There must be a name for this!

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: GUEST,Songster Bob
Date: 28 May 08 - 12:17 AM

I like the term suggested above, but to me it sounds like hymnody -- church music is rife with this, where every note is harmonized so that no single part of the music has any real musical tension. If the melody goes C-D-E-D-C, the chords would be C-G-C-G-C. Folkies would probably play it all on the C chord, or C-C-C-G-C, depending on the length of each note.

Of course, a modern "folk" arrangement would be C-Dm-Em-G-Am, but what do I know?

Bob

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Slag
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:28 PM

Chordata, kinds like the phyllum. It means your a spineless wonder if'n you can't play it! There's a trick to it. You put your capo over the third fret kinda diagonal-like, then you sing real loud when you come to that part. Heck, if I can't reduce any piece of music to three chords and a relative minor it's not worth playing.

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 27 May 08 - 04:40 PM

Chordorhea gets my vote. Chordomania for polite society.

I have a theory (I know; big deal) that keyboard people do that to us, perhaps unintentionally. I.e., I've seen a lot a sheet music specifically hyped as "a wonderful piano arrangement of x" or the same for organ, and you get not only a new chord on every 32nd note, but half of them are E-flats. I think that comes from the nature of keyboards, which, IMO, make it just about as easy to play one chord as another, at least when compared to the lute family. Only in jazz do you really want all those changes--and probably not even in all sub-types of jazz.

Chicken "Keep It Simple" Charlie

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Escapee
Date: 27 May 08 - 04:36 PM

I ran into that recently, PoppaGator. I agreed to play in a pit band for a musical and when I saw the book I about died. It was Dixieland style and mostly new to me. Fortunately, it was simpler than it looked. As you mentioned, they were mostly familiar chords with variations and transitions tacked on. I find a lot of true chordorhea in piano arrangements for folk songs, though. I guess the arranger thinks it can't be that simple. Or maybe they're paid by the chord.
Fair winds,
SKP

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:23 PM

I've noticed that, in many cases where excessive numbers of chords are provided (e.g., one chord per quarter-note "beat"), each "different" chord in a given sequence can be viewed as a version of the same chord, but with a single added note in each instance.

Most of us would not think of these as separate exotic chords, we'd think of them as a familiar chord held for 3-4 beats while executing a bass run or a treble melody-line "over" the chord.

If we were visiting in person, I'd play an example or two, but I don't have the mental energy to make up tabs to illustrate...

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Jim Lad
Date: 26 May 08 - 03:17 PM

Chordorhea!
That's it.
I'll remember that.
Thanks!
Jim

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Def Shepard
Date: 26 May 08 - 03:15 PM

don't lay no boogie-woogie on the king of rock n' roll.Still untangling my fingers from attempting THAT little trick. :-D

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: gnu
Date: 26 May 08 - 03:12 PM

Chordorhea. Hahahaha.... good one, Escapee

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Escapee
Date: 26 May 08 - 03:08 PM

Chordolalia?
Chordorhea?
SKP

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: vectis
Date: 26 May 08 - 12:48 PM

Mornington Crescent

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Barbara
Date: 25 May 08 - 09:34 PM

Well, dang, it looks like my anti-viral software cleaned my cookie out of the system again. Sorry. The above was me, too.
Blessings,
Barbara on Maui

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 08 - 09:32 PM

At Puget Sound Guitar Workshop they called it Complicated Chord Disorder (or was it Syndrome?) At any rate it is supposed to occur at a certain stage of your guitar playing development when you have discovered the more outre chords and ways of playing, and can't let go of anything you learned up to that point.
It can lead to some really tedious, if showy, arrangements of standards.

They also coined the acronym "FOMS" for another thing that happens to people there. It occurs when multiple workshops and events are scheduled at the same time and stands for Fear Of Missing Something.

Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Bert
Date: 25 May 08 - 08:44 PM

Beginner!

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: curmudgeon
Date: 25 May 08 - 06:32 PM

An "arrangement."

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Gurney
Date: 25 May 08 - 06:20 PM

Folk Baroque?

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: The Vulgar Boatman
Date: 25 May 08 - 04:45 PM

Billericay.

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: banjoman
Date: 25 May 08 - 07:05 AM

Ageism - I used to be able to do this but age has caught up with my hands

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 May 08 - 06:13 PM

Not sure in this case.

But 5 words to 4 beats and repeated for two and a half minutes is called rock 'n roll.

Spaw

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Geordie-Peorgie
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:44 PM

George Martinesque

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Little Robyn
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:12 PM

Affectation....

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: GUEST
Date: 24 May 08 - 10:07 AM

Unnecessary...

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: Melissa
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:33 AM

When I'm being ladylike, I call it "show-offy"

Subject: RE: There must be a name for this!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:27 AM

Bloody awkward.

G

Subject: There must be a name for this!
From: Jim Lad
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:24 AM

So I'm looking for the chords for "Down by the Glenside" and I find them in Em. I want to use Am configuration so I'm transposing in my head and tripping all over the place, not keeping up at all.
Then it dawns on me.
They're sticking four chords on three words and to my ear only one of them's right let alone necessary.
Looks to me like a chord for every syllable.
Is there a name for this?