The Pop/Blues Paradox

[mumpcake]

One of the things I can't stand about today's pop music is that it seems like there are only 4 chord progressions that the record companies will let artists use these days so nearly every song sounds the same.

Yet Blues rarely strays beyond a I-IV-V progression and that doesn't seem to bother me as much.

[BertKoor]

Imho you give too much credit/influence to the record companies. They just put on the market what the consumers find easy to digest.

Analogy: you as a consumer have the choice each meal to grab a burger or go to a restaurant where they serve things you did not even know were edible - for the same price

[melomood]

Just remember, you being bothered by it doesn't make it any less good or valid then those bog standard blues bars,that can bore to tears under the right setting and has more history (over here at least) to be more popular when done by British bands that were influenced by 'race records'

[mjudge55]

A couple things about the blues though: it has that whole western European major harmony thing (major I-IV-V) with the African influenced minor pentatonic (and variations of it) and rhythmic syncopations/swing on top of it, so there's potentially some harmonic and rhythmic interest built in. Add to that the fact that blues is black music heavily influenced by the imprint of slavery and Jim Crow, perhaps the defining characteristic of American history, so there you have tons of cultural interest. Finally, blues is roots music, a foundation of jazz, a big influence on country, the mother of R&b and rock 'n roll (with all of its offshoots like metal, funk, disco, house, and on to techno). So hearing blues is tapping into the main vein of American culture and music.

I don't think modern pop has that in its basic formula... except the rare cases where you have a smart songwriter who injects it in there. None of this is to say blues is better, just getting at why blues is more than I-IV-V and shouldn't be reduced to that.

[vurt]

i have an oxblood paradox.

[vurt]

no! sorry, "oxblood pair of docs".

[jancivil]

I don't think the amount of complexity or variation has any necessary relation to how good or not a music is.
There is a type of pop prevalent today that sticks to C major and certain acceptable formulae in its chord choices in such a way it results in very childish music, nursery rhyme level but not-as-memorable kind of affect. Utterly predictable tonal major key music wears on me faster than anything else. However quality might be somewhat a product of craft, melody does not have to be as lame as that within the same strictures. and [at least] 90% of any- everything is crap.

There is a fair amount of blues music that is not 12-bar I IV V basis, John Lee Hooker. Blues is going to have somebody doing something improvisatory or at least it's going to be a different performance the next time which imparts a quality a pop record does not. I personally don't seek out much 12-bar blues because heard it all before. When there's one of these street fairs/chamber of commerce-pushed deals where there's some shite band doing half-baked blues it's almost as annoying to me as certain pop music but part of it is it's inflicted upon me by commerce and I don't get a vote.

[rp314]

We all have our preferences...



That said, I agree that these forms and styles seem to go through their Golden Ages and those of us who profoundly love the Blues have almost a century of wonderful music to listen to--the traditional stuff and the more modern versions from Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, etc...

[rp314]

[rp314]

Let's follow up that Carla Bley composition from the late 1960s with one from Ornette Coleman of a decade earlier...

[cbriggs77]

We’re bound by a western musical scale. There are only so many notes, and within that, only so many combinations of notes. So it makes logical sense that mathematically at this point in our musical history we’ve discovered the most satisfying progressions. But our taste changes like others have said, so who know if the progressions we love now will be the same later in human history.

[jancivil]

I'm not in fact bound by that, no one is except by choice.
(every blues guitarist knows about many things that cannot be sussed by that scale, purely through bending of notes, maybe you do not. the limitation you seek to impose is unnecessary and upon examination false.)

"we've discovered *the* most satisfying progressions" is an opinion, it's not supported by any logic nor can it be. We don't all "love" the same things, certainly not equally. Conceivably the progressions in eg., the John McLaughlin 'blues' number are not covered in your most satisfying list.
Some people do not particularly love V - I, for that matter. Their taste moved to something else, there is no "our taste".

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

We’re bound by a western musical scale. There are only so many notes, and within that, only so many combinations of notes.

Unless you go microtonal.

[cbriggs77]

We’re bound by a western musical scale. There are only so many notes, and within that, only so many combinations of notes.

Unless you go microtonal.

When you’re right, you’re right.

[jancivil]

in a string bend or a bottleneck slide, or in a vocal or other full portamenti, the number of points between any two named tones is pretty much uncountable.
permutation of a given set of twelve - with spacing limited only by human hearing - itself gets to be fairly vast.

IME counting more than say 53 inside an octave perhaps exceeds real utility (but who's counting )

Conventional tertial constructs in conventional use cases notwithstanding, the limitation there is quite easier to draw.