“Creating Art & Music” is an introductory course designed to introduce creative activities in the context of art and music. Thus far the course has been taught at the middle school, high school, community college, and university level (with appropriate adaptations for each level). Each week, students in the course are posting their projects in this strand of the Snap! forum. Here’s a link to the course materials:
This week’s module is titled “Musical Chords”. In this module, we will begin exploring musical scales and how they can be used to build both chords and chord progressions. Chords play a crucial role in music by providing harmonic support and structure, shaping the emotional tone, and creating rhythmic momentum. Chord progressions guide the flow of music through tension and release, while different types of chords evoke various emotional responses.
Unlike melodies, chord progressions are not subject to copyright, meaning that the same progressions can be found repeated throughout music history.
For your assignment this week, we would like you to review the documents found on the course website and then explore the chord progressions in the Snap*!* program linked below. Once you have a chord progression you like, add drum tracks to create a full rhythm section. In subsequent modules, we will explore crafting melodies and harmonies to accompany these tracks.
These are some of the most common chord progressions found in contemporary popular music. (All examples provided here are in the key of C, so you don’t have to worry about sharps or flats. However, if you would like to try a different key, simply switch to a different starting chord and keep the same intervals between the chords in the progression.)
The video below offers an explanation of why each chord progression in the program above works well and provides several examples of each progression being used across different musical genres.
Here is my chord progression and drum track! I experimented with a few different orders of major chords with one minor chord in the third position since I think it adds more depth to the progression. This one ended up sounding the best to me out of the various ones I tried!
This is my chord progression. There wasn’t a particular vibe I was going for, more so just experimenting. I only used major chords here but that sounded kind of boring so I added a lot of different drums to try and make it sound better. I also changed the instrument from the traditional piano to a saxophone and I think that it sounds much more interesting!
For this chord progression, I tried my best to create a vibe that was somewhat slow paced and welcoming, thinking over pop songs that I know. To do this, I messed around with the chords until I got to the key of B minor which allowed me to produce the vibe I was going for. I then layered on some drum lines to help enhance the beat.
Here is my project! I definitely did more than needed, but I got lost in the zone and kept adding on. I wanted to mess around with chords of some popular songs that I know and ended up adding the melody on. Right now, it’s a bit dense and definitely could use some abstracting but I used the chords and melody of “Love Story” by Taylor Swift.
I did the C chord progression of vi IV I V and then reversed it. I also added a bass drum that held a steady beat and then the snare drum that played sixteenth notes. There wasn’t a vibe I was going for, I was mostly just playing around and trying different beats and instruments to see what sounded good.
This is really cool, I definitely heard Love Story as it was playing. There’s not anything I would change, I like how the chords go with the notes and love the drums!
This is seriously impressive work. I was able to instantly recognize what you were playing without even reading your project description. I think the drum backing is a really nice touch here to add some tempo behind a rather slow song. Great work overall!
Here is my impression of Kids by MGMT. This chord progression follows the vi, IV, I, V pattern. Additionally, I added the melody behind this iconic opening to better represent the song as a whole. While the melody in this song is produced by a synthesizer, I felt as though the electric bass did a strong job replicating this sound and covering up the slur that happens between the second and third measures. I also followed the relatively simple drum backing used within this song’s opening as well.
https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html#present:Username=artiehumphreys&ProjectName=Chords
Here’s my take on Midnight in Harlem by Tedeschi Trucks Band. I had a lot of fun making this and learning about the chords feature of TuneScope, but I had a hard time coordinating the organ part with the chords as the actual song has a lot of ties and complex notes that cannot be implemented normally. However, I look to extend this to add a drum beat later this week.
Here is my chords, I wasn’t really going for any specific vibe but came out with an interesting sound. Could definitely pair this with a cool animation in the future.
I tried to change my song to a lullaby from a video game I liked, because that song is in 4/4 time. However, even with this change my syncing issue has not been fixed. Is there any way I can fix this?
For my chord progression, I wanted to make a rhythm with many notes played per chord. I looked for a more upbeat progression and ended up choosing C F Am G. I put it in the third octave because I thought the fourth sounded too high with the guitar.
For my chord progression, I started with one of the chord progressions we learned in class and then added some of my own. I played each chord 4 times to create a rhythm. I was thinking of a chord in my head that I wanted to play and I couldn’t figure out so I chose D major which gave me a different sound than I was expecting, but I still like it.
Here is my chord progression! I like Adele’s song “Someone like you” and saw that it followed a simple chord progression, so I wanted to recreate it along with the melody from the chorus. I thought it ended up sounding like the song, except I hear an extra pause here and there in the song, which may be due to me improperly setting up each note.
My project is inspired by a familiar song-like melody using a chord progression, but the ending sounds slightly incomplete since the last quarter note seems to be missing when I played it.
I really liked the way that the D4 minor key added a somber tone to the chord I was building, and given that I really don’t have much of an idea of what I am doing with music-writing was fairly proud of the simple chord I built. I would like to expand this more by the end of the week.
I decided to use “Paris” by the Chainsmokers because this artist has more of an electronic sound, so I thought it could be easier to build up the different layers of the song using code. This song also uses the same chord progression throughout the song, making it easier to loop. One thing that I found frustrating is that the Loop-Chord dropdown option does not seem to work on the track block. I had to manually duplicate the chord in the track many times in order for it to keep playing.
I like that you used the same chord repeated several times to make it more upbeat and dynamic! Your code is very neat and easy to read and I like that you used a reporter block to establish the rhythm.