What do the music of Beethoven and Kanye West have in common? “Not Much!” would be a typical reply. What does modern day rap have to do with Beethoven?
Or, ask most high school students to trade in their favorite pop band for Mozart and you might get laughed out of the classroom as they claim that classical music has no relevance to today’s music.
However, I argue that each generation of musicians believes that they are creating innovative music, when in fact, they are regurgitating the foundations of classical music established by classical composers. Follow me from classical times to the modern day while I focus on these two foundations: chord progressions and keys of music (examples being A minor, C major, etc.) and show how they’re applied.
So what are chord progressions and keys of music? Music Theory Instructor Ian Temple defines a chord progression as “just any succession of musical chords, which themselves are groupings of two or more different notes typically played simultaneously.” (Soundfly team, Flypaper) In most western music most chord progressions have a tonic (the focus of the melody) and a dominant (the note in a chord progression that leads to a tonic). Keys of music are the scales in which the music revolves.
A legendary mathematician Pythagoras discovered that notes with a whole number ratio while sound harmonized while notes with a non-whole number ratio would give off a dissonant sound. Pythagoras created the first 12 note chromatic scale. The scale revolves around perfect 5ths tuned in the ratio 3:2. Most modern pop music today still uses Pythagoras’s scale to create that famed catchy 4 chord progression ( I–V–vi–IV).