# Has harmony/melody technique regressed in popular music?



## youngcapone (Mar 1, 2020)

Whenever I watch videos of producers creating songs it just doesn’t seem like much thought is put into the chord progression and melody. It pretty much seems like everyone does the basic pick a scale - pick chords in that scale - and then pick random notes in that scale until they come up with a melody they “like”. 
On a related note, I was watching a tutorial on captain plugins’ “captain chord” plugin and although it made creating chord progressions and melodies simple and easy, it just seemed geared toward that same basic format I described above. Keep in mind that captain plugins is meant to be used by professional producers.
I guess my question is, do modern producers look to advance harmony/melody techniques or is more time spent on developing sounds or maybe something else?
I know this may come off as a criticism, but I’m not saying that whatever’s happening is better or worse, I’m just curious what people’s opinions are or even approaches you use.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

to my limited knoledge yes, melody and harmony overall during the last century has become less and less important in popular music, while on the other hand the importance of sound and rhythm increased. I see often people saying this just about the last decades, but actually even comparing the music of the first half of the 20th century with the music of the second half I see already the same trend with a general decline of melodic and harmonic sophistication (altough of course there were exceptions).
And while I like all the experiments made with rhyhtm and sound and repetition, I think it's sad that on average popular music has lost the taste for complex sophisticated harmonies and long memorable and clever melodies, because those things have a big value. It's like we had paintings made with millions of colors and suddenly mainly works made with yellow red and blue. Obviously it's perfectly possible to make great art with just primary colors, but if everybody would make painting like that people would complain about the fact that we have lost chromatic richness.

I think there are exceptions out there, and I can probably mention a few, but I have the impression that those are indeed exceptions. 
I really hope to be wrong, maybe in the future when I will have listened much more music of these recent decades, maybe discovering things that now are just underground and very little known I will have a different impression and after all there's so much music produced today so that's a possibility.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

What's happened in the top 40 music has definitely gone down over the last few decades. There was more song structure back in the day, melody and some more creative accompaniment. Now it's all about a hook, and milk all there is out of the hook. That is what producers are after now, since that is what sells. Been discovering Gentle Giant. There is absolutely no popular musical act that can compare with them in complexity and counterpoint.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> There is absolutely no popular musical act that can compare with them in complexity and counterpoint.


except for the Great American Songbook and all the other Jazz-based popular music of the generation before.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Interestingly, in the late 70s Gentle Giant attempted to make more commercial music under pressure from their record label. It turned out to be rather disappointing. But there wouldn't be much point in a popular artist making music like Gentle Giant because it wouldn't sell. But for those who appreciate that kind of music, Gentle Giant or the American ensemble Dixie Dregs are both good examples of sophisticated composition.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Bwv 1080 said:


> except for the Great American Songbook and all the other Jazz-based popular music of the generation before.


Any piece in particular?


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> Any piece in particular?


Do you think progressive rock was some great leap in musical sophistication from, say, Jobim or Hoagy Carmichael? That was the zenith of sophistication in popular music, it was all downhill after that


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## Andante Largo (Apr 23, 2020)




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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> What's happened in the top 40 music has definitely gone down over the last few decades. There was more song structure back in the day, melody and some more creative accompaniment. Now it's all about a hook, and milk all there is out of the hook. That is what producers are after now, since that is what sells. Been discovering Gentle Giant. There is absolutely no popular musical act that can compare with them in complexity and counterpoint.


Well, in all honesty, Gentle Giant was never considered a pop group.

There was some pretty schlocky pop music being made at the same time GG was making their decidedly non pop music.

The top 10 pop hits from 1975 (the same year as the Free Hand) are not too impressive. There's some pretty schlocky stuff:

1. Love Will Keep Us Together - The Captain and Tennille
2. Rhinestone Cowboy - Glen Campbell
3. Philadelphia Freedom - Elton John (one of Elton's worst)
4. Before the Next Teardrop Falls - Freddy Fender
5. My Eyes Adored You - Frankie Valli
6. Shining Star - Wind and Fire
7. Fame - David Bowie
8. Laughter In the Rain - Neil Sedaka
9. One of These Nights - Eagles
10. Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver

The only redeeming songs on the list are the Bowie and Earth, Wind and Fire.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Do you think progressive rock was some great leap in musical sophistication from, say, Jobim or Hoagy Carmichael? That was the zenith of sophistication in popular music, it was all downhill after that


I guess it all depends on what is being referred to as "sophistication".

It is my understanding, that a great deal of prog has: greater use of complex time signatures and polyrhythms, chord progressions, dissonance and atonality, less predictable, then the song writing and arrangements of the artists you mention.

To me, that argues to a certain level of sophistication.

Now, if you want to argue that the artists you mention above, were more sophisticated in how they used the musical tools they chose to use, in order to communicate their musical message, than that seems like more of personal preference, and not some objective scale of sophistication.

