Correct. With any chord progression that uses only scale-tone chords, if the melody notes are all in the major scale of the key the song is in, they're guaranteed not to clash! That's basic theory.

I don't agree. If we are not talking about jazz and more complex music, in the more conventional idiom there are scale tones that clash with diatonic chords. Like e.g. an F will clash with C major chord, etc. Kids songs are a good example since they are often very simple and diatonic melodies, yet the melody itself has a pretty good indication of when it's time to play what chord. I'm sure you all have heard some people playing a certain diatonic chord over some simple kids (and popular) song where you immediately hear that it's the wrong chord and it's, e.g. the dominant V chord that is expected there, and not the tonic, etc.

 

I believe what I mean with my first post is a different thing where melodic patterns/sequences are chosen in a way that is not as implying about chords and functions and then any of the diatonic chords would work. It's a more specific case of intentionally avoiding functionalism by choosing scale tones that are common to the set of chords that will be used and avoiding those that can clash with them.

[MathOfInsects]

Well, in those moments the harmonic movement is the composition. In the key of C, if I sing a melody that is only the note "c," the composition then becomes what I do with the harmony under that note. 

 

But in general, melodies rarely (if ever) really outline a chord. Our customs around harmony do the implying, and work in concert with the melody to produce that song. We can reharm any song, even diatonically, to produce brand new harmonic movement that still just as strongly supports the melody being deployed, and when we do we'll often end up with a song so different-sounding that people might not ever realize the melody was the same. 

Try playing the melody of Amazing Grace as written, but with the harmony all down a minor third, to make it minor. If you played that for someone, it's just as likely that they'd think it was some song they'd never heard, as that they'd say, "Oh, he's playing some weird minor version of Amazing Grace."

 

[CyberGene]

3 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

We can reharm any song, even diatonically, to produce brand new harmonic movement that still just as strongly supports the melody being deployed, and when we do we'll often end up with a song so different-sounding that people might not ever realize the melody was the same. 

True. I love doing reharms, they work better with more complex (jazz) harmony IMO but nothing stops you from using simpler triads too. It depends on the melody though. Sometimes it outlines chords. But you can adjust the tempo and change chords on every tone without waiting for the outline to happen. That's what I did with Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star some time ago:

 

But those are all rather extreme cases with intentional reharmonization for the sheer effect of doing so. In the more general case the chords are implied pretty well, so that completely random change of chords is not possible. I would assume those songs, or rather the melody, were composed with harmony in mind, not in isolation.

[Tusker]

Sometimes the harmony is very non dissonant and the melody’s relationship to the harmony is what provides a lot of the tension and release. I am thinking of Mozart’s beautiful chromatic enclosures.

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, CyberGene said:

But those are all rather extreme cases with intentional reharmonization for the sheer effect of doing so. In the more general case the chords are implied pretty well, so that completely random change of chords is not possible. I would assume those songs, or rather the melody, were composed with harmony in mind, not in isolation.

Nice Twinkle!

The only two scale tones that really suggest harmonies are the 4th and the 7th (which also accounts for them being the "missing" tones from our major pentatonic scale). It's hard to hear the 7th without feeling the V implied, and it's hard to hear the 4th without hearing a IV implied. Otherwise, all bets are off (generally speaking). There are some other elements in play, like where the melody comes to rest, what the note-frequency is (i.e., number of uses, not wavelength), and what the shape of the phrases might be. But these are only evocative, they are not definitive.

It's funny, because historically speaking, tonality had a pretty short run as the defining aesthetic in European Art Music. For every Classical Era composition that reinforced the idea of a harmonic "home," there have been 10 in the Romantic Era and beyond that subverted, ignored, or overtly tried to undo it.

One "problem" is that our scale system is specifically "tuned" around tonality, so as soon as you add a second note from our scale system you are implying our tonal tradition, whether you mean to or not. And another is that this was the music that was specifically supported/preserved/celebrated by the institutions of power at the time, which gave it a foothold into the minds and experiences of anyone in its purview, and that "anyone" includes the European territory we now call the United States. So we've all developed affinity-centers in the brain for the 12 half steps of our equal-tempered scale. As result, certain things sound "right" to us, that are completely arbitrary, and also that sound just as wrong to those who grew up in other traditions.

One of the results of this is that, after a certain point, we're not surprised as often. This is what's happening for you. That point lives in us, though, not in music in general. The goal then is to seek out people doing new and adventurous things within the tradition we find ourselves. There are plenty; you just have to go looking instead of waiting to be found. 

[AROIOS]

2 hours ago, CyberGene said:

True. I love doing reharms...

I find your reharm way more interesting than that Coldplay song.
 

Theory-wise, there's little depth to that song. It's 100% tonal, and its chords are "functional" to a fault. A bit of experimentation with plagal cadence and first inversions will easily churn out a dozen of these fastfood tunes.

I suspect a lot of the "airiness" and "dreaminess" you hear, actually came from its mixing/production techniques, rather than the harmony itself.

[CyberGene]

15 minutes ago, AROIOS said:

I suspect a lot of the "airiness" and "dreaminess" you hear, actually came from its mixing/production techniques, rather than the harmony itself.

Yes, I think so. As far as I know that type of dreamy sound was first invented by Brian Eno as an engineer for U2 with shimmer reverb often mentioned in that regard (long reverb with various intervals added to the tail, most often octaves, so basically it creates a natural pad to the guitar or piano). 

[AROIOS]

5 hours ago, CyberGene said:

Yes, I think so. As far as I know that type of dreamy sound was first invented by Brian Eno as an engineer for U2 with shimmer reverb often mentioned in that regard (long reverb with various intervals added to the tail, most often octaves, so basically it creates a natural pad to the guitar or piano). 

Yup, both Strymon BigSky and Valhalla Shimmer handles that type of effect pretty well. Didn't know Eno was the inventor of that technique, learned something new today.

[jazzpiano88]

16 hours ago, CyberGene said:

Yes, I think so. As far as I know that type of dreamy sound was first invented by Brian Eno as an engineer for U2 with shimmer reverb often mentioned in that regard (long reverb with various intervals added to the tail, most often octaves, so basically it creates a natural pad to the guitar or piano). 

 

I would agree with this as to the sound.   

 

The actual music is another story.  The chord progression is garden variety at its root*, but the voicings are compelling, making it listenable to me even though it is repetitive.   It beats you over the head with its tonal center, however the repetitiveness is broken up by the 3 or so intensity levels from the intro and throughout. 

 

* for guitarists F# 3rd inv.  | C# 2nd inv / Bb | F# 2nd inv / Eb | F# 2nd inv / B

[stoken6]

Back to the original question "is there a term for this", it strikes me as the opposite of "modal interchange", where notes are borrowed from other scales/modes. So "modal avoidance" or "modal isolation" perhaps?

 

Cheers, Mike.