Rolling Music Theory Thread

Wish he'd had the later knowledge of Thurston being a full-blooded asshole to put his performance of "Superstar" into contemporary context

His harmonic breakdown is immaculate, though, a Kevin lecture? would attend

Off topic but "Superstar" is sub a great track, as is the rest of Mad Dogs

"is sub a great track" = not good? I dunno I am recalling the song from memory and it is a great track, but I've never heard of "Mad Dogs"

Assume he meant "such a great track" but as an intranetz typo it's a keeper.

I are an idiot: Ab is the relative major of F-minor.

I have a direction problem: up a third, down a third, whatever.

"A major goes down to see his miner friend"

!

Another directional problem: had trouble hearing the Bb minor chord, perhaps because mind was confused that the bass note is still descending but the chords are on their way back up.

And another paper about the Carpenters and this song in particular , or vice versa: http://www.popular-musicology-online.com/issues/05/jarman-ivens-01.html

- fade-outs are a functional concern rather than a compositional one. Fade-outs were originally implemented so people didn't have to hear the sound of sequencers being flipped off.

Do you have mnemonics for the other keys? All I could find was "Father Charles Goes Down and Ends in Battle" for the circle of fifths which I had never seen before.

Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen is one of the great double live classic rock albums- for some the only one, although I don't think it gets much love around here. The band is filled with great musicians such as the two Jims, Gordon and Keltner, on drums, many of whom had been with Delaney and Bonnie earlier, such as the aforementioned Carl Radle and especially Leon Russell, who was in the Shindig house band with Delaney and co-wrote "Superstar" with Bonnie. George Harrison, who briefly was in Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, as it was called, would also use these musicians, in the recording of All Things Must Pass and for The Concert for Bangaldesh. Eric Clapton, who was part of the "Friends" for longer performed with them as well, particularly in Derek & The Dominoes.

The Concert for Bangaldesh is sub a good movie.

Shoutout to Canadian band KLAATU on that last link.

Wonder if Tim is ever coming back to this thread.

Funny, I just figured out how to play "Superstar" a few months ago. Hear the second chord as an Ab triad in second inversion.

Chords are very different in the original Delaney and Bonnie version, by the way.

Wonder who did the Mad Dogs arrangement and changed the chords.

- fade-outs are a functional concern rather than a compositional one. Fade-outs were originally implemented so people didn't have to hear the sound of sequencers being flipped off.

It's not a compositional concern for "Mind Games" (John Lennon) to fade out rather than end?

Looking at that Jarman-Ivens piece, I think she's got the sequence wrong. The Delaney and Bonnie version was on an album that came out in '72, but it was an older track - had been on a 45 released in '69. It predates the Mad Dogs version.

pop song length started as functional too, became compositional

I dunno! I never listen to John Lennon. Just kidding. I was just thinking about the 80s, when fade-outs were at their most ubiquitous. My ears hear fade-outs differently, to me they do not suggest "cycling onward unto infinity", but rather the feeling of leaving the protagonist caught struggling in a spider's web. Like the end of "Time Bandits". Or the moment the lights come on and they kick you out of the club.

Funny, I just figured out how to play "Superstar" a few months ago. Hear the second chord as an Ab triad in second inversion.

Chords are very different in the original Delaney and Bonnie version, by the way.

Wonder who did the Mad Dogs arrangement and changed the chords.

Looking at that Jarman-Ivens piece, I think she's got the sequence wrong. The Delaney and Bonnie version was on an album that came out in '72, but it was an older track - had been on a 45 released in '69. It predates the Mad Dogs version.

Like Midler's recording, the Carpenters take the first three notes of the vocal line as a starting point, but whereas Midler's pianist then moves back to reiterate the resolution of the suspended supertonic (Figure 1.1)

simple F chord

Just listened again briefly. Maybe the person who changed the chords was me, writing them down wrong:)

Will say that instead of an oboe the original has a violin that emerges from the mix.

do not suggest "cycling onward unto infinity"

Meltzer called this "osmotic tongue pressure."

(He was talking about "Hey Jude.")

Tell you one thing: rhythm section is much busier on the original, especially the bass. Lots of syncopated sixteenths right from the beginning. On the live version he saves most of his sixteenths for the chorus.

I was guessing before on the chords of the chorus, now I think they are

|Db | Cm Cm/Bb | Ab | Ab |

Now I know why I had trouble hearing the Bb on the MD&E version- first time around he plays an Ab. Playing the seventh under the chord on the downbeat is not always the first choice, unless the tune is "Waters of March."

Chords on MD&E version not really that much different than from original b-side. First new thing is the intro vamp on the F minor. After that main difference is the Gb that is used on the original to get into the chorus is moved to near the end of the chorus.
In the MD&E version there is no chord change to lead you to the chorus, they just go there from the C at the end of the verse. The first time through, the playing gets a little het up on the first bars of the C, threatening to break out, but then calms down on the last bar and returns to the verse, but the next time they go all out on the last C and the pressure is too great - "I can't take it anymore!" -and the chorus starts.

