I'm not sure exactly the name but I was wondering if there was theory behind this idea. Recently I was working with a song and there were these intermediate or transitional chords in-between the i-v, or v-vi, for example, they were ascending or descending based on the nature of the occurrence in the progression.

So basically I was wondering if these transitional chords exist with every progression and follow the same rules? Or maybe there is some sort of theory behind it?

Anyways thanks guys, always get really great answers here.

Picture for reference






http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/cjdawdj/ScreenShot201 2-11-11at80628PM.png

It's really hard to figure out piano roll.

It looks like your first chord is an Fm why someone would introduce a Db over the bottom is beyond me. the next three notes are a rootless fm7 so it's the same chord. the next one is a C#2

Every chord progression under the sun no. Does it make something better or worse for it's existence also no.

So essentially the answer is no, no theory to it. But so the term for these chords in the progression would just be referred to as piano roll?

Your screenshot is of a piano roll: that view of a sequencer showing a piano keyboard on the left side, and notes scrolling off to the right. That type of software window is commonly referred to as a piano roll.

Tapper Mike used music theory to explain why your chord progression doesn't make a whole lot of sense and is not particularly remarkable. There is no "alternate" type of music theory to explain chords which are only held for a few beats instead of held for several measures. Its all still the same chord progression, regardless of tempo and rhythm. Playing every other chord briefly does not justify your choice of notes any better than if you had carefully planned it out.

Ah, thanks guess I just gotta play around until I find what I like!

I don't think the other guys are getting what you mean to be asking, because you're asking an excellent question. What you are looking into is called "voice leading", which is how one voice leads to another. You are also working at other traditional techniques of composition and orchestration even if you don't realize it- the Db tapper mike referred to is functioning like an anticipation, an inharmonic note in one chord that is resolved in a later chord. At 2.4 the Db starts creating a dissonance resolved at 3.4.

There's a lot to it, a lifetime of work. When I get some time I'll try to write a short list of essential "rules" of voicing and voice leading, which aren't rules of course but rules of thumb. Some of them are based on plain old acoustics so it's not easy to "break" them without sounding like mud.

edited, typo

I did something similar a while back:
Melody Construction and Voice Leading / Part Writing
An intro to ornamental, unessential, and non-harmony notes

Well, the perception of chord motion is greatly influenced by the harmonic rhythm, so what you said is not exactly right. You can make the same chord progression sound wildly different if you play around with its rhythm.

I don't think there's anything particular strange here (maybe I've misunderstood tapper's first reply, plus reading the piano roll isn't very easy). Essentially what we have is:

Fm Ab Eb Db as our basic chord progression. Everything nicely in key.

It sounds pretty bog-standard and tarnce-like to me:
http://soundcloud.com/steevm/moonsnstuff

In tarnce it's very common to vary the chords over a bar, generally changing only one note - a lot is just switching to sus2 or sus4 and the appropriate minor/major. In the first bar, our variation is from Fm to Db major. But going from Fm to Db is simply exchanging a C for a Db. Again, just one note variation, in line with most of these tarncy things. The Dbsus2 following the Ab in bar 2 could also be interpreted as an Absus4 (and we have no idea what the bass is doing) - again there's only one note changed. Only the Db and Dbsus2 following the Eb represent a "big" change, but by this point the progression has already done this a few times (changing to Db or a related chord at the end of each bar) and the next chord is also the Db anyway.


I've no idea what the musical terms for these variations/transitions is, but it's definitely very common and you'll see/hear it all over the place in all types of music. JarJar is probably right though

Not sure about the timing in the original though, I shortened every second dotted eighth to be an eight note.