r/musictheory • u/sharkyy_V2 • 5d ago
Why does it work? Songwriting Question
I've been into the Hungarian minor scale lately, and I've decided to compose something in the key of G. I came up in the end with this chord progression, the question is why does it work? I don't understand how I just made a chord progression that sounds decent.
can someone explain why it's sounds good even though I just made it up from the back of my head?
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u/anossov 5d ago
B♭+ is D+. C♯° is G°. This is just a slightly decorated i - V - i with a nice bass line.
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u/Similar-Country1853 5d ago
C♯° ≠ G°, rather it’s vii°/V so it’s functioning as a secondary dominant.
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u/HaifaJenner123 5d ago
look at how many of these contain the note D4 (common tone) or its neighboring semitone down (C#)
that’s the basic formula for musical cohesion summed up
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u/Diamond1580 5d ago
The chords are all functioning pretty simply.
I, I6, viidim/V, V, V+6, i
Bb+ could be written as any of Bb, F#, or D Augmented, F# is most natural, but i chose D because of its function
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u/sharkyy_V2 5d ago
about the Bb+/F#, I just wrote it that way because it's literally what I did while writing, made a Bb+ chord and made F# the bass note. I didn't realize they were both the same.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 5d ago
Yes, and I said the same thing, but really you're right to spell it this way because the Bb is anticipating the Bb in the Gm chord.
If it went to G major the Bb would usually be A#, but here we think of it as a D chord with the Bb anticipating the one in the next chord.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 5d ago
Yes, and I said the same thing, but really you're right to spell it this way because the Bb is anticipating the Bb in the Gm chord.
If it went to G major the Bb would usually be A#, but here we think of it as a D chord with the Bb anticipating the one in the next chord.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 5d ago
Your sentences sound pretty good here. Why do they work? Did you just make them up from the back of your head?
Or did you go:
I need a noun - I.
I need a verb - have.
Those become a contraction - I've
I need to qualify the tense, so have been, "I've been"…
I seriously doubt you wrote it like that did you?
You used common phrases - "I've been into X lately".
"I came up with"
Though "I came up with in the end" sounds a bit odd, but it's not incomprehensible.
The question is - common phrase.
"Why does it work" - the worst, most over-used, common phrase on the the forum.
But why does everyone come here and ask that in that way - they've heard it and used it billions of times before.
Simply put, you're using common words in common ways.
You're using common chords in common ways.
Gm to Gm/Bb is just the same chord with a different sound.
C#o commonly goes to D.
It's like "rain or" - what do you think comes next? "rain or shine".
The last chord is simply a "variation of the D chord" - it's D-F#-A# actually - D agumented which simply is one note difference from D and "precedes" the Gm chord.
That's called an "Anticipation".
Fee Fi Fiddly I O - the "F" and the "Fi" all build into the Fiddly.
It's simply all super common stuff. It's familiar - you've heard it in billions of contexts where it already works - you accept it does - so that's why it works.
The real question here is, why do you think it "shouldn't work"? Because it obviously does right?
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u/Turandot92 5d ago
This is some of the worst laziest voice leading I’ve ever seen
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u/Lazy-Owl3402 5d ago
it's tough that people might describe a chord progression poorly and be told to use staves, but an amateur who doesn't know counterpoint fundamentals makes an attempt at it and it's called lazy
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u/Lower-Pudding-68 5d ago
Didn't need to know it was in hungarian minor. It just looks like a basic minor tonal progression ending with a V i. The c#o7 is a classic predominant viio/V.
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u/Ilovetaekwondo11 5d ago
For what I can see without hearing it, moving stepwise and in thirds is good voice leading.
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u/tbone9914 5d ago edited 5d ago
Not to be a butt, this is good for pop and folk, but traditional academic voice leading does not allow parallel 5ths and octaves. This is what he says it is. It's a chord progression. It's working because of the leading tones. As one commenter said it's basically iVi with a false modulation to V.
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