Rolling Music Theory Thread

It's much easier to hear, say, "Taxman," as in D because, for one thing, it stays on D for so long, and for another, the C and G come in a place where structurally one would expect a turnaround.

In any case, apparently you can't be a real music board without having a thread about this topic, it's some kind of law of the internet. http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=407446&highlight=sweet+home+alabama

http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/Lynyrd-Skynyrds-Ed-King-913.aspx

No, that was the only solo I ever saw in a dream. And I saw both of ’em. And I pretty much play them note for note, even today, except one part I change. But I remember when I recorded that in Atlanta, like we recorded that song four days after we wrote it. And we were thinking about putting it on the first album because our first album wasn't even out yet, but Al Kooper wanted to save it for the second album. But Kooper argued with me the whole time I was there, saying "You're playing the solo in the wrong key." Because it starts on a D chord but it really resolves in G. It's really in the key of G. And he says "The solo should be in D." And he, unbeknownst to me, was telling the rest of the guys, "Look, we can't have this guy do the solo on the record."

You should also google Al Kooper's version in his memoir.

In any case we've come a long way from when we argued over the modality of "Greensleeves." Or have we.

Forgot that I heard really old Phrygian tune the night before- "Pange Lingua."

From "Surviving Ellington" in Francis Davis's Jazz And Its Discontents

...he was musically self-taught with an autodidact's scorn for formal education. Yet he saw to it that Mercer studied music at Juilliard, Columbia, and New York University. “I think it was his way of keeping up with advancements in music theory through me," Mercer speculates. "I remember one day he handed me two huge volumes and said 'Read these and tell me about them.' It was the Schillinger system and it took me three years to digest it. When I started to explain it to him, he cut me off. 'Oh, yeah, I was doing that back in 1928.' And truthfully, he had."

.he was musically self-taught

If this is about Duke Ellington, I'm pretty sure this is false. Grove, Starr/Waterman, and this page from GWU all say that he received formal training on piano from approx the age of 7. The latter page also states that he took private lessons in harmony.

Was wondering about that. Assumed it was a bit of an exaggeration. Basically read it as " did not attend conservatory." It's kind of the flip side of "classically trained" meaning "took one lesson from a Russian lady."

But those private lessons he took were from a high school music teacher, not one of those tenure track positions you mentioned on the other thread.

On one of those old Phrygian tunes there is some discussion of the melody being clearly Phrygian but was it also harmonized in a Phrygian arrangement. Was hoping flam could elucidate. (Also if you don't like the name flam, we can try something different. )

I don't really know what you're asking? "O Sacred Heart Now Wounded" is not Phrygian. Paul Simon doesn't Phryg it, he stays pretty faithful, even keeps Bach's delicious cadence to VI. A quick scan through alternate versions on Youtube shows some people who rest on the vi, but no massive re-interpretations.

http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ftp/BachJS/O_Haupt_voll_Blut/O_Haupt_voll_Blut-a4.pdf

I don't know "Pange Lingua"

Hm. Version I was looking at had no accidentals and started and ended on the note E.

I guess Bach harmonized it tonally and that's the version we know and love now. Wonder how it got played in the first twelve decades of its existence.

Here's the same hymn respelled in C http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/O_Sacred_Head_Now_Wounded/pdf/

Melody does start and end on E, but Bach never harmonized that E as being the tonic. If you were to re-harmonize the melody you could make a Phrygian cadence on that third line (d-e), but not the last one, as far as I can tell-- it's been 15+ years since I did chorale and looking at this hymn again is amazing, Bach the Genius

Hmmmm. I googled ways of resolving Phrygian-mode melodies and just realized there's an ambiguity in my last post, "Phrygian cadence" can refer to a IV6-V movement in chorale, despite having little to do with actual Phrygian mode aside from a similar harmonic colour

To be precise, a Phrygian cadence is a half-cadence from iv[6]-V in a minor key (commonly with the soprano voice moving from ^4-^5, although this is not a necessity). The name comes because the bass motion (as well as the soprano motion if you have the ^4-^5 line) recalls melodic movement at a cadence in the Phrygian mode in Renaissance counterpoint.

I mean, you have to see ^5 as the final of the Phrygian mode.

A popular theory is that Bach chorales modulate so often because Bach was trying to harmonize modal hymn melodies with 18th-century functional harmony.

Fascinating, look at the original Cruger harmonization, which originated many of Bach's moves, has a neat little bVII move that Bach'd remove but imply with a I7. See too the conclusion

http://www.kantoreiarchiv.de/archiv/a_cappella/motets/crueger/o_haupt/o_haupt_voll.pdf

Note too that the melody's penultimate note doesn't jump up to G in this version, this could totally be harmonized Phrygian-style

THE STUNNING CONCLUSION

a funny aside: I just received texts from P4trick St1ckles right now with photos of his guitar parts. He writes his riffs down pricksong style. "Imagine the last D major chord as the sort of arpeggio you would hear if you beat the End Boss in the castle dungeon. Obvi when the dots meet and spar it is Aeolian vs. Phrygian hot licks throwdown"

Wait were prick-songs written in neumes or something else?

