Pedal points!

Good catch.

Recurring intro riff to that tune always sounds Wagnerian to me, like "Ride of the Valkyries" a little although maybe it's something else.

"Everlasting Love" - Robert Knight

Pedals are everywhere. The 2-note guitar solo in Boredom (E and B) is a pedal point over the main riff, which includes 2 very dissonant chords at the end, F and Eb, then moves down a semitone to chime with the final Bb chord.

"Your Mother Should Know" - The first two chords are A minor to F, but it sounds like the piano stays on A minor (making the chord F-A-C-E, a major seventh).

There's a prominent E in the melody, too. You have to wonder whether they realized that.

I have just realised that my very, very favourite thing in music is the literal opposite of the Pedal Point:

Where the guitar holds a one-note drone through the whole chord progression, and the bass goes wandering about, carrying the melody through the chord changes.

Basically, you do that, and I am *yours*.

that's a pedal point too!

Length of Love. Length of fucking Love. Guitar on pedal point, motorik Stereolab beat, Duran Duran bassline.

Just take me, I am yours, guitar pedal points.

*flails helplessly*

TS: pedal point on the tonic vs. pedal point on the fifth

xp I mentioned something I think is similar what's going on in that Interpol song upthread and learned that in jazz circles it has the wonderfully scientific name of 'Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony', or, if you're a real head, simply CESH.

Oh god I am such a sucker for this, and I've realised that every single one of the Interpol songs I really love and carolanne on is just a giant gleeful pedal point love-in. Like, I am so predictable in my musical loves, but also slightly relieved that there is a reason that there is a reason for me finding this stuff such musical catnip. Sure, 'Contrapuntal Elaboration of Static Harmony' sounds better than "fingerbanging guitar solo" but that's exactly what it was on The New, just this long, hanging pedal point in the form of this endless one-note guitar riff that the rest of the band kind of revolves around.

Mammoth has one, too. It's so fucking obvious now I'm hearing it for the... 18th time or whatever. The whole song is based around this blang-blang-blang-blang guitar pedal point, and then the bass goes into a glam descend - SORRY! I learned the fancy pants word for "glam descend" it is apparently, an ~"Andalusian cadence"~ - and that is just one of those musical manoeuvres I am completely helpless in the face of. And then for the middle 8, they switch, and the guitar takes the glam descend the bass goes on the pedal point and it's just... oooh magic.

It's really super super obvious stuff, and I kinda hate myself a little for falling for it. But yeah. Kessler seems to be all about pedal points and that's what scratches my musical itch in this otherwise terrible, terrible band. yes.

i think 80% of any music i have ever made falls into this category. no shame.

Oh. I just gave in and watched a live video because I was so curious about that "fingerbanging guitar solo" and oh. Oh oh oh. First, I'm glad that my ears for production are accurate, and the guitar is doubled. But mostly oh. Oh oh oh. The ~secret~ to that sound and it is not a tremolo arm either it is oh it is oh oh oh ooohhh. That is very clever, very very clever, oh.

But really, I cannot wait until this obsession ends because spewing this obsession over every thread is really getting silly now.

But still. Oh.

"Surrender"

The Who - "The Real Me"

Styx - "Fooling Yourself"

every Hüsker Dü song

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Rqvry3K05qQ/T3dqKlRbQNI/AAAAAAAAAG4/2Pr1sD7uqJE/s1600/U2-With-Or-Without-Y-351964.jpg

The "California Girls" one where it goes from a tonic major chord to a minor five chord at the beginning of the verse.

That's a good chord change.

"Darling Be Home Soon"

Hm. Will have to listen to again

"Detroit Rock City"

Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Love or Confusion"

"Got to Get You into My Life"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp1HWhnpfvs

every Hüsker Dü song

― flappy bird, Thursday, June 9, 2016 11:22 PM (two years ago)

Really?

somebody pointed it out upthread--joni mitchell is the queen of pedal points

Pavement - "We Dance" almost qualifies, there's a brief A-major containing a C# but all other chords in the song pedal around the D on the b-string.

Your Song (the intro)
Maybe I'm Amazed ("maybe i'm a man")

"Xanadu"

"Even in the Quietest Moments" by Supertramp wins this - the backdrop of a constant D in the bass throughout the entire song underlies a shifting palette of major, minor, dominant, and diminished chords, often with 7ths atop them. There's at least seven different chords in the verses and chorus, more if inversions are counted separately. très cool

Opening riff and chorus to Cliff Richard, "We Don't Talk Anymore"

"Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies"

ooh i like that this thing i like has a name. is there a name for its kind of opposite, e.g. when a bassline changes under a repeating melody (if that makes sense)?

My favorite example of this is Peter Gabriel's "It Is Accomplished" (from Passion). The whole song is one four-note sequence (A-G#-F#-E) while the bass creates new chords each measure (A B F#m C#m A B E). The bridge is the same four-note sequence with the bass adding a new chord and sequence (D E, repeated).

There are so many Genesis and Phil Collins tracks that make use of this.

Holger Czukay to thread.

"If I Needed Someone"

The Human League - "Mirror Man"

"Love American Style" (on the "By the dawn's early light, my love" section).

ooo nice one

"A Groovy Kind of Love"

A pedal on 5 when it goes to the ii chord!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP__yC1H3aM

does this count?
jk & CO "Fly"

wonder if Thom Yorke heard this and decided to do Like Spinning Plates

a friend who's a musician says it's not – it's just the impression I got from the arrangement and mix, prob... sorry everyone!

Jump by Van Halen is a pedal point for the verse and chorus. It only goes off it for the "Can't you see i'm standing here against the record machine" part