Making BAD Chords Sound GOOD

[@NotBest713]

1:57 you wrote C E G D F# Ab instead of C E G D F# A

[@BenLevin]

Dang, that's true - it should be C E G D F# A. I proofread this video so many times but still missed this. Thank you for pointing it out.

[@michaelethen7919]

My favorite proofreading tip? Proof it word by word, but backwards.

[@icanogar]

@@michaelethen7919 What a trick! I need to implement that asap...

[@dunehaggar7495]

In a different font...​@@michaelethen7919

[@markosvafeas]

I love how half of these played on overdriven lead guitar with whammy bar shenanigans instantly sound like Steve Vai

[@kristianwichmann9996]

All the Lydian ones, basically

[@lemming7188]

@@kristianwichmann9996 You can thank Frank Zappa for a large majority of Vai's compositional ear!

[@bevo65]

Astute! 🤠

[@Fire-Toolz]

ben loooves vai if it wasn't obvious!!

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

Steve Vai playing with Zappa in the early 1980s, to be more precise.

[@guitarandhow]

I've been subscribed to your channel for a while now, and I think your teaching videos have become exponentially more easy to understand, fun, and quality-full. I love how the soft synth in the background while you're talking is playing the chord you're talking about.

[@BenLevin]

I'm glad you noticed the improvement! I've been learning a lot.

[@Rohishimoto]

​@@BenLevin Really want to second this, I've been subscribed since like 2018 or so because I knew this channel was special and had such unique ideas but I have never been as engaged in your content as I have been recently. The scope of the videos feel much more pointed which makes it very digestible. It actually has me playing piano again after a long break!

[@klontjespap]

simple solution: play them on higher registers, and prove fourier series/theoreum applied to things like additive synthesis correct once again the higher you go, the less dissonants/irrational ratios there are, when you hold the additive nature (linear curve) of overtones against the exponential curve of octaves (always *2 the frequency), it will logically converge into more "consonant" options the further you go up, the frequency ratios become more rational playing a C, D and Eon the same octave all at the same time isn't that dissonant anymore once you travel into the 6th octave and up, at some point at the edge of what we still perceive as musical notes from an instrument, you can even start sneaking in half-steps and still be somewhat "consonant", but you need to go up so high to really get there, it loses its musical usability before it converges that closely across the board also, inversions, inverting chords like making a perfect 5th a 4th inversion and make it less consonant, you can reverse apply the priciple of inversions/voicing to make them a bit more consonant depending on the situation too of course with the correct musical context priming you for the chord, you can make dirty sound exactly what is required, as a metal guitarist i shit out flat 5ths and diminshied every day too :D but i was merely covering the chord in isolation

[@CatFish107]

LOL "Simple solution": Procedes to provide a very in depth, and thoughtful effort-post.

[@privacee1845]

Higher you go the more dissonant your non divisible ratios are. 33/32 is more dissonant than 3/2. The overtone series being the method of chord voicings is overrated, the fundamental notes would be too low and the orchestra would have 200 piccolos playing microtonal stuff if it was true

[@michaeldmytriw1047]

Such a musical monster. And a fantastic teacher!!

[@wiseSYW]

there are no bad chords, only bad chord progressions

[@quicksanddiver]

And, perhaps, bad voicings

[@chromaticswing9199]

Give me a bad chord progression

[@pez1870]

​@@quicksanddiverbad voice leading*

[@UncleWalter1]

There are some piquant polychords in there

[@JakHart]

I feel like every video I watch from Ben, my brain forms new synaptic connections, and I move even further away from the majority of pop music, and yet I appreciate it all that much more. I notice how my interpretation and implementation of music has changed over the time I've been watching this channel, it's absolutely stellar.

[@wheelnsky]

Really love the high quality of your art and teaching! Your approach to teaching resonates very naturally to me. Thank you for all the awesome work you put out Ben!

[@evawilliammusic]

This is such a good video, gives you little packets to play with while also teaching you how to find your own scale matchings

[@drrodopszin]

Once you give up on pop and happy, you can now make any chord sound good.

[@CatFish107]

Truth. The inverse can also be applied with artistic intention. Intentional dissonance and noise are valid tools. As a painting analogy, there are masterworks depicting terrible images, not only beauty.

[@JBergmansson]

Since you allowed the top and bottom chord to switch places, once you pass the C/F# combo, the rest are mirrors of what you had before. I.e G over C is the same chord quality as C over F. Bb over C became C over Bb which is the same as D over C.

[@LxE9799]

Sounds similar to the concept of negative harmony, maybe it has to do with it?