Those texts remind me of some guitar blog I came across the other day in which the guy said "as the Dark Lord loving shredder that you are you should be thoroughly familiar with the harmonic minor by now."

Thinking of starting Richard Taruskin's magnum opus Oxford History of Western Music soon.

Guess neumes were out of fashion by then.

Meanwhile leafing through ancient copy of Donald Jay Grout I just found on the shelf.

He Poos "Cloudbank."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/01/15/histories-of-western-music-from-grout-to-kleinzahler/

Your Easter Sunday homework is to report on which mode this is in:
http://images.zeno.org/Kunstwerke/I/big/HL70394a.jpg

crucifixolydian

Just heard SHA on car radio and saw the light. Now how about you?

Does that mean that you strongly feel that it is in D now?

Not quite. Just messing really. Although there was a guy on the thread on the other borad I linked who played in Grateful Dead spinoff bands name Steve Kimock or something who had a pretty well-reasoned argument for D, in which he asked the musical question: "Instead of asking what key is the song in, I ask what key am I in?

And I quote

Still much easier for me to detect Mixolydian when they unequivocally hit you over the head with it, as in "Mama Told Me Not To Come" or certain James Brown grooves such as, I think, "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)"

Meanwhile got the first two volumes of Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music. Will report back with any questions.

Lots of CCR songs are Mixolydian too, I think. There are certain swampy funky grooves it works well with.

Hear it much more clearly on "Fortunate Son," for example, than on SHA.

Face it, Mixolydian scale sounds more bluesy and Major scale is more country so...

Plus the solo came to the guy in a dream!

"Sweet Child o' Mine" is my go-to rock example for the Mixolydian mode.

(The intro and verses anyway. You actually get a V chord in the chorus.)

tbh pentatonic major probably signifies stereotypical old-time Country than full-on Ionian. Tons of exceptions no doubt.

depends on what country song you're talking about. folk songs, parlor music, blues, swing, boogie-woogie, and other idioms all fed into country/hillbilly music and they all had different melodic inflections. i dunno if it's practical to speak about country music in the first half of the 20th century in modal terms.

Though if someone wants to do an indepth analysis of this song I'd love to hear it just because I like this song & I'm bored & not near a piano at the moment. I know there's a raised fourth right outta the gate. Also I like that there's a picture of a CD-R containing only this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsn6P4SDLLg

depends on what country song you're talking about. folk songs, parlor music, blues, swing, boogie-woogie, and other idioms all fed into country/hillbilly music and they all had different melodic inflections. i dunno if it's practical to speak about country music in the first half of the 20th century in modal terms.

Country music considered chronologically was a much bigger tent then some might realize, as I learned when I recently read Creating Country Music: Manufacturing Authenticity, which I never tire of flacking. Do you know that book, crüt?

The Floyd Tillman song sounds, analytically, straightforward to my ears, crüt. The auxiliary raised-fourth (in this case coupled with a raised-second) is such common example of chromaticism that I'm sure there's a name for it, see the famous Beethoven minuet. All the stanky details in this recording are the product of the individual players all imposing their own varying degrees of chromatic inflection, the dissonance created by the slide guitar moving step-wise upward from IV to V is pretty intense. There's gotta be a name for this kind of stuff in country music. Love the add6 on the last chord

Flam's last post has reminded of the original reason for the recent revive as well as helping me address some actual musical confusion I've been dealing with recently. Will post more later hopefully, right now need to answer Sund4r on the other thread plus I am watching Hairspray, which may figure in as well.

Specific thing: Certain Northeastern Brazilian styles such as the baião are known for using the Lydian mode. Two things. One: cheap, poor man's way to get a Lydian sound is to just play major triad shape and then move it up a whole step and play it again. Second thing: it's not really Lydian. How is it not? First way it is not quite Lydian is that it is Lydian Dominant. Second way is more confusing. In fact I heard some kind of explanation that somebody either heard it wrong or Luiz Gonzaga played the sharp four by accident(!) or his instrument was out of tune or busted. But...

Flam's discussion of different people bringing their own approach to chromatic made me think more about what the heck was going on in the baião. A little judicious googling came up with the idea that the mode is not just Lydian Dominant, it is a combination of Lydian Dominant, Mixolydian, and Dorian, some kind of synthetic, über mode. In fact, there was a piece I had been trying to play that was exactly that and it was driving me crazy. Note that the way it worked it wasn't that the extra notes were used as passing tones, just that in different sections or different bars or different half-measures the fourth goes back and forth from sharp to natural or the third goes back and fourth from major to minor.

Maybe if I had fleeter fingers or a better ear or a satisfied mind I would have just accepted these flipping thirds and fourths and moved on, but I couldn't and it was really affecting my ability to memorize the piece. Also, felt like in some sense it was my punishment, if you will, for too much time playing in the lower positions and not shifting, and liking to be in one 'macroharmony,' as it were, for a longer period than is allotted at faster tempos or with more busy chord changes. On the other hand, if I had been born into the style, I wouldn't have to ask questions I would just know, but unfortunately I don't have that luxury. But now I have a name, 'escala nordestina' which is enough for now. At this stage I don't need some kind of Euclidean axiom proof of something ('alpha' theory) just a name to tag it with and a pigeonhole to put it in ('beta' theory)