The I-IV-V chord progression is the most popular in Western music because we're genetically programmed to like it.
How's that for an unfounded assertion? Be warned, in advance: all that follows comes from a passing reference related to a computer chip. But it's tempting to tease that reference out.
OK, enough with the cryptic prelude. Here's the point. Last year, on an episode of the O'Reilly Digital Media Insider Podcast (podcast #23, to be precise), David Battino discusses the Intel "jingle" -- the four notes you hear whenever a commercial shows the "Intel Inside" logo (hear it in the semi-spoof video at the bottom of this page). Battino says briefly that the jingle was composed with the I-IV-V interval because it's the most common interval in music around the world.
What is the I-IV-V interval
The I-IV-V intervals (or do-fa-so, if you're Fräulein Maria) relate to any of the following chord progressions:
- E-A-B
- G-C-D
- A-D-E
- C-F-G
and so on. Any campfire guitarist or person who has ever played from a Top 40 songbook can tell you that you can play a gajillion songs in contemporary English-language music by knowing just three chords.
I-IV-V: The most common chord progression in the world?
Now it's a heck of a leap to go from "Songs on Billboard's Top 40 are most often in I-IV-V" to "Songs everywhere (Afghanistan, Siberia, and Greenland's indigenous communities) are most often in I-IV-V." I've looked, unsuccessfully for some evidence to back that up.
- I've found a blog post that describes Walter Werzowa as the writer of the Intel jingle, and attributes to him the comment that I-IV-V is the most common musical interval in the world.
- I found an article about really cool research that suggests that musical intervals in general are based on common frequency ratios in vowels in human speech; and if common intervals are a truly international phenomenon, then maybe intervals commonly used in songwriting are, too.
But I can't find any references where someone claims to have done a survey of global music to determine the most popular intervals in the most popular songs.
Nonetheless, let's take a flying leap and accept that this is more or less true. (Maybe a real devotee of international music would agree. Please chime in, if you're reading.)
If I-IV-V is the most common progression in music for all humans, that changes the status of a I-IV-V song, in my mind. I have generally been of the opinion that if I write a song that's all G-C-D, I'm copping out somehow. That I'm a sheep following the herd. But if this is a truly global phenomenon, with a scientific basis, then I need to stop resisting these chords! If this is fundamentally a musical progression that appeals to humans (not just English speakers raised on the Beatles) at an instinctive level, I need to embrace it.
Doing otherwise would be like playing my guitar out of tune just because I don't want to be a follower.
What do you think? Please comment below. And if you like this post, please Digg it or send it to a friend!
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More resources:
As usual, Wikipedia has some info on intervals.
And there's an interesting semi-spoof video about the Intel jingle and its connection to music:
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