Senior year in high school, I took a class called “Basic Musicianship.” It was a “gut course,” as they say; no homework and not many tests, as I recall. What I do remember learning is the concept of a triad chord and the quote, “Music is painted on a background of silence.”

Obviously, the members of The Axis of Awesome paid more attention than me. Australia’s “most tolerated musical comedy trio” has done some valuable research and revealed the shocking truth of pop music: it only takes four chords to make a hit song. Here is the shameful proof:

On the opposite end of the musical spectrum, here is Jan Swafford’s excellent Slate piece explaining the surprising difficulties involved in simply playing in tune. With many audio examples. Of course, I didn’t understand any of it, but I felt good about myself after reading it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.