Rolling Music Theory Thread

There was a guitar player in this weird band in Austin back in the day who almost always played whole tone scales-his name was the same as one of the top sixties studio drummers- but I was too busy being creped out by the borderline offensive wardrobe of his bandmembers to notice.

My advisor advised me against writing with it (at least straightforwardly) because everyone has already heard Bartok and Debussy. Worked when Crimson did it, though.

Why would you not want to sound like a cartoon who just got bonked over the head??

A fair question.

For me it actually most evokes Monk, who does kinda sound like a bonked cartoon in the best way possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSoQ9Augp0Q

In the Mick Goodrick book he says something about the symmetric scales not having "handles."

The riff to Born on the Bayou is mixolydian, isn't it? Just a b7th within a major scale?

Yup. Sweet Home Alabama is the same chord progression just spaced differently. The C - G functions the same way in SHA that the D - A does in Born on the Bayou.

just spaced differently

Just a little.

When I-bVII-IV and V-IV-I are both common progressions, I don't think it's obvious that the progressions are functioning the same way in these two songs, given how fundamentally different the weighting and phrasing are. (As mentioned above, "Werewolves of London" is a V-IV-I song with a similar harmonic rhythm to SHA.)

I could argue that Werewolves of London is in D too. The only thing that keeps this from being obvious to me is that the vocal melody hovers around the G so much.

When you always have the D on a strong measure and the G on a weak measure (Werewolves, SHA) it's hard for me to hear it in G.

Think this one is almost done to death. May be time to move on to study the Andalusian cadence.

Meanwhile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4&feature=kp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy0urWBt5e8
"Tim. Help me out, Tim"

http://www.guitarplayer.com/miscellaneous/1139/under-investigation-the-soulful-guitarists-of-james-brown/23315

"Scalar Shift in Popular Music," by David Temperley featuring the Supermode and a cameo by our favorite chord progression: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.4/mto.11.17.4.temperley.html

Something to read over the weekend: http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/rock_corpus/2011_paper/declercq_temperley_2011.pdf

Full website for that: http://theory.esm.rochester.edu/rock_corpus/index.html

Maybe you should just read this guy's blog post about it first: http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2013/toward-a-better-music-theory/. Feel like I read it a few months ago, but not in the context of this thread.

One more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOzaVpgeHJg

Realize in the cold light of day that I was using Mixolydian in the very broad sense of "static elaboration of a seventh chord, often including blue notes and passing tones, especially the sharp nine but even sometimes the major seventh, as in the James Brown example" as opposed to the other meaning which apparently is "a piece of music which, upon inspection of the harmonic and melodic elements, turns out to use the scale tones of the Mixolydian mode."

NB to classical conservatory-trained musicians, Canadian or otherwise: "seventh chord" without any qualification is usually assumed to mean "dominant seventh" in many circles
/smiley /Wikipedia /smiley

Lol.

Temperley wrote a whole article about the cadential IV in rock: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.1/mto.11.17.1.temperley.html

His work is interesting. That Ethan Hein blog post and this one annoy the heck out of me unless I think of them as undergrad reflection papers, in which case I'd probably give him an A-.

Like Sponge Bob and Squidward fine, but that image grab was a missed opportunity to post Biz_Mozart.jpg.

I've got to point 2.4 in the "Scalar Shift" article and am not sure that Temperley has said anything very interesting yet. I have basically no jazz theory background but even I know that bVII can be a substitute for dominant harmony. His 'supermode' is basically the major scale + standard modal mixture.

B-b-but the name is so much catchier.

I'm burning out on this topic but last night I went to to library out got a copy of What to Listen for in Rock: A Stylistic Analysis, by Ken Stephenson, and the initial chapters I read on the subway this morning were pretty good.

Also, new screenname.

First chapter, "Phrase Rhythm" is a keeper.

Love to hang around and discuss modal cadences in the Renaissance and Rock, Common Practice and Post-Tonal strategies in Classical, but right now I've got to put my Jazz D-hat on.

When you come back, I'm interested to know what you like about the Stephenson book. That "Scalar Shift" article really made me start asking these questions again:

it's not always entirely clear to me what the ultimate goal or purpose is with a lot of academic analysis of popular music, aside from sheer scholarly interest (and lines on the CV, ha). With guitar mags, it's usually clear that the articles are there for people to learn specific techniques from. With the analysis of art music, it's easy for me to see how the work is useful for people who want to compose and/or play art music (who are the usual audience for these journals). While I still disagree with him that Radiohead (or, say, "Close to the Edge") is too easy to parse for someone with art music training, it's not 100% clear to me what the readers are going to gain from the exercise: it does not seem that this is going to have the direct benefit of helping (most) people learn how to write and play rock music.

Like, the very recent phenomenon where classically trained musicians with PhDs in music theory seem to be writing about pop music for each other as often as they write about art music IS kind of curious.

(Still wearing the D-hat. Will answer later)

Will see if you can answer you in the morrow.

I'm afraid it is going to take me longer than I thought to answer your question and I am not even sure I am the one to do so.

