Friday, October 16, 2009

I V vi iii IV I IV V

Hmmm, we haven't had a musical interlude for awhile! So, what to play, what to play... Ok, here's a classic from a few years ago:



Now, even if you're not a Green Day fan, the melody-line of that song may sound just a tad familiar. There is a reason for that, said reason being that Billie-Joe Armstrong borrowed the chord progression from a certain well-known canon:



You fools! Go back and count the "n"s!



Much better. We will overlook for now the fact that the man pictured in the video is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, not Johanne Pachelbel. So yes, there you have it - the strange connection between Baroque chamber music and late-20th-century pop-punk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In one of my caroling troops back in the day - we often would have fun finding as many Christmas Carols as we could to put with Pachelbel. "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" wins 1st prize.

I never knew that Mozart wrote the Pachelbel Canon - learned something new today!

JB

Patrick C said...

Funnily enough, I was discussing things with another musical friend of mine last night, and he too mentioned the Jolly Old St. Nicholas - Pachelbel connection! It does sound like great fun - what were some of the other carols that "fit"?

And yes, the Mozart thing is... puzzling.