Musical Syntax

Listen to the sound files below. Pick the wrong one.

Don't worry, you'll know which one is wrong.

One
Two
Three

Which one did you say?

Three, right? Do you know how you knew?

In Western music, we like our chords to happen in a certain order. We call this chord progression. Even if you don't understand all the math and symbols in western music, you've (likely, if you can read this) heard such chord progressions your entire life to where you can remember them well enough and identify them, even if you don't have language to speak about them. (I cheated a little by putting the 'wrong' example last, so that you'd be 'reminded' of what correct chords sounded like.)

We call this musical syntax, since it's a lot like learning how to use words in a correct order to make sense as well. The third example sticks out because I broke a rule. It would be like if I not write sentence none to good. You'd notice.

If you were wondering, the first example is a simple jazz progression, and the second is a simple 50s doo wop progression. The last one throws a iii chord in the middle, which is a chord that doesn't get used often anyway, so it sticks out pretty hard.