Rolling Music Theory Thread

Before listening, just scanning this over, a bunch of these are just the truck driver modulation, right?

it's the rare song that I've heard hundreds of times but wouldn't be able to sound out at the piano from memory.

i can mostly do this, but that's after practicing it for about 8 hours straight one day lol

"Layla", for example, although the shift between keys is garbage writing, imo.

i always thought that transition was very jarring, tho the chromaticism is kinda fun.

a personal favorite key change of mine is costello's 'oliver's army,' which changes key from A to B right away in the bridge by shifting to the new key's relative minor of G#m, but doesn't become obvious until he returns to the verse.

The write-up on Cheap Trick "Surrender" doesn't mention that there are two changes in the song... I've always loved how the intro is in Bb but then it goes immediately to B (and never goes back to Bb)

is there a turnaround in that one, or does it just jump up a half-step when the verse starts?

Nope, it just jumps a half-step arbitrarily off the top, and then it does the same move again when they get to the verse where the parents are banging

That's great, yeah.

What do we make of "Girl from Ipanema"? Let's look at the original Getz/Gilberto version in Db, not the fakebook version in F. Here's a faithful transcription of Gilberto's guitar part: http://www.hjgs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/The-girl-from-ipanema.pdf . And this is the melody: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11gZNXD-CJ87Gkm4USTvWuDpPH_XdYD5t/view?usp=sharing. The A sections aren't too crazy: essentially, the progression of Db [6/9] - Eb9 - Ebm9 - D7 - Db [6/9] reduces to a I - ii - V7 - I progression with a tritone substitution for V7 (D7 instead of Ab7) and a chromatic II7 chord produced by an incomplete neighbouring note between the I and ii chords. EXCEPT Gilberto played the entire thing in second inversion, which seems crazy but works for some reason - what is the reason, though? Over the ii-V(tri sub)-I turnaround, I can see that the fifths in the bass are mostly doubling the melody; this still doesn't explain the bass in the first four bars. Also, it's a little trickier because the tri sub chord isn't a real D7 - there's no root in either the guitar part or the melody. It's actually F# dim/A, which could substitute for D7 but is now a substitute for a substitute?

The B section is the really fun part, though. The most convincing explanation (Ed Byrne's or my adjustment of his) I've seen analyses mm. 11-22 as moving through three unresolved tonicizations:
Dmaj7-G7 is IV-bVII7 of A
Dm7-Bb7 is ii-bVII7 of C
and Ebm7-Cb7 is ii-bVII7 of the home key of Db
and from there we just go to a standard chain of ii-V-Is

which is not bad as an explanation but... where do those key areas/tonicizations come from?? A (Bbb) works as a chromatic mediant move to bVI from Db but why do we get to C from there? Why does G7 go to Dm7? (Bb7 to Ebm7 is obv straightforward.)

and from there we just go to a standard chain of ii-V-Is

Although, actually, Cb7-Fm7 is still a bit wtf.

I love reading this thread but I think I understand general relativity more than I understand music theory. Is there such a thing as a good primer?

I think I can pick a key change, fwiw: Quicksand by Bowie has a good one, right (into the second verse)?

Bossa nova is a game of rhythmic and harmonic obscurantism. The word I like to use is "buoyancy"-- if you de-emphasize the downbeat, or remove the root of a chord, you're left with something not "unfinished" but something that floats.

I think of "Ipanema" as being, harmonically, like a game of zero-gravity Jenga. Remove the root, stack added pitches on top, you get something that floats. I've always appreciated the way that the first four bars of the melody have Joao singing the 7th and the 9th, dancing around the root Db of the chord, and the way it evokes, I suppose, a nice ass. He only hits the tonic over the ii7 chord, a little kiss before he descends to have the vocal melody cadence on the 5th of the chord.

