4 Chords, 65 Songs

Inspired by "4 Chords" by The Axis of Awesome, I decided to make my own rendition of songs that utilize these four chords. In music theory, the chords are as follows: I-V-vi-IV. Rather than performing each song (as did The Axis of Awesome) I mixed the actual recordings into a single montage.

Of course ALL of these songs are in different keys and have different meters and different tempos; mixing them in their "natural" state would sound awful. So I transposed them all to the same key (I chose the key of B major.) And once transposed, I took each single chord sequence and made them all the same length.

With these alterations, you will hear that some songs sound "Alvin and the Chipmunks"-esque while others sound "deep-voiced demon"-esque. Also, some are substantially sped-up and others substantially slowed-down. And some are hardly changed, if at all; it just depends on what the original key of the song was.

Hope you like it.


FOR MUSIC THEORY GEEKS:
Most of the songs were in a major key, with the chord progression truly being I-V-vi-IV. There were, however, a few songs in minor; with a i-VI-III-VII chord progression. This minor-key chord progression is *enharmonically equivalent* to vi-IV-I-V. So for such songs, the chord progression is repeated at least twice during the song (e.g., vi, IV-[I-V-vi-IV]-I-V) you'll obviously see that right in the middle of the doubled chord sequence (in brackets) is "I-V-vi-IV."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• 4 chords 36 songs
• 4 chords 65 songs
• axis of awesome

[sdbielz]

For those musicians among us, thank you for making them all sound like they are in the same key.

[Wattsini1]

It's NOT Pachelbel. I V vi IV is NOT the same as I V vi iii IV I IV V

[nextalexklein]

@Wattsini1 yes but its all relatively close to the same 1-4-5 that we all know and love

[david203]

This pulls the curtain open on a pop music scam--there are just a few plots (song patterns). Different voices, timbres, tempos give the illusion of different tunes.

[jetstream321]

is it me or do i like every single one of these songs?

[Godofire275]

@Fitz97forpresident he didn't fuck with the keys just the pitch and tempo. THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO SOUND DIFFERENTLY... many bands ack in the 70s to 90s just sounded the same, this provides variety.

[moichtunrealman]

@mathyou9 God it should be a lot of work. Took you a lot of time? I don't know if you're planning to update it since you did it like 3 years ago but by the way you could've put Heavin Coming Down - The Tea Party .

[lennic95]

@Fitz97forpresident It's not the same as autotune. The chord are the same, but the keys are different, Rebecca Black just can't sing in key. Very different!

[Fitz97forpresident]

Remember what we learned from Rebecca Black; Just because you can auto-tune something, sure as HELL doesn't mean you should.

[Fitz97forpresident]

Thanks for killing over half of these songs, specifically, Angel in the Night, Always on my Mind, Canvas Bags, You're Beautiful, Hell; Even Birdplane didn't sound right. Dude, don't fuck with tempo, or keys of good songs to prove a point, yes some of these are rather similar, but only the Axis of Awesome did this correctly. All videos like this other than them, fuck it up. Don't mess with good music. Alot of these just sound wrong.

[afshafer]

Just thought of another one. Marry me by Train!

[icehawk1223]

@Wattsini1 Ascending 5ths progression!