Chord Req: Songs with one chord

Subject: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Jan 08 - 10:58 PM

I need a selection of songs that require just one chord to play them. Traditional Folk or Blues tunes would be great. Something that is common in the music world.

I seem to recall a thread about this very item awhile back but I can't seem to bring it up in a search.

Thanks

Don

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,iancarterb
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 12:27 AM

Sing anything a capella and it's a one chord song, based around the tonic note of the major or minor scale. Play a single appropriate note from the tonic chord or the one and five of that chord at appropriate metric or a-metric intervals, if accompaniment is for some reason required, and you may like the result. It will ONLY work for traditional folksongs, if it works at all. Blues may be a tough sell, because most listeners will expect I IV V (or I ii iii if it's jazzy), but look for fife and drum (try Roots of the Blues or The Blues Roll On, two classic Lomax field recording collections). The chain gang song that opens the film Oh Brother is from one of those two albums.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Melissa
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 01:16 AM

I looked at a book not long ago that had "Hear Jerusalem Moan" as a one-chord song.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Goose Gander
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 01:25 AM

I think it works very well for some early blues. There a probably 50 or 100 John Lee Hooker songs you can play with one chord (and lots of jagged flourishes, of course).

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: PoppaGator
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 03:29 AM

John Lee Hooker is indeed the all-time king of the one-chord boogie.

This guy ~ Seasick Steve ~ seems to be a latter-day disciple of Mr. Hooker. Currently the subject of a lot of critical disagreement on another Mudcat thread.

Not everybody's cup of tea, obviously. Intense backbeat rhythm and raunchy electronic distortion seem to be pretty essential to this particular style; it's as if somehting like that is necessary to take the place of harmonic variations as a way to maintain the listener's interest.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Mr Happy
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 06:15 AM

John Tams's fiddle seems to be playing the same note all the way through this song:

http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=Rolf+Lislevand&search=Search

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: s&r
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 06:27 AM

Many rounds can be sung against one chord Frere Jaques and London's Burning spring to mind.

Stu

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 07:58 AM

I seem to remember one night Ronnie Drew singing Shoals of Herring with one chord. The feeling of the audience was that he was in altered state of consciousness. I think the secret is, not to care too much. It worked okay for Ronnie....

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 08:17 AM

Jump Back

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Ed.
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 08:29 AM

Don,

Here is the previous thread: One-Chord Songs

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 11:37 AM

Why do you want to play one-chord songs? The reason I'm asking is that I find them hard on the left hand, which gets clamped and then cramped by lack of movement.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: the button
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 11:51 AM

"Female drummer boy" sounds like one chord to me. In fact, I think it's in that whacky mode that goes B natural to B natural playing the white notes on a keyboard.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 11:54 AM

Dylan's "Masters of War" is more or less a one-chord song, I think, and a very effective one, because he used this kind of percussive working around the minor chord flatpicking routine to develop a relentless driving sound that perfectly fitted the deep anger the song expresses.

The key of Em on the guitar is very well suited toward such arrangements.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,Question Mark
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 11:55 AM

Muddy Waters' song "Rolling Stone" might be a one chord song.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: the one
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 12:03 PM

maggie's farm..

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Mark Ross
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 02:26 PM

PASTURES OF PLENTY can be played as on the original recording with a D chord. Woody played it in C capoed up two. When I was Utah Phillips' sideman, he sang it in A, but had me play an A7 all the way through. Of course it's to the tune of PRETTY POLLY so you could also do that.


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Mark Ross
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 03:40 PM

Come to think of it, Woody recorded BUFFALO SKINNERS with just one chord, A minor all the way through.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 04:14 PM

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the effort.

Hi Leeneia, I have to do a workshop of simple songs for beginners at a Guitar League meeting. (See www.GuitarLeague.com ) I plan on showing songs with 1, 2,3, and more involved songs. Since I know of no one chord songs in my rep this was the place to come for good advice. And as always, I got good advice.

Don

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: eddie1
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 06:09 AM

"Stern Old Bachelor" (Derrol Adams) can be played using one chord - as long as it's a minor or b minor or c minor etc.

Eddie

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: David C. Carter
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 06:22 AM

Dylan's "Hollis Brown"is more or less a one-chorder.

Can't recall which key,but it's a D chord,and hammering on the A & D strings.Doesn't use the top E very much.

David

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 06:29 AM

I think Masters of War is the same sequence as Nottamun Town, in which case it uses at least 4 chords, Am, C, G, and D.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 06:54 PM

Bo Diddley

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Goose Gander
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 07:00 PM

Let's see, what else . . .

"Who Do You Love?" - I'm most familiar with Bo Diddley's version.