Wait, there are some more differences. On the way up on the verse of the original, the Ab holds for another bar, as does the Db. Also there is a Bb-minor at the end of the chorus I didn't hear in the other one.

OK, guess I should see what Joe Osborn is doing on Carpenters version.

By original b-side, are you talking about the Delaney and Bonnie version?

Listening again, the big difference I hear is that they go to Ab major instead of C minor at the end of the verse. The Mad Dogs and Carpenters versions go to C minor. I thought they also used C minor as the fourth chord in the verse, but it seems just listening again now that it's a first inversion Ab. (The first inversion outlines the bass descent from the Db chord that precedes it to the Bb chord that follows it.)

Delaney and Bonnie version also has the dominant chord at the end of the first and third verses. And Bb minor to C7 at the end of the chorus in place of the "I love you/I really do" line.

Bette Midler version is very different also!

Speaking of the "I love you/I really do" line - Mad Dogs version is Gb to Db but Carpenters make the Db a major seventh chord.

can anyone name examples of songs in the Lydian mode that don't resolve to (or hint at resolving to) Ionian/Aeolian/Mixolydian?

Love to help you, son, but I've moved on to the Lydian dominant.

j/k

fleetwood mac dreams & rem man on the moon

via a book i have here, there are loads of examples but none of them seem that strictly lydian to me.

i don't know if the way i think of modes is 'correct' but i don't find it useful to think of whole songs as being in a particular mode.

pedal point/couple of chords + a particular melodic approach can signify a mode, but few song-song-type-proppa-song songs do that.

i used to think if i learnt my modes i'd unlock some magic key to new musical worlds but now my ear/interval knowledge is up to scratch i don't really understand how thinking modally could really help me.

Reminded that I recently read this in, by Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music:

Glareanus’s main theoretical innovation, reflected in the pseudo-Greeky title of his book (“The Twelve-Stringed Lyre”), lay in the recognition of four additional modes beyond the eight modes established by the Frankish theorists of Gregorian chant. These modes, which Glareanus christened Ionian and Aeolian (together with their plagal or “hypo-” forms), had their respective finals on C and A, and hence corresponded to what we now know as the major and minor scales. Neither was a necessary invention. Through the use of B-flat, a fully accredited tone in the gamut since at least the eleventh century, the Lydian had long since provided the theoretical model for the major and the Dorian for the minor. But Glareanus’s terminology made it unnecessary to account for the use of C and A as finals by calling them transpositions of other finals. Very typically for a humanist, Glareanus sought to represent his innovation as a return to authentic Greek practice. It was anything but that.

,by

"Dreams" seems like a pretty legit answer, although some of the pentatonicisms in the melody avoid the B.

IMO "Dreams" is not in Lydian mode. It is a case of a song having no represented tonic. Compare the melodic behaviour of "Dreams" to "I Think I'm In Trouble" and you'll hear that they're essentially the same song, except "Trouble" has the I chord on the verses.

Me, I don't think of music as having any modal qualities unless there's evidence of intention toward it being "modal". Sometimes that intention is revealed through analysis, other times it just "feels" that way. I "feel" that the jazz-school trained bros in Grizzly Bear did whole-heartedly write the verse of "Two Weeks" knowing the melody was, for the verse at least, Lydian. I feel the same way about Bjork's "Army of Me" (Phrygian).

In the latter case, "Army of Me" does have textbook Phyrgian cadences. Grizzly Bear do not-- the traditional Lydian cadence is II-I (G-F), and it is not evident here.

But I could* argue that a defining compositional feature of 00s freak-folk, from Devendra to Iron & Wine to Grizzly Bear to Fleet Foxes, is a flexible treatment of the fourth of a scale. It sounds, sonically, like mysticism. I first noticed it when I heard Grizzly Bear's "Little Brother" and thought it might be a trait-of-a-genre-worth-investigating when I heard the same thing in a Fleet Foxes song. Went back and heard it all through Devendra's second album. There is a Vashti Bunyan song that does it. "Chimicum Rain" also, flexible 4ths on that song. "H'ors d'Oeuvres" by Roy Harper, too. All these freak-folk touchstone songs, all have flexifourths. Interesting, huh? (Very little to do with actual Lydian mode, though.)

* could but won't, beyond this single post, because zzzzzzzzz.

flexible fourths have been used in folk/trad/parlor music for over a century so that makes sense

If a traditional Lydian cadence is II-I, what distinguishes it from all the II-I movement in "Dreams?" (I mean, obviously, a II-I in the middle of one of the verses is not a cadence, but what about the ones that end the verses and choruses?)

If the song is in Lydian as you suggest, the melodic cadence "you will know" would be resolving downward to the fifth of the I chord. That is a far less convincing suggestion than an implied supertonic-to-tonic melodic movement over a IV chord. The melody is so un-Lydian that I can't hear it that way.

Yeah, I don't hear it as supertonic to tonic, though. The whole melody seems to frame A minor to me, mostly pentatonic. So, I hear that resolution down to C as a weak one that ends on the third scale degree.

I cannot aurally wrap my head around that reading, but the capacity for disparate interpretations speaks to the strength of that progression, I suppose!