Making retrograde chord progressions work
Hi Visitor
Retrograde is a technique where you play something backward, kind of like the Beatles or these backward-masked messages in heavy metal songs… except you are not reversing the audio tape (*), but you are actually playing it from end to beginning.
Why does such a simple concept require such a sophisticated-sounding term? No one knows!
More importantly, why would we do something like that? I admit it sounds quite silly at first, after all.
We do it simply because it’s a way to come up with new music that - surprisingly - works! You can reverse melodies or chord progressions (or both at the same time!), and you obtain new music without having to resort to either hard work, genius, or trial+error.
… or at least that’s what I would like to tell you!
The reality is that there is one liiitle teeeeny teeeeensy issue with writing (say) chord progressions with this technique: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t!
When it works, it sounds awesome.
When it doesn’t work, it sounds like the opposite of awesome. (“Awe-none”? “Awe-not a lot”? “Awe-seldom”? People keep telling me that English is a “modular language” and then give me a hard time when I take them seriously…)
We musicians, however, are a resourceful bunch and are not discouraged by these trifling difficulties, so we found ways around that. We can make retrograde work pretty much every single time!
But how?
Well, that is what I want to share with you in the video below, check it out!
Watch the video here: https://musictheoryforguitar.com/satisfying-retrograde-chord-progressions.html
(*) Pardon, the "audio file". Who uses tape anymore?
Enjoy!
Tommaso Zillio
Music Theory Education Expert
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