Rolling Music Theory Thread

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!

Here's why: first two lines of the verse start on A, climb up to E and then back down. Third line starts on A an octave higher, frames the upward movement on C (the highest note), then back to A, descending to (and resting on) the fifth - E, ending on the lower A.

First and third lines of the chorus also outline E to A.

Ok, yes, if I imagine an A drone I could hear a beautiful Aeolean melody here. How does that make the song in F Lydian? And: how do you reconcile the A-Aeo melody with the chords? And: did you listen to basically-the-same-song "I Think I'm In Trouble" again and hear how the same songwriters might be using the same terrific chord progression?

the song feels Aeolian to me too, but what fgti is saying sounds right

xpost

How does that make the song in F Lydian?

No, I'm not saying it does! I know I originally said that I could see calling it Lydian, but only because the chords do seem to rest on F. I think the way they reconcile the sort of Aeolian melody with F is by suggesting that it's a major seventh chord. The last guitar lick at the end is A-F-E.

"Trouble" does the same thing, doesn't it? The IV chord is a major seventh.

So, I am resistant to saying "it's in this mode" when it comes to modern pop music. It's fun to talk about Mixolydian and Dorian and Aeolean scales, and pointing out instances where the song sticks with those pitches, certainly how they're used in jazz... but modes are an ancient compositional idea that has little or no bearing on modern music, aside from composers/songwriters who deliberately wish to write modally as an affectation. So yeah, I agree that the melody for "Dreams" is a "sort of" Aeolian melody, but in my opinion it is more accurate and interesting to describe it as a major-key melody in a song that never arrives at the I-chord.

I said elsewhere (and upthread) that "Army Of Me" exists entirely within a Phrygian scale. I imagine that song is the product of Björk's own "I want to write a song in Phrygian mode" creative decision. But in rereading some threads and comments this morning, I was amazed at how many people also want to describe "Dreams" and "Get Lucky" as Aeolean, or "Pyramid Song" as Phrygian. I simply don't believe these terms have any application in pop music, I think North Americans pop listeners hear music as major/minor/other. I don't think a raised fourth in a scale means a song is Lydian or a bII chord makes something Phrygian.

A song I wanted to talk about with you guys because a) it's really very pretty and b) it kind of explores this issue is Beck's "Wave":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iea-ozFzGzw

What do you think? It does the same not-actually-Phrygian thing as "Pyramid Song"-- the I chord is a major triad, so it is not in Phyrgian mode, but it features a I-bII movements with enough consistency that it leads listeners into thinking it might be modal. And what do you make of those bV chords? What kind of cadence is that? I'm not a particularly advanced theory guy, and beyond mediant-relationships in chromatic harmony I basically just start thinking "now we're getting intuitive". But if there's an explanation for what this is, what it's called, beyond I-bII-bV I'd love to talk about it...

I was amazed at how many people also want to describe "Dreams" and "Get Lucky" as Aeolean, or "Pyramid Song" as Phrygian. I simply don't believe these terms have any application in pop music, I think North Americans pop listeners hear music as major/minor/other.

Sometimes people prefer to describe modern diatonic music as modal because 'major/minor' could tend to imply CPP functional harmony and voice-leading.

I'll try to analyse the Beck when I can get to my instrument but that's an interesting progression, you're right! Off the top of my head, the closest thing I could think of is that a quasi-Locrian line (in terms of root movement) is being harmonized with major triads, similar to what Bartok did with a pentatonic line in Bluebeard's Castle?

Yes, and I contend that the vast majority of popular music conforms to the language of CPP functional harmony. Certainly more so than it conforms to modal forms.

I thought you might say Locrian, and maybe you're right, but I mean, I've never actually heard a piece of actual Locrian music. That is, I've never heard Locrian chant before, or any jazz based on the Locrian mode.

My ear very clearly hears modes as being functionally related to raga. That is, the scale is not the basis for complex polyphony. The mode is describing a set of pitches that must at all times relate to a root, or a drone, or an implication of one-- and a droning root is a consistent feature of chant, Indian classical music, and modal jazz. You see what I mean?

you were the first person itt to describe Get Lucky as "Aeolean"!

Yes! I'm trying to figure this out as I go along :)

Dorian and Aeolean are useful because they describe two different versions of a (typically) minor scale. Mixolydian too, I suppose, for major, though it's use seems to me to be borne out of flexible 7ths (and flexible 3rd for blues and folk). Nobody says Ionian because they just say major. It's Lydian, Phrygian and Locrian I guess that I'm wary of.

And well you should be.

I think the flattened seventh of the Mixolydian mode as used in American music is the convergence of different traditions; in the classical & Christian music traditions it is, as you say, an alteration of the major seventh, but it is also a fixture of the folk music of the British Isles (especially drone-based music, e.g. that produced by bagpipes or uilleann pipes). the relationship of the flattened 7th to the 7th harmonic makes the Mixolydian mode sound just as stable in a folk/rock context as the major/minor scales are in a classical/pop context. to my ears anyway.

I feel like I hear a lot of i-bII progressions with what I hear as Phrygian melodies over them but this thread has made me less and less sure of my capacity to properly identify such things. I agree about Lydian/Locrian though.

Enjoying and agreeing with the recent posts. Maybe later have something to add. Or subtract.

@ Crüt I hesitated to identify bagpipes/uilleann pipes as being "Mixolydian" because traditionally they're exactly not :) I mean, they kind of are, but the seventh isn't fully "flat" and the third isn't fully "sharp". Similar to raga tunings and Hardanger tunings, they have their own unique system that ought not to be defined by trad Western tunings. The Mixolydian tuning you'll hear on harp+LARP renditions of "She Moved Through The Fair" are aberrations. This is nothing new! just bringing it up as a counter-point to my hesitation in application of modal terms

that's very true. I'm being super sloppy w/my vocabulary.

It's a trap, crüt!

Ha, I think I mentioned before that the first part of Rush's "YYZ" is always the (modern) example of Locrian mode that I use in class. It does have a repeated root (with ^1-b^5) in the bass. How would you analyse the pitch collections in Meshuggah songs, if not as Locrian?

I guess my thinking about church modes in modern music is somewhat in line with Persichetti's?

Right you are about YYZ! Damn, I can't believe I never noticed that. (I never have analyzed a Meshuggah song, I just assume w darker metal that flattened-supertonics are required)

What does Persichetti say? I've never studied him.