It seem pretty subjective that you hear more sophistication in Jobim (I'm certainly a pretty big fan), or Carmichael and I hear more sophistication in The Thinking Plague, Magma, or PFM, because we may be listening with different criteria.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

The jazz-based popular music I think is generally more sophisticated in terms of harmony and voice leading, where the prog music tends to be more complex in terms of rhythm and song structures. Since the OP is referring to harmony/melody, then I would tend to agree the jazz-based popular music is probably more sophisticated in this area.

That said if we are calling prog 'popular' music, it is a pretty large and diverse genre and there is a lot of it I have not listened to.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Simon Moon said:


> I guess it all depends on what is being referred to as "sophistication".
> 
> It is my understanding, that a great deal of prog has: greater use of complex time signatures and polyrhythms, chord progressions, dissonance and atonality, less predictable, then the song writing and arrangements of the artists you mention.


in terms of harmony and melodies I disagree. Jobim wrote songs with harmonies way more sophisticated than anything I know written by prog bands I know. Just look at songs like Inutil paisagem. To put dissonances here and there is actually quite a simple thing to do. To throw minor seconds and augmented fourths it's easy, but it's how one work with it that makes the difference.
And in terms of melodies look how long and varied were the melodies of the songbook, while they weren't never a big concern for progressive rock bands. Since we're mentioning Carmichael: tell me any melody that has a lenght and it's as elaborate and at the same time memorable as those (both in the verse and in the chorus) of Stardust in prog music. Or the chromatic one on All through the night of Cole Porter. Or outside the states, the long melodies written by Pixinguinha (like Rosa). Or look at the harmony on Ill Wind of Harold Arlen.
Or the harmony in a song like Noturno em tempo de samba, a song written by Custodio Mesquita in 1937






Prog music sure used a lot weird time signatures and polyrhythms and sometimes atonality too (especially bands like Henry Cow or others RIO bands) but my impression is that often they didn't know what to do with those things and it doesn't sound fully realized. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of prog and it produced very good music at its best and a lot of fascinating stuff even when not at its best. But many times I feel like they just wanted to do complex things without having a clear direction.
On the other hand the great american songbook was about songs, so there wasn't a focus on making experimental or dissonant stuff for the sake of the experiment, but that doesn't mean that that stuff is simple to make just because it's catchy. 
They were sometimes classical composers (like Vernon Duke) with a deep knowledge of harmony, but they used a particular harmonic, rhytmic or melodic effect having always a sense of the whole piece, instead of having the idea of trying a lot of different experimental things in the same piece and put everything together. 
The rhythm on Puttin' on the Ritz for instance is more interesting for me than all the time signatures used by Egg on the Polite force. And onestly I don't remember any PFM music being that sophisticated in terms of harmony, they were quite melodic and close to folk for the stuff of them I know.
To me in terms of harmony the most advanced things in popular music in the second half of the century (besides jazz) to me are those of brazilian songwriters (who were in many ways looking back at the GAS), like Toninho Horta, Guinga, Carlos Lyra, Djavan, Ivan Lins, Jobim, Johnny Alf etc. Some Steely Dan, some Stevie Wonder (like Too High), some Brian Wilson and Frank Zappa.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

And are odd time signatures really more complex or sophisticated than the syncopations in jazz and latin based popular music? Counting 5/4 is easier than, say, a son clave

Check this out, this was mainstream popular music in the 40s


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I don't hear any counterpoint in the Hoagy Charmichael's Stardust. It sounds like one melody to some chords, still a great song regardless. But show me something like this. i can agree some avant garde jazz like Dolphy did have more lines, but it was more improvisational and less organized than this.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't hear any counterpoint in the Hoagy Charmichael's Stardust. It sounds like one melody to some chords, still a great song regardless. But show me something like this. i can agree some avant garde jazz like Dolphy did have more lines, but it was more improvisational and less organized than this.


Plenty of counterpoint in these arrangements


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't hear any counterpoint in the Hoagy Charmichael's Stardust. It sounds like one melody to some chords,


which it is (I mentioned Stardust for the melody). But counterpoint isn't the only way to make sophisticated things with harmony. There's a lot of non functional harmony with extended chords that is sophisticated even without having many lines together. There's Bach and there's Ravel if I can put it this way.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

youngcapone said:


> I guess my question is, do modern producers look to advance harmony/melody techniques or is more time spent on developing sounds or maybe something else?


Many pop music producers are self-taught, so they have limited understanding of "advanced" music theory techniques, but... have good idea about what Western public wants to hear (which is not complexity in melody, harmony or counterpoint - the last one is a sure a way to empty the dancefloor and music is mostly about dancing these days.)
(I think most work done these days is by mixing engineers who have to create nice sounding media, given simplistic pieces, performed in a mechanical fashion. And its their job to apply effects like pitch correction and reverbration - for example old time producers would have just recorded in a big hall with natural echo.)

