Harmonic Rhythms and Cycles

You’ve learned 2 chord types, chord symbols, the six prime chords and how to place notes (=voicings). Now it is high time to talk about chord progressions.

1. Cycle of a Chord Progression

The very first thing to be noted is that repetition is crucial in almost all sort of music. In general, a song repeats a cycle of chord progression, whether long or short. You don’t have to endlessly splice different chord progressions one after another.

Simple repetition is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it is an effective way to leave a strong impression to listeners. Let’s look into cyclic structures in music.

Almost 1 Chord / 2 Chords

In synthesizer-featured electronic music prefer repeating relatively short cycles. Especially in techno, it is common to repeat just one chord, one phrase again and again and again. This tendency is also observed in various other genres that predominantly use loop-based samples in their compositions, such as hip-hop and dancehall reggae.

In these genres monotonous repetition is widely accepted as a culture because these tracks are rooted in sequencers or samplers, which are destined to repeat the same phrase.

Looping a simple cycle is also common in rock music.

4 Chord Loop

Cycles composed of 4 chords are one of the standard forms in many pop music genres.

The songs above are especially simple in that they use only prime chords, and use the same chord progression throughout the song almost entirely.

Chord progressions are extremely simple. Instead, they change beats, instruments or melodies to develop a song. This is a possible strategy to make a song memorable.

But with keys set differently, it may be hard to see what these chord progressions are like. Well, then let’s conduct Roman numeral analysis to abstract these chord progressions.

Now you can really see that they are all made up with the combinations of just 6 prime chords! The power of abstraction.

You can also find that “With Or Without You” and “Paparazzi” are based on the identical chord progression. This is a pleasant moment of analysis.

You may not get used to it yet, but eventually, the moment you see these roman numerals, you will be able to imagine chord progressions in your head.

8 Chords or More

The longer a cycle gets, the longer story of music you can write. Above all, classical music tends to construct long progressions without repetition.

If you’d like to produce a dramatic song like slow love ballads, longer progressions will be suitable.

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These are the examples whose chorus is composed of just a single chord progression line without looping. On building such long progressions, non-prime chords greatly help to make variations. But, see, “Heal The World” runs through its chorus part just with 6 prime chords.

Lyrics and Chords

In looped style songs, multiple patterns of lyrics correspond to a single chord progression.

So it inevitably lacks the sense of unity between lyrics and chords. The foreground (=melody) is kinda separated from the background (=chords).

In non-looped style, on the other hand, lyrics and chords are uniquely linked to each other, cooperating to create a story of the song.

But longer progressions will not be as memorable as short loops. So this is like a “double-edged sword” — To make it catchy or dramatic.

3. Harmonic Rhythms

The length of a cycle is not only determined by the numbers of chords, but also how fast chords change. The rate at which the chords change is termed Harmonic Rhythm.

Here’s a simple chord progression with very basic harmonic rhythm. What if the pace of chord change is halved?

How does it feel? Generally speaking, slow harmonic rhythms can bring such moods like chilled, relaxed, expansive, grand, that sort of feel. Then how about doubling the speed?

It is expected that fast harmonic rhythms will bring hasty, uneasy, heated or aggressive mood.

(Dis)arrange Harmonic Rhythms

In practice, Combining multiple rhythms is a very effective way to rock the mood of a song and make it more stimulating.

From slow to fast

Or, it’s even more exciting to incorporate some irregular rhythms. These days complex harmonic rhythms are prevalent in pop music¹.

In these songs, harmonic rhythms seem irregular to ears—the paces are constantly altering or chords switch in unexpected timings etc. Though chords used there is just 6 prime chords (in this 30 sec. preview), they sound quite exciting!

Please remember that just a small idea, when combined, is able to vitalize a song.

Summary

• Usually a song has some looped cycle in its chord progressions.
• The length of a chord progression determines the length of the “story” of a song.
• The pace chords change is termed harmoinc rhythm. It also greatly affects the mood of a song.

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