[@JonHarris77]

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. If you allow switching them, you could only have 6 different quality possibilities instead of 11.

[@JBergmansson]

@@JonHarris77 Yep. Not that there is anything wrong with the ones in the video, but it would have been an even greater challange to try to make them all work without inversions.

[@adriatic.vineyards]

I love your approach to music man

[@iqui]

Great video, inspired me a lot to make some chords myself now :)

[@ThatBenKraft]

Love your stuff Ben! Really like how some videos share a similar theme but are very distinct and cool!

[@benjaminmjones5021]

I love this video!! My favorite Amajor over Cmajor voicing (with lots of sustain) is having the C chord spread out low octave (root, fifth, third) and putting the A chord pretty high up and gluing it together with a D-note somewhere in between the chords ✨✨

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

Bb|C, without the reversal, can resolve beautifully into a Dm11 (or something close to it; it should be a minor chord with a D in the bass and a G on top. The voice leading would also work great (every note moves up by either a semitone or a whole tone).

[@andrewnicon]

These little lesson videos are really good and fun to watch.

[@michaelethen7919]

Because of transposition we really need Db through F# only. G through B are just transpositions of earlier ones.

[@GarrySummer1700123Summer]

Dude ben, your videos are just so good man, creative and cool. Keep it up

[@Tom-ry2xv]

the editing is so perfect even though the video is fast its very understandable and at least followable, which is rare for such "theory" content

[@GreatFlamingEyebrows_]

there's an old video of yours where you were making a beat and said "everything sounds good to me today". I think about that quote a lot

[@saba2655]

wow neat, do you know which video it is?

[@GabrielPerboni]

Every weird sounding music stuff is just half step away from sounding absolutely amazing… That’s what I’ve learned with Dr. Levin Love your vibe… Keep being unique for the longest time

[@plantafantasma2060]

Ben, you're awesome. Thank you.

[@blaholtzen]

Thank you Ben

[@bishalshankar9530]

You can also play lydian augmened on that E/C I think that's the appropriate scale to implement

[@KyleC360]

This feels like going from eating spicy peppers like an apple to learning how to cook them in flavorful dishes. Peace and Yeast to you Ben!

[@aliensporebomb]

First example went from 1960s sci-fi UFO harmony to DiMeola-esque! Nice!

[@jsa3rdbb]

This reminds me of the video where you made chord progressions from random notes. Super cool perspective

[@littleswedishboy]

Really admire your ability to come up with all these cool, creative video ideas every week. Peace and yeast

[@BenLevin]

Thank you, that's inspiring!

[@user-cz7yz9hc8b]

Excellent examples of how melody and dissonance interact.

[@MrMaxKeane]

C + (C# through to F#) are the same as: (G through to B) + C But transposed

[@DDRaph]

your videos are amazing!

[@gordonkennygordon]

Hello! I really enjoy using this kind of triad moosh, but I've never sat down and systematically tried all the possibilities of a particular combination...so thanks for that inspiration! And also thanks for the Spicy-7-to-Lydian-1 resolution examples, something I don't think I've ever played around with... Every video of yours surprises and delights me Be well!

[@adamsmith7058]

It's a good little game. It's also kinda cool that he's opening people's ears up to less comventional sounds, while still staying accessible. The same way that Rick Beato did before he went all grumpy, or doom laden in the case of AI and it's prospects.

[@kassih.musica]

wow music isn't just feelings I guess xD I play guitar since childhood but only know the basics of harmoni. Crazy class! Thank you!

[@mostlyokay]

What did minor 9ths do to you, Ben?

[@travisSimon365]

"There are no bad chords if you just take all the notes that make a chord sound bad and move them around until they sound good" ;-)

[@DDB2020]

Peace and yeast, the perfect outro.

[@Meatball996]

Polychords always fascinated me because I always thought they sounded pretty good but there are hardly any songs that use them

[@lourier3]

Can you explain how you find out which chords sound nice to resolve into?

[@Poopick]

Brother thank you so much for this video! Finaly something interesting about music theory that is usefull in practice

[@syhr_samoht]

BEN! BEN! BEN! He's the best! x

[@exion101]

Excellent stuff, exactly what i would expect from the sequel to Ben10!

[@venahtmusic]

6:05 that sound reminds me so much of The Faceless's album Planetary Duality, which fits.

