Harmony
5 tracks.
The order in which chords follow each other. A few progressions recur across thousands of songs; the choice shapes whether music feels resolved, yearning or restless.
Read more on WikipediaThe African-American music born in the Deep South around the start of the 20th century, built on call and response, bent "blue" notes and short repeating forms such as the twelve-bar blues. Almost every later popular style, from rock and soul to house, carries some of its scales and phrasing.
Music centred on a minor scale, whose lowered third gives a darker or more melancholic colour than a major key. Much dance music is in minor keys, which keeps euphoria bittersweet.
A note held or repeated, usually in the bass, while the chords above it change. It builds tension because the harmony keeps moving against something that does not.
Two or more voices singing different notes at the same time, so that together they sound a chord. Stacked harmonies make a chorus feel wider and warmer.
John Newman, Kove
Kove drives John Newman's northern-soul plea for a second chance into rolling drum and bass, the raw voice riding fast breaks and big, bright chords.
Daft Punk
Nile Rodgers' chicken-scratch guitar, Pharrell's easy vocal and Daft Punk's robot choir turn a four-chord loop into the most irresistible disco revival of the 2010s: the lead single of Random Access Memories, in its radio edit.
Aloe Blacc
A hard-times plea set to a Brooklyn retro-soul jam: Aloe Blacc's 2010 hit, the theme of HBO's How to Make It in America, heard here live in Berlin in 2011, where a chorus about a job lost and a dollar borrowed is made for a room to sing.
Deluxe
'Tum Rakak' is a song by Deluxe, the moustachioed band from Aix-en-Provence: a funky live-band groove in B-flat minor with Liliboy singing a gleefully absurd lyric about curiosity, party crumbs and a truck that reeks in the heat.