Ha, I mean, you're probably the only person who can answer the question "what do you like about the book?" But yeah, it's totally all good. I'll keep an eye out.

Oh wait. I thought I was going to have to answer all your other questions:) It's going to take me a while to read that book, there's some stuff that seems interesting I'm not quite getting and don't have a lot of time to focus on it right now. I'll let you know if and when I get somewhere.

Oh, no, the rest of those questions are ones that I am trying to work out for myself.

Finally figured that out this evening:)

Instead of trying to give you a comprehensive review of that book maybe I will drop in now and then with a short post about what I think he is trying to get at at certain points.

Going to have to return that book to the library since someone else -a reader of this thread? - has requested it, so I have to see how far I can get and give you some idea about what's going on.

I guess just about forty days and forty nights have passed since the last big thread revival.

So what did I get out of that Ken Stephenson book, what I was able to read of it?

The big takeaway is that in the music under discussion there is not one clear cut resolution point- the rhythm, the harmonic cadence and the melody may not all resolve on the last bar of a phrase but instead, point to the next phrase. It is a kind of perpetual motion machine, always pulling itself forward. This is why, according to Stephenson, the fadeout is such a popular ending, there is no natural place to end. In a live setting, of course, the band may have to choose a chord and end on it.

By the same token he says that using the cadence to determine the key is like putting the cart before the horse. Instead, he starts by citing the following remark by David Butler: "Any tone will suffice as a perceptual anchor - a tonal center - until a better candidate defeats it." To determine the key, one should listen to the opening triad, and see if it consistently appears at the beginning of phrases, if it is, you are probably done. Also one should listen for a perfect fourth or fifth repeating in the melody. If this occurs these, notes are probably the root and fifth of the tonic chord.

There is an interesting discussion in the first chapter about different types of phrase structures which he classifies as

• The 2 + 2 model
• The 1 +1 model
• The extension-overlap model
• The first-downbeat model
• The elision model

The 2 + 2 model applies to something like "Roll Over Beethoven," two bars of singing, two bars of rest
The 1 +1 model applies to something with a kind of blues call and response, singing in the first bar, which is answered by singing in the second bar- "They call it Stormy Monday... but Tuesday's just as bad."
In the extension-overlap model, the end of one phrase extends into and overlaps the beginning of the next phrase. So, if the phrase length (or "hypermeter") is four bars, the phrase extends into the fifth bar.
The first-downbeat model is something where there is a very short melodic bit at the beginning of the phrase followed by a period of rest, such as "Hey Jude."
The elision model applies to something where some measures are omitted in order for phrases to work out right.

Here is a review of the book: http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/music/gjerdingen/Papers/PubReviews/Stephenson.pdf
There is also a useful recap of some of the material about phrases in the third chapter of Song Mens: Analysing and interpreting Recorded Popular Song, by Allan F. Moore.
The overlap model

There is also an attempt to describe the choice of notes, the palette as it were. Instead of being drawn from triads of one particular tonality, they might be derived some other way- all major triads with roots based on some scale, such as the natural minor scale for example. As Sund4r pointed out upthread, not clear how this kind of thinking improves on the concept of the Modal Mix.

Hm. Bullet points make space go missing in regular zing screen after "The elision model" but space is there if you click through to single post.

That Butler quote led me to the following interesting and relevant paper, which also cites it, on Schoenberg and the Church Modes. http://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2103:schoenberg-on-the-modes-characteristics-substitutes-and-tonal-orientation&Itemid=124

PS The author is a Canadian academic, full professor at the University of Ottawa.

Meant to type "psst" instead of PS

model applies to something with a kind of blues call and response, singing in the first bar, which is answered by singing in the second bar

Anyway, a little of this stuff goes a long way. Maybe more interested in going back to the Tim approach on this thread. Was just trying to figure out the chords to "Superstar" from the Mad Dogs and Englishman version with "the young delta lady" Rita Coolidge on vocals, Leon Russell on piano and his Oklahoma buddy the great Carl Radle on bass. It's pretty clearly in F minor, with a descending bass line. After I got an idea I checked against some of the tab apps and they had usually had the bass note as the root of the chord, and using the misleading enharmonic ( spellcheck suggested some bizarre alternative- enharmoomic!) - D# for E-flat. Anyway think the first four bars after whatever intro are:
| F-min | F-min /Eb | Db | Ab/C |

Then I guess it goes
| Bb-min | Db | C | C |

That's a song where the lyrical material informs the key choice, imo, as bizarre as it seems. Compare to "The Look Of Love", which similarly begins in minor but modulates to its relative major for the choruses. Both songs begin with clear V-i progressions in the intro, establishing without-a-doubt that the verses are minor key. "The Look Of Love" cadences more heavily (and eventually concedes) to the relative major, but "Superstar" does not. But really it's about feeling the lyrical material, and understanding the complete intention of the composition; naysayers can only look to "When I Am Laid In Earth" for similar Glen or Glenda flip-floppiness, the subtle ambiguities are made less subtle by the libretto.