The band Nirvana was a unique tonal experiment at the close of the 20th century.

Unlike many grunge bands (or any bands really), Nirvana’s unique sound was due to timbre (the sound of screaming vocals and distorted guitars), as much as it was to tonality (the arrangement of the notes into a key). They meddled with tritones on Bleach, discovered new and unusual 4-chord song progressions like “Aneurysm” and “Tourettes”, and tied the whole dissonant package together with their intuitive raw feel and Kurt Cobain’s natural sense of melody.

Let’s look at the verse melody from “Smells like Teen Spirit”. Click on the black stemmed noteheads to listen.



The melody resolves on the 2nd, one degree above the root note. Drag over the F root above to hear how they harmonize. They create an F9 chord like the above right.

“Smells like Teen Spirit” is a simple F Minor 4-Chord Ballad, but the melody is what makes it really interesting. It’s as beautiful to sing, as it is to rock out on a guitar. It’s worth taking a look at the entire verse melody.

Click on the score to play/stop.

The bouncy off-beat melody is an F Natural Minor scale, or the Aeolian mode (F G Ab Bb C Db Eb). Although there is only bass playing the root notes of each chord throughout, the melody beautifully expresses the full range of the Minor scale by hitting all seven notes. Kurt may only play power chords (neutral chords with only perfect fifths and octaves), but the “minorness” of the F and Bb minor chords is expressed in the melody. So too, with the majorness of the Ab and Db major chords.

In the score above, you can plainly see the fearful symmetry of the melody. The first and third measure are a kind of inversion of each other that both resolve on the 3rd (Ab), while the second and fourth measures are basically parallel, transposed down a 4th.

The demo version features a melody that is even more symmetrical. There’s no longer the upwards motion of the first three notes (“Load Up On”) that really makes the melody pop out and present itself. This bluesy revision to the melody actually makes the whole line better by including a little bit of novelty, and less redundancy in the first and second measures. Tiny imperfections and defying expectations make music new and fun.

And sometimes, you’ve got to just let the song sing to you the right melody….

The above harmonies are found ‘accidentally’ during the prechorus of the song. The guitar plays a high alternating C and F, while the vocal melody (hello hello hello how low) hits a a passing G, which results in the unlikely chords above.

Kurt Cobain would often hit wrong chords—suspend fourths when he meant to hit power chords, or major chords when he meant minor—but the dissonant jazz chords above are completely intentional, and while not explicitly played, are heard briefly in the passing minor melody.