There’s so many ways you can play one chord progression that the repetition isn’t ever exactly the same.
My favourite chord? Bb6th with added 9th.
I like inventive melodies and chord changes, a little bit of creativity.
The rhythm, the sounds, the tonality, the chord sequences, the individual effect of each instrument and each section of the band – I’m talking about a whole continent in my music.
A major component of jazz is improvisation, which forces you to stay in the moment because you never know what will be coming up. There’s a lot of freedom and space available as you improvise around the chord changes.
Light rails are too bus-like to impress most commuters, too squished and close to the ground. Monorails, by contrast, strike a chord with travelers. There’s something about the sleek designs, the pillowy rides, and the panoramic views that just enchants.
The way jazz works is that we take a theme, and then we write using the same structure, same chord changes, and then we can do different tunes.
There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.
I’m not sure it’s affection for Australian or New Zealand films or not. I think it’s just that there’s something about ‘Wilderpeople’ that has really struck a chord.
I definitely don’t see myself as much of a singer, because my upbringing is really based around the guitar, learning chord progressions and that sort of thing. So the singing aspect of what I do has been a secondary adventure.
I don’t need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I’m playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it’s all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.
A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout – rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story – but the chord has to be resolved.
Song of Ireland’ struck a chord in Ireland. There are tons of Rabbitts there.
I can read a chord chart, but I couldn’t read a note chart.
After 35 years of bone-crushing rock guitar playing, I’m finally starting to get my head out of the harmonic sand and learning how to play over chord changes.
There’s a richness to the old works if you look before the 1950s. The chord progressions and the language was more complicated, especially in the jazz and classical world.
My favorite punk rock song is ‘Linoleum’ by NOFX. That’s pure harmony, the coolest chord changes.
After all, what is cinema? It is an interaction, a discussion that throws up questions and provides some solutions. The solutions might look simple, impractical or too fictionalised. But one must realise that viewers empathise with certain characters because they strike a chord with the viewers’ needs and frame of mind.
I’m kind of a geek when it comes to talking about chord structures or melody, so I always loved in-depth conversations with musicians about things. I also enjoy when a fan can just put something on, and they really know nothing about music other than they like it and it touches them in some way.
Whichever chord progressions move me, whether it’s rock, jazz, doo-wop or soul, I’m going to put it together and not be worried about whether people can put it in a lane or not.
I didn’t know that you were supposed to tune the guitar to an open chord, and I learned to play slide with a normal tuning. I think it’s a little more melodic that way and doesn’t sound so bluesy. Of course, if I could play like David Lindley or Ry Cooder, I’d be a happy man!
That’s the power of music, a key sequence or a chord sequence or even a note can do something to you physically that’s uncontrollable.
It’s like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling.
We’d hold a chord for three hours if we could.
My role in Nandita Das’ ‘Firaaq’ as a woman too impotent to intervene when her community resorts to brutality and violence has struck a chord wherever the film has been screened.
How many ways can you cut a steak? How many ways can a chord go? I’ve been in this business so long, I know how to cut it.
Fair treatment of human beings and animals in many different realms strikes a chord with me.
It’s just a real thrill when you’re showing somebody a chord progression or something, and you see that light come on, you know. You see ’em ‘get it.’
A lot of us have classical and jazz training, and it would be hard for us to work with a hip-hop artist who doesn’t know a lot about the technical aspects of music. But when you listen to Wyclef’s records, you hear bridges, chord changes and real structure. You can tell he has big ears.
When we do reggae, it’s normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there’ll be chord changes, key changes.
I’m definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it’s not very productive to come in with nothing.
True Americanism is practical idealism. Its aims, instead of being materialistic and mechanical, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian. In this way, the U.S. can provide and express ideals that strike a chord in humans everywhere – a declaration of independence on behalf of all the peoples of the world.
I remember sobbing myself to sleep because I couldn’t play an open G chord.
I had an explosion on my vocal chord.
As long as there’s young people, they can look to Jim to help them cut the umbilical chord.
All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.
I’ve seen some female players, and they get up there and play an A chord and leave… and it’s not a good representation. You can take it seriously and love it as much as a guy loves it, not just to get up there and pose.
Anytime I can use open strings in a chord, or add a ninth, I will.
I went to my friend’s house one day, and he had an electric guitar he had just bought with a tiny little amp. I turned the volume up to 10 and I hit one chord, and I said, I’m in love.
Not everyone in Santa Monica is a well-heeled, juice-cleansing, Prius-driving yogini, but for better or worse, that is the city’s dominant chord.
I loved the idea of Bowie as an artist, with his Burroughsian cut-up technique, creating these undecipherable, abstract songs, where we all projected our own meanings onto his jarring word choices and unexpected chord changes.
Actually, because I’m so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That’s how hard I play, and that’s how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me.
I don’t understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?
I was working like a dog as a housekeeper, barista, nanny, cook, so I could save enough money to really sit with my instruments. Whenever I had 20 minutes, I would practice a new chord or write a new verse.
It’s very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don’t mean to say it’s very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that’s my taste in music – my taste in chord progressions and melodies.
I wanted to write songs which I think is a different thing. I wanted to write music that is informed by folk music. The chord progressions are obvious references.
It’s really hard to find a love song that is real. That’s when you really strike a chord with somebody, when you dig in deep and grab a hold.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ – such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.
Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
I was 16 when I started playing. I borrowed a friend’s acoustic guitar, and I had a Beatles chord book. I just taught myself that way.
I used to try and make up visually for what I couldn’t play as a musician. I used to get into very incredible visual things where, in order just to make one chord more lethal, I’d make it a really lethal looking thing, whereas really it’s just going to be picked normally.
I found when I started getting serious about writing music, that my writing was country songs. It was basically country subject matter, country melodies and simple chord changes.
When the Killers first came out, a lot of people thought we were English, and it touched a chord in me, because my roots are very American.
You can never predict success. You can never predict another person liking what you are doing. But if you are an interesting storyteller and if you strike the right chord, perhaps you will be understood.