The melody cadences on the 5th of the chord-- and the guitar chords are in 2nd inversion (the 5th of the chord in the bass). What is the reason? It's because, without the underpinning bass (firmly establishing that we're in Db), we'd be misled into thinking that our song is happening in Ab, a version of Ab with a lot of add6s. It's like a party trick-- the ear doesn't realize the song is actually in Db until the bass enters to set you straight.

sund4r: don't let Joao fool you with that D7/A. It's not as complicated as what you're describing, it's just an Ab-flat9, with the Ab root omitted, and the flat9 in the root! (Joao's D69/A that follows, though, although it is close in structure to an Ab-flat9, it's not the same-- this is just a chromatic substitution.)

The B-section is a very, very difficult thing to parse. I just struggled with it but I think I have a solution. Byrne's interpretation of the B-section is different from mine. I hear the first 12 bars this way:

Dmaj7 - G7 is a II - V7 of C. Look at the vocal melody, ends on a B, my ear wants to hear that B rise to a C for a nice pat resolution. And it almost does...

The "Dm7" has a G in the root-- all the pitches of a Cmaj triad are here in this chord! We have a Dmaj7 - G7 - C! (except the "C" is actually some hybrid of a Dm7 and a G7).

But yeah that Dm7? G7? chord is complicated, I think that it functions this way:

Dm7 - Bb7 is a bvii7 - V7 of Eb.

And we get that resolution to Eb-- except to an Ebm7. We duplicate this chord sequence up a half step:

Ebm7 - B7 is a bvii7 - V7 of E.

The subsequent "standard chain of ii - Vs" is made so lovely with those #11s, a very underrated chord addition.

Kudos to Jobim, this is a gorgeously complicated thing, I've never unpacked it before and it's wonderful.

Also sund4r just to make things about myself, I have a song called "Perseverance.." that does the same thing as Joao does-- the song appears to be in some kind of complicated B, but then the bass enters half-way through and establishes that no, we're in E.

Chinaski, do you read music? Play an instrument? Are you looking for more theory to help with composition/songwriting? Improvisation? Analytical listening? Particular idioms you are interested in? "Where to start" could have v different answers depending.

Sund4r's line of questioning is good. I'd like to think at this point I intellectually understand theory to some degree, at least from a jazz angle, but I still don't always hear it , except for the more obvious harmonic clichés, and there's no way I understand a fraction as much as the previous two very well-trained posters. In the end I found it more useful to be doing something with it rather than just reading about it to get something to stick in the earhole and brainworm.

As far as "Garota de Ipanema" haven't read the previous posts properly yet, but Jobim is a really clever composer and it is often hard to tell how he is doing what he is doing when he is doing it, often the chords will move a little bit in one direction while the melody shifts a little in the other, the aural equivalent of some kind of visual paradoxical stairstep effect if you will. He definitely does all kinds of interesting stuff that doesn't seem like moving around the circle of fifths and doing the usual substitutions.

There is also the question of what Tom is writing and what João is playing. Think part of what differentiated Bossa was not just the fancy harmonic movement but the relatively simplified rhythmic patterrns. It's almost motorik compared to other Brazilian stuff! He deliberately wasn't playing the boom-chick of a root-five samba bass line. He was more playing descending or ascending lines. Think somewhere I read he just preferred the fifth string and avoided the sixth which is maybe one reason he might hang out on the fifth in the bass.

Or maybe he was hanging out on the sixth string and just playing the fifth of the chord there, but he definitely didn't shift basses between the fifth and the sixth string lightly.

Guess I haven't tried to play that one in a month or so, since I don't remember what string the bass note is on!

Okay, took another proper look. That B-section is K-krazy, can't I just file it under non-functional harmony and be done with it?

the guitar chords are in 2nd inversion (the 5th of the chord in the bass). What is the reason? It's because, without the underpinning bass (firmly establishing that we're in Db), we'd be misled into thinking that our song is happening in Ab, a version of Ab with a lot of add6s. It's like a party trick-- the ear doesn't realize the song is actually in Db until the bass enters to set you straight.

