I often wonder why many of the “Songs” chord progressions in Scaler “only” have 4 chords. For some reason (as a newbie) I assumed that “more is better”. Most of my early “songs” had never ending “unique” melodies, and the feedback was that the average listener is looking for regularity in music, to anchor on. The art of music seems in finding the right balance between repetition and variety.
When I go back looking at my various song prototypes/experiments, the ones that resonate most are the ones with just a few chords in. The extreme example being something like this, literally just 2 chords applied to lush pads (having their own builtin harmonies). Even the highly resonating filter is driven by the sound (not the notes) of the chord harmonies.
Another example that (to me) turned out surprisingly interesting sounding was a “cover version” to a track some friends of mine did. They used only one chord through the whole song, since it was an ambient drone based piece, and the variety was in the background effects applied. My cover version just added one more chord, which then carried the whole melody/song. Admittedly, it ain’t jazz or other sophisto stuff - electronic music (EDM, ambient?) seems more tolerant toward hypnotic repetition…
