Category: Folk Songs

Good Songs with Few Chords

3/24/2025

Is it really possible to write a good song using only a few chords?

The short answer is "YES!!!!!!"

Many folk songs are built on just two chords --- the Tonic (I) and the Dominant (V). In the Key of C major, that would be the C major triad and the G Major triad. Take for example, "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush." It has just two chords. Many other folk songs and children's songs are built on just two chords.

Even more songs such as folk songs, children's songs, and even hymns are built on just three chords the Tonic or I, the Sub-dominant or IV, and the Dominant or Dominant 7th V or V7. Take the famous song from "Mary Poppins" for example. "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is built on just three chords. The famous hymn "Amazing Grace" is also build from just three chords.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon

Speaking of amazing, I am amazed when I learn interesting facts about composers I admire. I learned that John Lennon and Paul McCartney started writing songs for their little band The Beatles when they knew how to play just two chords on their guitars. They continued learning new chords, adding to their musical toolboxes and made up more new songs, but neither ever learned to really read or write musical notation. They used their ears and hearts to create tunes and words and just played accompaniments of what sounded good to them from the chords they knew. Other people helped "dress up" their songs and wrote out charts for publication.

Leslie Bricusse

Leslie Bricusse is another composer I admire. I have heard that he never actually wrote out the music for his songs, either. (Apparently, he had people for that!) He was particularly adept at writing lyrics and tunes to songs that seamlessly flowed from the dialogue in the scripts (which he wrote as well). The songs for his musicals nearly always explored the thoughts or motives of the characters or helped move the plots of the shows along.

When I was a teenager, my mother bought me a folio of Leslie Bricusse songs. I played and sang all day his songs like "On a Wonderful Day Like Today," "Beautiful Things," "After Today," "Fabulous Places," and "Gonna Build a Mountain" from his many shows like "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off," "Doctor Doolittle," and "Scrooge."

Ian Fraser

I suppose because he had top-notched arrangers and orchestrators like Ian Fraser to make his work look and sound good, he got away with never learning to actually write out his songs. He probably never bothered with taking music theory classes or learning a frustrating music notation program. Yeah, and the chord progressions to his finished products were much more complex than just two or three chords.

But even two chord songs can be "dressed up" to sound more sophisticated than they really are. Take for example "The Nursery Rhyme Quodlibet" from "The Adventures of Dick Whittington." Four Old English Nursery Rhymes and just two chords. Enjoy!

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Nursery Rhyme Quodlibet

2/15/2016

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Ring around the rosie...

Old English Nursery Rhymes were a way to teach language skills to the very young in an age when the vast majority of people were illiterate. These little rhymes toyed with alliteration, modulation and rhythm and educated by putting daily life situations into easy to remember verse. Most of the rhymes were light-hearted and comical and some even made serious or even gruesome situations comical. (Think of "Ring-a-ring a Rosie" that was actually about the realities of dealing with the Black Death.)

As an Opener for "The Adventures of Dick Whittington," I wanted to include the entire cast in singing authentic Nursery Rhymes of the Elizabethan period. The children are drawn out onto the stage by the Narrators who introduce them. They come on in four small groups each singing a separate Nursery rhyme. Group 1 dances on singing "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush." They sing and do the actions twice through. Group 2 enters a few bars later singing and dancing to "Do You Know the Muffin Man." Then a few bars later, Group 3 enters singing and dancing to "London Bridge is Falling Down." Finally, the last group of boys comes on singing "Adam Had Seven Sons." Each group sings their song through twice, and then sits down, leaving Group 4 singing alone to finish.

Singing four unrelated songs at the same time is called a Quodlibet. This is an ancient form of what we would label Partner Songs nowadays. The songs work together because they are sung in the same key, have similar length and follow a similar chordal structure. They may or may not have the same meter however. For example, "Mulberry Bush" is 6/8 where the other rhymes are 2/4, but because the heavy beats in each rhyme are duple, the patterns work well together.

The children in the cast are having fun working out the timing of this number. It is a lot of movement for the audience to keep track of, but it goes by so quickly I hope they find it energetic and delightful. The kids think it is pure FUN! They are having a great time. That's what I am going for!

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Good Songs with Few Chords

Nursery Rhyme Quodlibet

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