Yeah, that's a good point. I was focusing so much on the guitar part, and the unaccompanied first verse, that I was overlooking the bass part, which, you're right, does put the roots of the chords in their place and also puts an Ab under that dominant-functioning chord, making it an Ab flat9, as you say.

Dmaj7 - G7 is a II - V7 of C. Look at the vocal melody, ends on a B, my ear wants to hear that B rise to a C for a nice pat resolution. And it almost does...

The "Dm7" has a G in the root-- all the pitches of a Cmaj triad are here in this chord! We have a Dmaj7 - G7 - C! (except the "C" is actually some hybrid of a Dm7 and a G7).

But yeah that Dm7? G7? chord is complicated, I think that it functions this way:

Dm7 - Bb7 is a bvii7 - V7 of Eb.

And we get that resolution to Eb-- except to an Ebm7. We duplicate this chord sequence up a half step:

Ebm7 - B7 is a bvii7 - V7 of E.

B-b-but II maj7 and vii m7 (not bvii in these cases) are the kinds of symbols under which my old theory prof would have written "don't write meaningless Roman numerals" - they don't refer to any harmonic function I'm familiar with. bVII7 is a common enough substitute for V7 in a jazz context. The only way I would understand those others is as chromatic products of voice-leading (like the Eb9 chord in the A section), which could work if the melody strongly suggested the key areas you give but I have trouble hearing that - if mm. 11-14 are in (or tonicizing) C, we get neither the tonic nor the dominant in the melody and the first two bars are built around C#/Db, which is obv not part of that tonality, with unresolved leading notes in m. 12 - so I can't hear C as the tonal centre there. I am able to hear A as a centre there with the melodic phrase beginning on a prolonged C# (the mediant) and resolving to the tonic on the third bar of the phrase. Likewise with the next two.

Also, where are you hearing the G during the Dm7?

does put the roots of the chords in their place and also puts an Ab under that dominant-functioning chord, making it an Ab flat9, as you say.

Although, yeah, it does have the effect of making the unaccompanied verse tonally ambiguous.

James Redd et al - "non-functional harmony" is a bit of a cop-out. There still has to be some logic to how the material is organized, post-tonal or otherwise.

(But yeah, do see the temptation, lol)

Okay, read through this a bit finally and mostly liked fgti's analysis, haven't parsed Sund4r's response yet.

Also wanted to post a bit of interesting trivia here I just learned from a book length academic study of Jobim that My Smart Neighbor™ told me about: he was asked to write the score for The Pink Panther and Two For the Road and later The Exorcist, all of which he turned down, the first two being written of course by Henry Mancini.

Here is a long video I haven't watched yet about this song from another super smart guy I have had the pleasure to talk to, Adam Neely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWCbGzxofU

Please feel free to call me on this cheesy Borrowed Prestige maneuver.

Gets really interesting at around minute 25.

Somebody told me that in the Chediak Jobim Songbook, which the composer presumably was involved in, the key is F and that the Db on Getz/Gilberto was probably because of Astrud's range.

Chinaski, do you read music? Play an instrument? Are you looking for more theory to help with composition/songwriting? Improvisation? Analytical listening? Particular idioms you are interested in? "Where to start" could have v different answers depending.

Thank you for your response. My query is more along the lines of, say, the relationship of linguistics to everyday language: I am immersed in music (and play the guitar a bit) yet the mechanics are completely opaque - to the point where reading your conversations on here leaves me feeling a bit like Wittgenstein's lion. I need a year 1/year 2 text, I think!

Anyway, I'm conscious of derailing.

I kinda can't talk about "Ipanema" any more just because it is a truly difficult song to parse and it seems more like a conversation at a piano than a series of posts!

