HIST 390 Blog

 Learning about the decline of the number of chords in modern music was very interesting to me.  It made sense that a decline in chords would come from funk music, which utilized usually only two or so chords and was really great for dancing.  This also has its roots in Latin music, such as Cuban or Puerto Rican music.  This was really interesting to me because it makes a lot of sense why so much music today is very dance centered.  The combination of less chords along with Reggaeton beats is the basis of so much of our chart topping music, made usually to be played in clubs.  What I also found interesting was how because of this harmonically static music, it makes it much easier to sample the music in another song.  We tied this theory back in class to Claude Shannon in class and how he says that everything can be made into information and then messed with.  In this case music can be translated into information on our computer and in music production software and then sampled and messed with to create something completely different.  The information is the same, but rearranged the meaning changes.