This all started out as trying to find easy songs — rhythmically and melodically — for my students to learn to play their instruments. I taught a middle-school, instrument-based music class at an international school in Germany. The job was pitched to me as a traditional American style band program, but when I got there, I felt that it just wasn’t working for the students. And if it ain’t working for the students, it ain’t working for the teacher. I slowly changed things. Very slowly.
Then it became something to help my students learn to improvise. I eventually started making leveled materials and had students working mostly in small groups according to experience and instrument transposition. I wanted students to learn to hear things for themselves. While teaching, I found Christopher Azzara’s Developing Musicianship through Improvisation and that made me realize the value of two-chord songs. Most improvisation books start with the blues — not a bad place to start, but Azzara’s book made me realize it could be even simpler and provide access for people with “no background,” with a jazz background, and with a classical background. Anyone who’s learning music, of course, has some background, even if it’s only listening. I felt volumes two and three of the series went too fast, particularly volume three: suddenly, after doing two songs with three chords, we’re doing Rhythm changes? Secondary dominants? Altered chords? A bit much. The basic model of the method, however, is solid, and the idea of working with a very limited harmony set was appealing. My ideas and materials still needed a lot of work, but I left the job and the town to be a mom as our family moved to Prague. The seeds were planted: break things down into the smallest musical units and find repertoire that fits.
Then it became something to teach ukulele and songwriting. I was offered an opportunity to teach ukulele and saw it as a chance to work out my two-chord ideas. I looked at what chord combinations are possible in open position and started filling in a spreadsheet with songs that fit the bill. We learn a song and then we write a new song over the same chord progression. In this way, we review the chords and we develop a sense of what these chords can do musically and emotionally (you need a relationship with harmonies!). My students have come up with some pretty fabulous little ditties and it keeps them motivated.
Why just two chords? With two chords, it’s one chord or the other chord and that is easy to hear. It’s easier to make up melodies that fit the chords. With more complex songs (i.e., more than two chords), a cadence — the chords that mark the end of a phrase — consists of two chords, so working with two chords can help you hear that, too.
I am going to try to present all of those things: pedagogical materials, improv materials, songwriting materials, all in the order that I use for teaching ukulele, but they should be used by anyone on any instrument (yes, voice is an instrument).
What does all this stuff mean?
Title (year of publication/composition/appearance, if known)
composer, if known
style, place of origin
Recording artist, when it’s not the composer
YouTube link
Spotify link
key: The flavor of the song — major, minor, mixolydian, misheberakh, etc. and its tonic (home) note, e.g. F major, C blues
Chords have jobs. Here are five ways to talk about chords and how they function.
Euroclassical function names: These are what is used in English-speaking, classical music pedagogy, but have crossed-over into talking about other musics, with mixed results. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Tagg: Philip Tagg is a musicologist who has come up with some ways to extend and clarify how we think about music that often has roots in Europe (folk, Afro-diaspora musics), but a strict Euroclassical way of naming things doesn’t necessarily clarify what is going on musically. Since Classical music rarely only uses two chords for a whole piece, the songs we’ll be looking at will fall nicely under Tagg’s jurisdiction.
Riemann: Hugo Riemann was a German music theorist, flourishing in the latter half of the 19th century. His ideas are what is taught in Germanic and Slavic speaking countries. I learned about this (the hard way) as an exchange student. Once I got over the shock that the music theory I was learning back home in the good ol’ USA was not universal, I grew rather fond of this terminology. I like to use it because I feel Sp — the relative minor of the subdominant, Subdominantparalele — tells me more about what the ii chord can do more than calling it “a ii chord” or “the supertonic;” it tells me that I can switch it out for the subdominant.
Scale degrees in Roman numerals: The basis of English-speaking nomenclature in both classical and jazz. Even the Germans use it sometimes. Even rock ’n’ rollers use it sometimes. Major chords are uppercase, minor (and diminished) are lowercase, unless you do Schenkerian theory, then they are all uppercase. But again, I like the information at a glance that using uppercase and lowercase affords, and we are dealing here with songs outside Schenkerian jurisdiction. (Schekerian theory can have useful applications outside of Common Practice Period classical music, but with only two chords, not so much…)
Chord names: What you are actually going to play on a ukulele or guitar or what have you. This does not give you a sense of what the function of the chord is; it only is shorthand for what pitches to play. In that sense, it’s the most important because it will get you playing and you can leave the rest of the gobbledygook above for the birds. I’m one of those birds.
I will be looking at the progressions in the following order. Here I’m going to use only capital Roman numeral scale degree names, since we are talking in generalities.
I-V
I-IV
I-VII
I-II
The keys represented in the songs are based on what is possible in open position on ukulele. Then I will look at the same progressions in other keys, and then some of the more unusual chord pairs (I-VI, I-III). Then I might just start all over. There are a lot of two-chord songs out there.
Mode: Basically the same as “scale,” but I decided that mode is more general and scale is very specific to the Euroclassical tradition. Either way, it’s simply the pitch set that is used in both the melody and the harmony of the song.
Melody: This is all the notes in the melody, in the ranges they appear, using solfege. I use moveable-do, la-based minor (re-based dorian, sol-based mixolydian, etc.). Ed Gordon does a lovely job explaining why this system is best, but in short, we don’t perceive everything as a modification of a major scale, so we shouldn’t teach it that way (scale-degree numbers work the same as do-based minor, so no on that, too). As a mnemonic device for remembering nomenclature or as a way of comparing structural elements, do-based minor/scale degrees is fine; but to train your ears to the aural flavors — the focus here — it’s not.
Form: The order of ideas (phrases) marked as same, similar, or different. This is based on the melody and not the lyrics. I love talking about form with students because it makes learning music much less scary. “Look it’s the same thing over here! You’ve already learned that bit! Yay!” Also, it’s good for understanding how to structure their own songs.
Meter: How beats are grouped. Again, here I turn to Ed Gordon for terminology, because I think it makes more sense than “simple” and “compound.”
Suggested Time Signature: How I would notate a transcription of the song. You may beg to differ. You may also choose not to notate. But a time signature might mean more to you than “duple, paired.”
Other recordings: The main reason for this is if you want to learn the song in a different key and play along (especially if you are not using this to learn ukulele and are instead, for example, learning to improvise on, say, alto saxophone in which a different key might be a very positive thing). Equally important is simply to hear other possibilities, other voices, other arrangements. Occasionally, one of the other recordings is wildly different (Sing it with me: “One of these things is not like the others…”) and I usually try to point that out.
For learning to improvise, I highly recommend Christopher Azzaria’s book “Developing Musicianship through Improvisation.” Simply get volume 1 and apply the methods to any of the two-chord songs listed here.
I do not do comments on this blog because I do not deal with spam. I do welcome constructive comments if you want to post about it on your own blog. I’ve got a google alert on “two chord songs.”
two chords 