Do chords need to appear in a certain order?

Someone wrote in last week and asked my opinion on a certain course being sold on the Internet. He is a regular reader of my writing and was asking about an apparent conflict between what I say and what was being presented in that course.

The conflict was this: I often discuss how chords “function” and where they want to go. In other words, I tell you to resolve different chords according to a set of rules. For example, a minor ii should normally resolve either to the V7 or the I. I have been critical of music where it is apparent that these rules are not being followed.

These rules have nothing to do with morality. They have to do with the way music works just like there are rules about how gravity works or arithmetic works.

The course in question teaches the opposite. It gives a few hundred voicings of chords and says to string them together in any way you want without worrying about the resulting progressions. The teacher says that the voicings are what makes this tactic work.

So who is right? Certainly in the sample videos on that site, his strategy sounds pretty good. Interestingly though, I noticed that his samples actually did follow the rules. That is not uncommon. Good musicians that do not know the rules often still follow them instinctively because the result sounds good.

But let’s ignore that fact and consider the question. Do you have to follow the rules of functional harmony or don’t you? And the answer of course is a bit complicated. Here is a little history.

Through the first few centuries of classical music, composers discovered more and more about tonality and functional harmony and their music largely reflected those rules. However, in the last century, that trend began to change. Composers began to get bored with following those rules and decided to explore new ideas and create their own systems for composing.

For example, there is a system known as serialism in which composers use a complex set of rules that largely ignores tonality. Most of us are familiar with this type of music which is often referred to as 20th Century classical music. Music majors in college love to play it because it is impressive.

Personally, I am not fond of playing it or listening to this kind of music. But I am not going to say that it wrong from a moral or musical perspective. It does at least follow a set of rules and the composers who write it actually do know what they are doing.

At some point, some composers decided to write music without rules at all–completely random music. For example, a composer (don’t remember who) threw a flopping fish on piano strings and called the resulting noise a composition. I have little respect for this approach to music.

Here is the point. I personally like music that follows the rules of tonality but I can respect musicians that break those rules if they know what they are doing. However, it is harder to respect music that breaks the rules of tonality just because the composer does not know what the rules are. I suppose that it is possible for a composer to be ignorant of music but still create some new great system of composing. However, it is certainly unlikely.

So, let’s get back to the original question. Is it legitimate for a teacher to say just play chords at random without worrying about the resulting progressions? I say no. If you are going to break rules, you should have a good reason.