Chord diagrams reduce music to visual directives within three major chords

Evidence

In the piano scores of hit songs, there are strange diagrams. They relate to guitar, ukelele and banjo, as well as the accordion - infantile instruments in comparison with the piano - and are intended for players who cannot read the notes. They depict graphically the fingering for the chords of the plucking instruments. The rationally comprehensible notes are replaced by visual directives, to some extent by musical traffic signals. These signs, of course, confine themselves to the three tonic major chords and exclude any meaningful harmonic progression. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 99

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• DEFINE: