Pedal points!

yeah you can argue that -- obviously the very fact that the bass note IS sustaining puts whatever note it is playing "in the chord". Really you're talking about implied harmony, where you have a progression that would "intuitively" or "normally" go to a chord that does not include the bass note, and yet the bass note stays the same when it goes to that chord

I don't know what you'd say when the tonic is sustained in the bass over a bVII chord, though, like in the "Boogie Fever" example.

That it's a radically inverted ninth chord?

that's the same as the "Nowhere to Run" progression isn't it? Yeah, I'd just say it's a 9th chord

Yeah, cool, another Motown one. It's in the saxophone on that record.

I don't know what you'd say when the tonic is sustained in the bass over a bVII chord, though, like in the "Boogie Fever" example.

― timellison, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an eleventh chord on the tonic played without a third and fifth

I like that, actually, because it acknowledges that the tonic is in the bass.

Yeah, cool, another Motown one. It's in the saxophone on that record.

― timellison, Wednesday, May 1, 2013 12:16 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually it's sort of in the bass too -- the bass doesn't actually sustain the note, but it doesn't play the bass notes of the chords either, it just does a little walk-up lick around the tonic

I don't know what you would technically call it when the bass is a half step up from what should normally be the root of the chord, but it's a cool sound. It's used to great effect in the Manfred Mann version of Little Red Book.

I think on Nowhere to Run I would just say it goes from F to G/F. Little Red Book is Bb/C.

whole step, not half step

Whole step up is a ninth like somebody posted up thread. It's actually not too uncommon an effect in certain situations to construct a bass line, walking or otherwise, where you hit the ninth where the root would be.

Guess the interesting questions being raised by this thread are:
1) From the original post: Who is it that decided to put the pedal point in? One would think that in a lot of cases the composer or arranger put it in, but in the case of Motown there is a good chance that it was James Jamerson, who was given an incredible amount of freedom in the studio, who came up with it.

2) From the discussion: what is the best name for a chord given that the lowest note does not seem to be the obvious root of a well-known chord shape or part of a common inversion of a well-known chord shape? Some people would say this involves examination of the surrounding harmony /steve_goldsoundz

Combining the two this thread forced me to remember that recently a friend of mine who is a really good bass player told me he played some kind of common pedal/sus note on a tune but the piano player he was playing with wasn't familiar with it or didn't like it, so he had to argue for his note.

Ah, it just occurred to me that Joni Mitchell uses these all over the place, and in really interesting ways. "All I Want," "Both Sides Now," "A Case of You."

Maybe these would be better described as drones. But I suppose the distinction is less musical than, er, social? Drone has a "folk" connotation and pedal point has a "composed" connotation.

I think on Nowhere to Run I would just say it goes from F to G/F. Little Red Book is Bb/C.

― wk, Wednesday, May 1, 2013 12:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whole step, not half step

― wk, Wednesday, May 1, 2013 1:03 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Those are both whole steps!

2) From the discussion: what is the best name for a chord given that the lowest note does not seem to be the obvious root of a well-known chord shape or part of a common inversion of a well-known chord shape? Some people would say this involves examination of the surrounding harmony /steve_goldsoundz

Well a lot of these chords are commonly written as something like "Fmaj/G" (F major over G)

"Never Let Me Down Again" is completely built off of the idea of the vocal line as an inverted pedal point, as is most of "Behind the Wheel"

Well a lot of these chords are commonly written as something like "Fmaj/G" (F major over G)
Yeah, sure, if somebody wrote it down like that, as a slash chord, then that's what the name is. But if somebody just gave you the notes of the chord, you might want to weigh the options.

The Beatles' "Getting Better" is an interesting example. The verses are not really a pedal point so much as a drone, I guess, but it's played by nearly all the instruments in the arrangement - bass, guitar, sitar, piano - in different octaves while the vocal melody is very, very busy.

Those are both whole steps!

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 14:29 (1 hour ago)

yeah I corrected myself. you even quoted it! it was late and I was drunk.

My music theory teacher once said to me "you jazz guys are always coming up with a chord name for everything -- 'Oh, that's an A flat nine sus 4 sharp five flat nine chord'"

Whole step up is a ninth like somebody posted up thread. It's actually not too uncommon an effect in certain situations to construct a bass line, walking or otherwise, where you hit the ninth where the root would be.

seems weird to call it a 9th if it's in the bass though, doesn't it?

it's a neg1

er no I guess it's be a neg7

lol

here's a good one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJsrZkEZZw

Well it's not at the bottom of the bass line- typically you might play 1,3,5,7,9- but it is below everything else.

My music theory teacher once said to me "you jazz guys are always coming up with a chord name for everything -- 'Oh, that's an A flat nine sus 4 sharp five flat nine chord'"

Well a slash chord also specifies that you want that note in the bass, and otherwise you're leaving it up to the people reading the charts

Well it's not at the bottom of the bass line- typically you might play 1,3,5,7,9- but it is below everything else.

I don't know, 9th to me implies that it's at the upper end of the voicing, otherwise it's just a 2 right?

Well a slash chord also specifies that you want that note in the bass, and otherwise you're leaving it up to the people reading the charts

yeah huge difference between writing a chart that says C/D vs. C9

some of it may be influenced by how closely other notes are clustered to it? generally a 9th is going to be above the core triad that defines the chord whereas a 2nd is in a tone cluster with the triad, so if the bass note is an octave below the core chord it makes syntactic sense to me to consider it a 9th to imply the intended spacing of the chord

notation-wise slash notation makes more sense obv

_Well a slash chord also specifies that you want that note in the bass, and otherwise you're leaving it up to the people reading the charts_

yeah huge difference between writing a chart that says C/D vs. C9

I guess one issue with a chord like F/G is that this is best name for it and there is no great way of referring to the type of chord it is without referring to the actual names of the notes.

The other thing is about the terminology of saying something is a second or a ninth. Most of the time when people use the word ninth it implies that it is a higher voice in the chord, as y'all have suggested, and that the (flat)seventh is present, whereas second implies that the seventh(or a sixth filling in for the seventh) is not present. But every once in a while somebody might use either one to simply mean something like 'a G somewhere on an F chord'

Then there is the Steely Dan "Mu Chord" apparently they invented to get a kind of jazz voicing without sounding too much like actual jazz

I guess some would also call that F/G a G9sus4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V9sus4_chord#Jazz_sus_chord

yeah steely dan did not "invent" that

Tell it to this guy: http://www.hakwright.co.uk/steelydan/mu-major.html

Hopefully they came up with the name, at least.

The Beatles' "Getting Better" is an interesting example. The verses are not really a pedal point so much as a drone, I guess, but it's played by nearly all the instruments in the arrangement - bass, guitar, sitar, piano - in different octaves while the vocal melody is very, very busy.

― Huston we got chicken lol (Phil D.), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 8:39 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can hear the verse melody as modal over a drone, but the chorus melody seems like more of a question. It seems like maybe there's a chord progression, but it's only being suggested by the bass line (while the other instruments are just repeating one chord).

the getting better verse just sounds like it stays on G the whole time to me.

Let's see what Alan Pollack has to say: http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/gb.shtml

I-ii-iii-IV for the chorus sounds OK playing it by yourself, but not so great when played along with the arrangement.

I checked the Wilfrid Mellers book and he doesn't discuss it.

chorus sounds to me like C, Dm/C, G, F

I'd definitely disagree with the G chord. I think the bass has E on the downbeat.

And then D on the downbeat of the next measure, so maybe it's back to the ii chord.

(Making it I-ii-iii-ii instead of I-ii-iii-IV.)

yeah you're right. now that I actually figured out the bass line it just seems like C, Am, Em, F

I-vi-iii-IV

The bass line has A and C in that second bar, but that's not an A minor chord. The notes in the melody are D and F.

I'm listening to the electric piano part in the left channel as well as the bass line and it sure sounds like Am to me. doesn't really matter what the melody is doing imo since melodies use notes outside of the chord all of the time.

But I guess if you want to include the G drone that the guitar is playing in the right channel throughout that whole progression, then it's C, Am7, Em, Fadd9

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!