Here is a thing. If you are okay with HTML, you might want to write an article using GitHub pages instead of any blogging platform (e.g. medium.com) The only constrains then become your skills instead of what your chosen platform has decided to support (typically embedding videos, code snippets, ...)
A common thing w/ Nirvana songs is that Kurt plays power chords, and then has the thirds (+ other tones) in the vocal melody.
But also, it was just a (counter-) cultural thing to feign lack of music theory knowledge or practice at the time. Quite a destructive one, I might add.
A nice video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWY4YYmSTWg
Really cool project. I love the animations that go with the songs.
I’d go through all of the chord progressions and make sure they actually match what is being played. There are quite a few errors. Happens to everyone.
Also, you and everyone else should remember that while the band is mostly playing power chords and omitting the fifths, what Cobain sings is part of the chord as it’s heard. This means that, for example, a lot of songs do sound major, Smells like teen spirit is probably in F minor.
I find determining key in popular music to be tricky. Most progressions consist of something like 4 chords, and there isn’t the teleology you see in something like Tin Pan Alley or Chopin to give the sense of where one is to arrive. Even the Axis of Awesome progression can be heard a major or minor depending on how you end the song.
Just like many punks before him, he did know chords, but he wanted that classic punk naive sound and in interviews he claims he doesn't know anything. It's about moving up and down the neck and finding the sweet, sick and weird sounds.
I don't know why the article claims this was a Nirvana discovery. It started in the 70s. Discharge, Wire then Fugazi, Minor Threat. These people are smart, just raw, and they like blunt aesthetics.
This is a remarkably ignorant take. Literally every detail is wrong.
They aren't major chords, they're mostly power chords, which are neither major nor minor (no third and the third provides the major/minor tonality). They often function as minor chords because of the melody or other parts, or just because of how the progression fits together. They aren't unique or new with Cobain, he was part of a long history of punk and rock and roll.
Cobain was a good songwriter in the rock and roll tradition. He was not particularly innovative or doing something technically unheard of, and he wouldn't have claimed to be. He wanted to be a good songwriter, and he succeeded. That's it, don't make up bullshit about it.
Fun Fact: Why is AC/DC nearly all power chords and Major Chords?
short answer: it sounds good
long answer: extra notes are added.
At some point during guitar history, some metal head was like "I wonder what happens if I turn this tube amplifier up ALL THE WAY to 11?" and... it sounded "good". Nobody really knew why at the time, but this distorted electric guitar was like, pleasing to the ear.
Sometime later, we figured out the science of why, after many many models of tube amplifiers had been designed and tinkered with.
It turns out that since electrons, are in fact waves, they can interfere with each other. As they blast across the space/time in a vacuum tube, they can interfere with each other... and if they are modulated in such way, let's say by a musical input, they happen to produce "interference bands" in a certain predictable manner as a function of the input signal.
What does that interference banding look like? Extra notes! Yep, when you slam a powerchord root-fifth at max distortion on a single-ended amplifier (the input stage to a Marshall), you produce "even order harmonics"!
If you rip A+E you'll get:
* Original A (root) * Original E (fifth) * Octave A (very forward, usually -1.5db) * Octave E (very forward, usually -1.5db) * 12th above the root (Another "5th"!) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish) * C# two octaves up (3rd) (Making this a major chord!) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish) * G two octaves up (Minor 7th) (Not as forward, but audible, -2.5dbish)
Whoah!? And the pattern continues but at some point amps filter out the series.
And guitar amplifier dudes also figured out how to make all kinds of distortion sound crazy! A 5150 produces "odd order" harmonics and makes adds totally different content. The pre-amp and the power amp sections interfere with each other, making the output function deterministic, but super complicated!
I used to think people were just being snob-ish about tube amps until I really dove into making my own guitar amp design. It's a crazy clash of music theory, functional harmony, and analog electrical engineering!
Chromatic major chord progressions were already popular since 60s psychedelic rock, and often used in full triads, no "power chords mostly sounding as major" argument required. Don't sleep on The Rolling Stones!
As other posts point out, leaving out the third takes away the major-ness.
It's also worth mentioning the way Kurt often played power chords, using his index for the bass note and barring the rest with his ring finger. This often leads to major chords when the root is on the A string and non-major ambiguous-sounding chords with the root is on the E string. It's obvious as early as the 3rd chord in the intro to Teen Spirit; it has the notes Ab Eb Ab Db (NOTE: Db, not C). It's inconsistent in Kurt's playing (edit: whether or not his strumming makes that 4th string, 4th interval sound come out), but the subtlety is a signature part of Kurt's guitar sound.
Also some of the chord analysis in the site (ex. In Bloom verse) is just flat out wrong.
If you want a song with all majors, where the full chords are played on the main instrument, first thing that comes to mind is Eno's Golden Hours (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxyg3sP03Cs). For parts of songs, maybe the intro to Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pMMIe4hb4)
If you like this you might like The Storyteller by Dave Grohl, it’s a great read from the vantage point of Nirvana’s drummer and his adventures and music influences both before and after.
The Kindle version is $3 right now.
Looking at the chords in the biggest hit, Teen Spirit https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/nirvana/smells-like-tee...
there seems to be a minor chord every 5 seconds or so which doesn't really fit the title?
From the article:
> Careful music analysis was left for other bands.
I'm sorry... but lol what.
> And it's fascinating to think that Kurt Cobain was unaware of any musical composition's rule he was following, but just trusting his musical instict (sic).
This doesn't come as much of a surprise. A good deal of my friends who are musicians (particularly those who could sing) found themselves writing music at a pretty young age before they had any real understanding of music theory.
Not sure Im following.
What is the point of the thread. Github page HTML or music theory.
I don't think there has been a rock album ever since, that would have been so big, popular, revolutionary and generation defining. I guess some genius must have been there.
Kinda like the Beatles there are clasically "wrong" chord progressions that just work. (EG V-IV-1). Just a classic punk album.
I can explain this in one sentence: major chords sound the best on distorted guitar because of the harmonic series, eot.
Finally the text in not-ask-submission do not become just a comment to HN post?
I wonder if genius is carried in the genes?
If so, let's see what happens with Kurt's grandson.
Pretty much every chord he played was a power chord. Thats just a root and a 5th.
It’s neither major or minor, because you need the 3rd to establish that
And nearly every punk and metal band uses predominantly power chords, without any real care in the world as to what the progressions are. It just sounds good to them. There aren’t any rules because punk is a DIY genre. If you told him he was doing a thing, he’d do the opposite just because. And it would still probably slap.
Kurt cobain was a fantastic song writer but you see these types of articles come out now and then propping him up as a genius. His own quote refutes that, and anyone who listens to punk music will agree that trying to analyze it using classical western tonality is silly and pretentious