Plus, Billy Childish did a whole album of one-chord songs.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,woodsie
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 07:27 PM

When I saw Roy Harper at thw Bloomsbury theatre 3 or 4 years ago he did a song that used only one chord - he said that he had been trying to write one for ages but it had been very difficult. can't remember it though and I don't think he did it again, the next couple of times that I saw him.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: M.Ted
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 08:13 PM

Pointed out in the other thread, but worth a repeat--many "funk" tunes hang on a single chord--"Chain of Fools", for instance--

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: number 6
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 10:57 PM

"Factory Girl" by the Rolling stones

If I recall it's pretty well all G's with a couple of D's thrown in somewhere.

biLL

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Jim Krause
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 11:00 PM

Spike Driver's Blues by Mississippi John Hurt.

JimK

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Mark Ross
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 12:16 AM

Derroll Adams..... PORTLAND TOWN can be done with one chord.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,HOUSE
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 07:05 AM

you can simply leave out appropriate chords during a song and just play one chord, but there's a difference between that and a song that actually only has one chord that is the correct chord all the way through.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 08:41 AM

Bo Diddley did some mostly one-chord songs. (The song 'Bo Diddley' uses a one-tone down slide-up - hammer-on? - but you could ignore that and just do the basic chord.)

"Who do you love?" ("I walk 47 miles of barb-wire, wear a cobra snake for a neck tie, got a brand new house on the roadside, made from rattlesnake hide) . . . say, did you say you wanted this for a kid's ukelele group? :-)

From my post on the previous thread: "On Gordon Lightfoot's first album is a song called "Oh, Linda" done with just bass and voice. The bass just riffs around an Em7 chord. Ver' funky - and I don't believe Lightfoot's ever written anything else quite like it."

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: M.Ted
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 05:14 PM

It is also possible to create compound chords that eliminate the need for chord changes because they combine chords--but...

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Joybell
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 02:37 AM

Can't see it here -- but "She Moved through the Fair" can be done with one chord.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Seaking
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 04:27 AM

From what I recall Roy Bailey holds the same minor chord throughout in 'witches'.

Chris

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 06:44 AM

Guest, House is quite right, a lot of the examples quoted here are of drone accompaniments to songs which would conventionally use several chords. For instance, "Over the Hills and Far Away" would normally be a three-chorder, but John Tams plays a very effective fiddle drone to it in "Sharpe" (I know, 'cos I bought the boxed set for Christmas). If you want real one-chorders, look at old blues, as has been suggested, or old-time banjo stuff. Dock Boggs "Country Blues", if memory serves, has just the one mdoal chord throughout. Some Boozoo Chavis zydeco as well.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 09:26 AM

I seem to recall Oscar Brand saying on one of his TV shows that he'd taught his daughter to sing "Home on the Range" with a single chord - I think he said it was a C6.

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Janice in NJ
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 12:20 AM

The C6 is the same as the Am7, and it can be used by itself with many chant-like Southern convict work songs in Am that fit the same basic pattern as Goin' Back to Weldon. That's because the Am7/C6 is almost two chords rolled into one. There's an full Am in there (a + c + e), and there is two-thirds of an Em in there as well (e + g).

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 11:02 PM

Thank you everyone. The League meet was tonight. I used Boom Boom Boom   
by John Lee Hooker, Who Do You Love done by Bo Diddley and The Laughlan Boy by Tracey Grammer.

I appreciate the help a great deal.

Don

Subject: One cord only
From: GUEST,Leadbelly
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:44 PM

Hi there,

this might become very interesting!

Who is aware of songs with one cord only?

From the beginning till the end? And singing around.

Folk, blues or whatever.

I have no idea.

---

I moved this into an older thread. I hope the suggestions are helpful. -mod

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,Leadbelly
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 03:59 PM

So sorry!

I just recognized by moderation help that there was a similar thread some time before.

Nevertheless, if you have some new ideas....

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: GUEST,threelegsoman
Date: 21 Aug 14 - 07:32 PM

Zum Gali Gali, a song from Israel uses only the chord of Am
I uploaded a duet by recording myself over a prior recording some time ago:
Zum Gali Gali

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Mark Ross
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 12:50 AM

Dave Van Ronk's arrangement of the prison work song LAZARUS is basically an Am chord all the way through. also, Pete Seeger said that he finally liked to play OLD JOE CLARK with just one chord.


Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Chord Req: Songs with one chord
From: Musket
Date: 22 Aug 14 - 03:38 AM

I am asked occasionally why I cram so many different chords in a guitar accompaniment. It isn't a wish to see how many you can contrive, it's that the less chords you use, the better your voice has to be...

A single chord song? I have been known to sing Dylan's Ballad of Hollis Brown with one chord and a single hammer other note. Guitar tuned to double drop D and capo'd up to E to suit my voice, I think.

Of course, using a modal tuning and running arpeggios around the fundamental chord sounds nice and when you think about it, makes most songs single chord.