Look into Japanese popular music, if you are looking for more compositional sophistication.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Many pop music producers are self-taught, so they have limited understanding of "advanced" music theory techniques, but... have good idea about what Western public wants to hear (which is not complexity in melody, harmony or counterpoint - the last one is a sure a way to empty the dancefloor and music is mostly about dancing these days.)


Is it really like that though?
I mean, people in the past have been into sophisticated music. There's been a period when classical composers where successful. There's been a period where jazz musicians were successful. Even in pop music there were guys like Jobim, and bossa nova was considered very light music to the point of being used as elevator music and in commercial while being sophisticated music harmonically.
I think it's a bit like a snake biting its tail: at some point certain producers decided that simple music was what people wanted to hear, and people hearing just that and nothing else become used to it and felt that something different or more complex was strange and uncool. 
I'm someone who has developed through the years a huge appreciation for harmony, and I remember that at first (I started listening music with some quite bad pop music) when I casually listened to something harmonically sophisticated I had exactly that kind of reaction. Like something unnecessarily complex and with a sort of weird aural effect.
Frank Zappa said it perfectly:


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

norman bates said:


> Is it really like that though?
> I mean, people in the past have been into sophisticated music. There's been a period when classical composers where successful. There's been a period where jazz musicians were successful. Even in pop music there were guys like Jobim, and bossa nova was considered very light music to the point of being used as elevator music and in commercial while being sophisticated music harmonically.
> I think it's a bit like a snake biting its tail: at some point certain producers decided that simple music was what people wanted to hear, and people hearing just that and nothing else become used to it and felt that something different or more complex was strange and uncool.
> I'm someone who has developed through the years a huge appreciation for harmony, and I remember that at first (I started listening music with some quite bad pop music) when I casually listened to something harmonically sophisticated I had exactly that kind of reaction. Like something unnecessarily complex and with a sort of weird aural effect.
> Frank Zappa said it perfectly:


Could it be that music doesn't have to be melodically or harmonically complex to be sophisticated?

I'm honestly not much into pop music myself, but in addition to rhythmic aspects, it seems to me that's there's an appreciation for a kind of timbral complexity in today's pop music that has been increasingly important over the past couple of decades.

Maybe not my cup of tea, but it's not something I'm steeped in (no pun intended), so my lack of appreciation for it doesn't necessarily mean much.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

apricissimus said:


> Could it be that music doesn't have to be melodically or harmonically complex to be sophisticated?


of course, don't get me wrong, even with my "fetish" for harmony I know that music can be sophisticated in many ways even appearing very simple. And it could be good even without great sophistication. There's a lot of popular music where harmonic simplicity is something that improves its effectiveness. 
But that's not the point of the thread I guess.



apricissimus said:


> I'm honestly not much into pop music myself, but in addition to rhythmic aspects, it seems to me that's there's an appreciation for a kind of timbral complexity in today's pop music that has been increasingly important over the past couple of decades.


I agree, and actually I'd say the period goes back much more than a couple decades. Actually that's true for classical music too during all the century, sound and timbre has almost replaced in terms of importance melody and harmony.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Rhythm>Melody>Harmony>Counterpoint - It is ironic that music theory deals mainly with harmony and to some extent counterpoint. People learn how to create decent rhythms and melody from existing compositions and by improvising on their own. There is no systematic way to learn rhythm (too many options even in commonly used meters) and melody (which is often times quite simple in pop music, so you don't need to be some kind of genius to come with something singable); and there are no real rules.

Any music that is not for solo instrument relies on different timbres, I don't know how it can be a focus of composition. Maybe you mean something like orchestration/arrangements with lots of different instruments to avoid monotony (which is probably a more valid way to create audible variation than changing the harmony for example)?

If the music is going to be just a background, harmony is probably the most import element.

About polyphonic music- it is the most sophisticated form of music, but: people can't really concentrate equally on several melodic lines; is associated with religious rituals, which is a big turn off for most young people; and few people listen to music for its own sake - music is mainly used as a mood regulator or background, or for dancing.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Any music that is not for solo instrument relies on different timbres, I don't know how it can be a focus of composition. Maybe you mean something like orchestration/arrangements with lots of different instruments to avoid monotony (which is probably a more valid way to create audible variation than changing the harmony for example)?


not only that. In popular music the manipulation of sound happens in many ways. Electronic instruments, post-production, effects, mixing... guitarists usually have a lot of effects in rock music.

To make an example, this is the work of Fennesz, who uses guitar and electronics in his music:






or My Bloody Valentine, a band famous for their guitar sound. The guitarist Kevin Shields spent a lot of time to achieve this kind of timbres. Again like for Fennesz the tunes in terms of harmony, ryhthm or melody are not that developed, but the sound is the most interesting thing of their music


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