How to write a hardcore punk riff [video]
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In the video he says there are a lot of I-IV-V intervals in this genre of music. In a harmonic sense though they don't fit into any sort of chord progression. It's not a major I-IV-V, it's not a i-iv-V or a i-iv-v. It's just 3-4 notes played individually so they don't really function as a traditional definition of a chord progression which establishes or goes against a key. It's ambiguous.
We experience an E1 when A2 is played over E2.
What we don’t hear is a third (9th or 10th harmonic) and the third forms the basis of the harmonic theories from the Period of Common Practice, and because the video is academic, those theories are the context in which chord progressions are discussed in the video.
Full disclosure, I am a self-taught, punk musician with minimal knowledge of music theory. But most hardcore punk songs are just pop songs sped up, so I don't see how one can have a chord progression and the other can't.
I don't really listen to this type of music but based on the quick snippets that were played only blitzkrieg bop had a chord progression. The other songs were power chords or what sounded like just single notes being played. If other songs in this genre you've heard are playing full bar chords than those would likely be considered to have a chord progression.
Also, since most of this discussion, including the video, was around guitar, you can have a chord progressions with one person playing only power chords but someone else has to fill in the gap, like the bass or singer. It's over the whole arrangement not an individual part.
Edit: It is! Look at his email.
These seminal hardcore bands not only had fantastically skilled musicians (including vocals), but also they were coming from a much different place than we assumed, something I didn't find out until later.
It's a mistake to think of them as amateurs who only knew the Sex Pistols and Ramones before they picked up their instruments. Bad Brains started out as a jazz/pop band. Greg Ginn of Black Flag also had some kind of jazz backgroud. I read somewhere that one of their favorite albums in the tour van in the early 80s was ZZ Top's Eliminator. Flea, who played bass in Fear before cofounding RHCP, was a high-level French Horn player in high school. East Bay Ray - surf and jazz. D Boon of the Minutemen studied flamenco guitar at one point.
There's a great book by Michael Azzerad (Our band could be your life, https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our-band-...) which gets into the influences of many 80s/early 90s bands including Minor Threat, who late in their existence were veering off into U2 influenced rock.
I know hardcore is fast, but had no idea the BPM was 300-400 for many of these songs. I remember seeing the Circle Jerks once and their new bass player couldn't keep up. His hand was clearly in pain.
IMO a classic artistic trap, especially for those enamored with a particular genre. Also a musician here, who has seen plenty of copycat scene bands, as well as others who have transcended their niche partially by having rich and diverse sources of inspiration.
The slogan at the time was "kill your heroes". Hüsker Dü?
For me, the greats at that time, 1980's hardcore, were the kids in the pit. The kids putting on shows in basements. The kids making copies of copies of copies of cassette tapes of music recorded from a boombox while driving around a city two hours away at 2 AM in the morning on a college radio station because that's the only time they played hardcore on the radio and it wasn't sold in record stores in your city.
Bad Brains did not start out as a jazz/pop band. Darryl: "a lot of people try to misinterpret and say Bad Brains were jazz fusionists but we weren't. We were just teenagers that were looking into that style of music before we started to listen to punk rock music." They couldn't listen to hardcore because hardcore didn't exist yet, they had to help invent it. People exaggerate the musical background of those kids. And the importance of that musical background.
The music was dance music for pissed off teenage kids with shaved heads. It didn't need to be great. If you look at the back of the DOA record Bloodied but Unbowed, it says "we want to create a world so free we can run wild".
https://i.discogs.com/Oa4bo9uc2FZ0elSuP2u60tHbwXqvEPKdDLeSZa...
That's definitional hardcore. That's what is was about. That's what hardcore meant to me. It wasn't about chord progressions.
We failed. And now that world is gone to the point that few remember it ever existed.
Guided By Angels: https://youtu.be/Z--D1flPLnk
Hertz: https://youtu.be/zb5Ja6V4OeY
Best modern punk band by a mile, lead singer is incredible!
Edit: They're playing in my city tomorrow but it's sold out.
If anyone is looking to sell 1 or 2 tickets for Amyl and The Sniffers in Berlin on Nov 9, 2022, please comment or send me an e-mail.
"This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band"
He's not trying to "nail the spirit" and fully aware that his analysis is just window dressing at the end of the day
But there's more thought involved in labelling the riffs in the video than composing them :D
Arguing over the "spirit" of punk in 2022 is a full decade more absurd than arguing over the spirit of the Andrews Sisters would have been in 1977.
Or to put it another way, the only way to be into punk these days is to entirely miss its point.
YMMV.
Or the "spirit" of jazz in 1977 or the blues at more or less any point in the 20th century. I'm not sure the relative absurdity of arguing that musical genres have "spirit" or an ethos, or any sort of basic continuity is measured in years since first release...
And I don't think kids picking up guitars and tuning them to drop D to play one finger chords really fast are that much more influenced by '77 nostalgia or the barre chords in the little-remembered fanzine than music theory videos. But the basic approach changes a lot less than the ad hoc theory applied to it, or indeed the music.
Barbershop quartet would be more daring.
And of course, Black MIDI has a formalism consistent with academic music and modernist composition of the 20th century.
Which is to say, Black MIDI is avant-garde and insiders sitting at computer looking at notes on a screen.
There’s no outrage and nothing outrageous.
I get the sense that I won't be able to post something you won't manage to find derivative and un-punk, but these guys are among the more unique modern guitar driven music I know of. YMMV.
Certainly by 1990, rappers had take the mantle of “that’s not music” outrage, and sampling was becoming what was considered the talentless noise not at all musical.
I mean I know a few people who have been into punk for forty years. Some have grandkids.
There’s nothing wrong with guitar driven music. It is just old fashioned.
I'm not a musician, but I enjoy learning music theory concepts, and that channel for me is pure gold. I can understand half of what's said there, and still enjoy it a lot.
A couple of my favourite videos are:
* Why Does Metal Have To Be So Loud? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fEdIKG7pm8
* What We Get Wrong About Genres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXOowACoUjE&t=478s
I know several better channels for getting the theory - including analyzing genres or songs, but most are focused on instruments + theory or composing + theory.
Share one or two alt music explainers, maybe in a new submission, though here will do.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH1Kp5ewZe_TP3CMB6LBw9Z...
The content seems good but the rest of the presentation is just not worth getting through.
I never thought some people might dislike that part, but now I see you and a sibling comment do.
I wonder if it's good for people like me (who don't know much about music theory) and bad for people in the field. If this is the case I believe it's a good choice: the audience of non experts is much bigger and thus the majority of viewers finding this helpful will outweight the problems of those who dislike it.
So I just turn off the video and treat these presentations as podcasts. I find the audio content is informative and doesn't need the visual distraction at all.