Chords and Speed

by Gary Ewer

All it takes is one glitch with your chord progression, and your song can die the death. And one aspect of harmonizing your song that isn’t considered enough is the song’s tempo. Here’s how that works.

In short, here’s the basic rule: the faster your song, the fewer chords it needs. And in fact, fast songs that use lots of chords, and where the chords change often, have a somewhat unpleasant feel. You want a fast song to have energy; that’s probably part of the reason you choose fast tempos. But energy should not equate to frenzy. For a songwriter, frenzy means “energy out of control”, and that’s not what you want.

The ideas in these blog articles are the sorts of ideas you’ll find in Gary Ewer’s Songwriting e-books:

When you change chords, you are in a sense pulling the listener’s ears in a different direction. This is where harmonic rhythm becomes important. Harmonic rhythm is the frequency of your chord changes, and it should fit a somewhat regular pattern. So most of the successful songs change chords every two beats, or every bar, or every two bars, etc, with only occasional deviations from that pattern. That makes the pulling of the listener’s ears a more consistent and aesthetically pleasing aspect of the song.

Slow songs can tolerate more intricate chords, and more strayings from the basic harmonic rhythm, because the listener’s ears have a greater opportunity to adjust. Fast songs work better if the chord choices are four chords or less, and if those chords change at a regular, perceived pattern. In other words, if you find yourself using the same chords over and over, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s part of a fast song’s groove, and the groove (I shouldn’t need to tell you) is crucial.

The same thing, actually, can be said for the rhythms that you use. The faster your song, the more unpleasantly frantic it will feel if you start using lots of complicated rhythms. The good thing is that especially with rhythm, you’ll find a natural tendency to use simpler rhythms as your tempo increases.

These observations explain why dance music uses the same chords over and over, and why the rhythms tend to be basic. It’s not so much because the music needs to be simple so that it’s danceable; it’s more that it’s danceable because it’s simple.

So what  you should be monitoring with your chord choices and your song is whether or not your song has a frantic feel. If it does, see what you can do to limit the number of chords, and make sure that the chords change at a somewhat regular interval. Energy without frenzy is what you’re after.

If you want to read about how to solve your songwriting woes, get Gary’s suite of 6 songwriting e-books at a “bundle discount” price.  Click here to learn more..

Posted in Chord Progressions, songwriting and tagged , , , , .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.