[@stephenweigel]

Now re-tune to 16-TET, to make good chords sound bad! :)

[@mattcreighton2352]

So it seems like every time theres a 7#9 in some flavour or another, Ben resolves it up a semitone to a maj7. Is there some clever bit of theory i dont know there? normally i think of 7 chords going DOWN by a semitone if anything (e.g the classic tritone sub ii - bII7 - I). Is there something in particular about the #9 that makes the chord want to do that? We could conceptualise as say V7 - VI in the minor, but that works just as well with a V7, V7b9, etc (maybe functional thinking is just out of fashion... haha)

[@jmjgow]

Peace and yeast to you as well

[@coastercook]

Thanks, Ben. You should make your next video about 'Make these Good chords sound Bad'.

[@mikeciul8599]

Are those Magic cards in the background? Let's see some Ben Levin Magic the Gathering content!

[@OliverBatchelor]

Most of these sound surprisingly similar, I guess a lot of them have similar dissonant intervals.

[@kay4x4]

BEN = AWESOME

[@lunafoxfire]

peace and yeast, love and bugs, tiny beasts need tiny hugs :3

[@BRaan]

You accidentally uncovered the secret to Steve Vai's songwriting method!

[@travisSimon365]

As a drummer who's musical knowledge is mostly, 'I hit things', I'm wondering how you found the 'resolves nicely to' chords? Is there a 'formula' to find that this particular abomination resolves nicely to a b-flat diminshed sharp 9, or do you just try a bunch of chords and finally go, 'ahhh'?

[@BenLevin]

Generally "altered chords" resolve nicely up a half step to Maj7 chords. An altered chord is a dominant 7 chord (1 3 5 b7) with messed up stuff added to it, specifically one or more of these (b5, #5, b9, #9, #11, b13) So Xaltered chord will usually sound good going to XMaj7 up a half step

[@BenLevin]

and most of these are altered chords!

[@travisSimon365]

@@BenLevin Awesome, thanks for the clarification. I'm slowly studying music theory by watching KZbin videos every once in a while 🙂

[@kwichmann2777]

🌶🌶🌶 MOAR SPICIER! 🌶🌶🌶

[@BeyondAllThatsAbove]

Peace and yeast Ben

[@Azure_Comet]

first? love your content ben, just got done making a demo c:

[@mikeciul8599]

Those minor 9ths didn't sound so bad to me. With that sound you were using, they seemed very Wendy Carlos! Especially the Ab and A upon C I think.

[@TomatePasFraiche]

This is so stanky, exactly what I needed to spice up my chord progressions

[@drumminah]

I lay down my life for d upon c.

[@delarkaBCN]

TLDR BASS

[@screamengine]

The lines don't always have to be pretty, and the colors might be downright shitty. It's the picture, from a ways away. She was pretty, flaws and all. Until I got to know her in the dark.

[@0hellow797]

“It sounds really nice” :00000000000

[@Fewkulele]

How to make bad chord sound good? Avoid minor nineths. Bam, all good chords

[@glottalstop2080]

actually the transposition of chord tones to avoid minor ninths is the part of video i don't really like. by doing so, in my opinion, you limit the amount of possible chords. for instance turning Db/C to C/Db just makes it the same chord as B/C(at the end of the video) but a semitone lower. so technically you did find bad chords in this video?

[@everyoneelsemovedonfan]

Hey Ben, I'm an autistic musician and I wanna share my music with you 💜

[@funkrobert99]

Why not simply swap the minor 9ths, instead of the whole chords? I think CFGEAC instead of FACCEG or even CEGG#BE instead of EG#BCEG would have sounded way more interesting!

[@BenLevin]

That's great to do, I just wanted to show how you can think of combining triads as a way to discover new chords. So I tried to keep each triad in tact as much as possible.

[@Classic_H_Radio]

HAHAHAH i was just gonna do this xD

[@rugososphotos3646]

pepsi at a movie 😂

[@StefaanHimpe]

Peace in the east. Also THEY don't want you to know the only good chords are C, G, Am, F.

[@galgabrielisrael3237]

Now lets go with all the minors

[@coversauce4786]

Still not as good as the Unison MIDI chord pack MIDI chord pack chord pack Unison Unison MIDI chord pack. The chords are made for you. Harmony right in the can.

[@NicStage]

Peast!

[@adamsmith7058]

So I'm waiting for the bad chords, and all he plays is bland pop chords. Oh well, back to back to mining Messiaen's modes of limited transposition to find chords that bring me beyond the edge of complete despair. Harmonies that make me want to lie in the recovery position and tell myself it's all going to be alright, while I cry myself into a fitful slumber.

[@curledup]

These all sound like shit

[@macks00w95]

you might want to clean your ears once in a while