Heh, think I know what you mean. In any case, I usually like this guy's approach to theory and here is something that may or may not be relevant: https://antonjazz.com/2012/01/backdoor-ii-v-progression/

This was the thing he did I first came across that I found useful: https://antonjazz.com/2012/11/dominant-scales/

Think I probably posted it here already

I guess my general observation will be that, if there is a 7th chord, this is kind of the main clue. It is probably the V7, could be a tritone sub, could be bVII7. The ii chord might be altered somehow and the I chord might never appear or be disguised in some fashion.

Probably linked to this guy before as well: http://brunojazz.com/vt-bVII7chord.htm

Totally fair, fgti.

Chinaski, most academic texts are built around using standard musical notation to take apart 18th and 19th European art music. If you play a little guitar, don't read music, and are more interested in pop/rock, this might be a good book to start with: https://www.halleonard.com/product/148390/hal-leonard-guitar-music-theory

It gets you to the core concepts a lot faster and gives a lot of familiar examples and tabs to actually play through and hear what you're learning. I'd supplement it with some ear training - start with identifying intervals.

If you actually want the more traditional method and are starting from the beginning, Sarnecki's Elementary Music Rudiments books are usually what I use; not sure of their availability in the UK - ABRSM may have some kind of equivalent. You could get the Basic/Intermediate/Advanced books or the Complete book that combines them all.

I have a song called "Perseverance.." that does the same thing as Joao does-- the song appears to be in some kind of complicated B, but then the bass enters half-way through and establishes that no, we're in E.

Just listened to this. Very cool!

Took the "Ipanema" question to Twitter.

...and? (I have been meaning to ask a friend to weigh, but haven't yet)

Which friend reposted this on FB, so I might as well be the first to post this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA

One of you appears here briefly in some sense. At around minute eighteen something appears that I was talking about with another one of you the other day.

I came across this recently too which ties in: https://ethaniverson.com/guest-posts/the-emotional-rhythm-of-sophia-rosoff-by-sarah-deming/

I didn't realize until now that the guy who gave that keynote speech that sparked all the controversy was someone I had dinner with at the 2018 SMT/AMS conference.

Anyway, I'll watch this video but I'll say upfront that there's something that doesn't completely sit right with me about the current wave of wokeness on music theory social media.

So I was prepared to hate that but it actually got really good when he got to Schenker. Getting the same guy to voice-act fgti as well as Timothy Jackson seems a bit harsh, though! Might try to put together a more thorough response later on. Despite the clickbaity title and beginning, it does go p deep, ultimately.

Incidentally, has anyone ever heard any music or musical scholarship by Ben Shapiro's father David or even heard OF his work in any context other than Ben referencing him in his stupid hip-hop video? I don't know of David being on record for anything other than writing for Breitbart under a pseudonym.

I didn't watch the video and I don't think I can? but I did message the guy yesterday (after getting two "hey you should see this" text messages at my birthday picnic) just to make sure he knew that those articles were Heavily, Heavily Steeped In Sarcasm

I also expected that to be simplistic but it wasn't -- very engaging and thorough and convincing and actually in tune with a lot of thoughts and feelings I had freshman year of music school but didn't really have a framework to express (in my case it was even more absurd because I was a jazz major and first-year music theory was about MONK CHANT).

Which actually suggests there are a couple of different interrelated points there -- one is the whole western/euro/classical-centric aspect of the way theory is taught, but another is that even within the "western" tradition, the way theory is taught is often overly narrow (in part, but not exclusively, because "western" music itself has already pulled from so many other musics at this point).

That said, when he got to the comparative examples, I felt like that would be a terrible pedagogy for beginner students, too confusing.

Like I think it actually is *ok* and even beneficial to start with a particular framework rather than a universal comparative approach, as long as you don't treat that framework as the gold standard.

Although OTOH children can learn two languages at once and can even benefit from it, so I wonder if the same can be said for two musical "languages."

is there any music pedagogy which simply reverses the frameworks, and consciously and rigorously reads "western/euro/classical-centric" from the other perspective?

I mean, I would assume that an Indian music school would or might have that approach?