Rolling Music Theory Thread

How can you use this? Well a two octave scale has 7+7+1 =15 beats, which can be broken up into five groups of three.

Maybe I should say circle of fifths. You are moving by fourths within a given key, but a scale starting a fourth away in the same mode is the same except for one accidental.

You could think of the modes of the major scale as one giant loop, with the half-steps coming every fourth or fifth. You always get at least one repeat until it mutates. Whereas for modes of the melodic minor, in which the half-steps are next to each other, meaning separated by a single whole step, you basically get an alteration of major third and minor third patterns except for the point where the two minor third patterns are back to back- the beginning of the sixth mode.

First started thinking about this a while back in terms of four note groupings, tetrachords, in which case you are moving around by fifths and there are four patterns that repeat as follows: two major, two Dorian, two Phrygian and one Lydian.

Sorry, this is just the way my mind works, even if turns out to be only a case of "looking where the light is." Feel free to take it or leave it. I'll spare you my comments on drop-2 voicings for now.

Although it eemed to me that he went right from the seven modes of the Ionian Scale onto more exotic scales like the Biharmonic Major or Melodic Major, skipping over Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor modes.

I think that he is assuming that the reader is already familiar with common practice theory, where the harmonic and melodic minor scales are standard.

Oh! You are talking about rotating the harmonic and melodic minor scales! Are there many 20th century compositions that do that? (Disregard the previous comment.)

In jazz almost all of the modes of melodic minor are used and a few of the modes of harmonic minor are used as well, mainly the fifth mode.

can anyone name examples of songs in the Lydian mode that don't resolve to (or hint at resolving to) Ionian/Aeolian/Mixolydian?

Found a paper on my phone I must have downloaded during an earlier discussion that may or may not answer this question.
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1081&context=gamut

Which cites this interestingly titled paper: http://www.theory.esm.rochester.edu/temperley/papers/temperley-pm07.pdf

That being: "The Melodic-Harmonic 'Divorce' in Rock," by David Temperley.

Oh, fascinating. The disconnect between melody and harmony in pop/rock is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past while.

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.

Thanks for the link btw. I'll let Murray know we were talking about his paper the next time I see him!

Sure, when will that be?

Looking at some of the examples in the Temperley paper. The "Taking Care of Business" one is interesting. The notes over the Bb5 really don't have anything to do with that chord.

I don't agree with the "Sunday Blood Sunday" one. I think the notes have a lot to do with the chords up until that F#, but that's just creating a sense of major seventh harmony with the G chord (and the A before it is a passing tone).

And, yeah, wow at the "Drive My Car" one, especially that tone cluster over the A chord. I think the F there gives it a little bit of the character of an augmented chord.

Diminished chords:classic or dud?

Couldn't sleep, started strumming some minor key thing and The Hollies' "Bus Stop" came out. It's Aeolian or I'll eat my hat. Also the melody starts with broken thirds, but syncopated so it sounds like a song and not scale practice. Oh, yeah came across another book, by one of the usual suspects.

"Bus Stop" - a top ten hit where the chorus sounds like a bridge.

It does tonicize E minor in that part.

Haven't read the whole thing yet but this looks like it might be of interest to people here: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.14.20.2/mto.14.20.2.biamonte.php

Noticed before but didn't read, thanks. Wondering if I should try to count out "Just What I Needed" before peeking at the solution.

Def

Weird thing is because I was trying to count it out this time, I didn't get faked out at all. But a few months ago even when I relistened to it a few times I still would get faked out.

Think moral of story is
1) when getting faked out by intro for your initial attempt assume first beat your hear is one and see if it works out.
2) if the intro is reprised later on the song, just count your way into it starting in the (hopefully) metrically simpler and more intuitive section preceding it.

This kind of thing happens all the time in Latin music. Still need to read paper

Your hear = you hear

Is "Just What I Needed" more of a fakeout than "Be My Baby", which also accents beat 4?

Moral 2) is OTM but moral 1) seems too trial-and-error imo. I would rather suggest working backwards from the point where the downbeat is obvious.

B-b-but how does one count backwards?

"Be My Baby" has a strong downbeat from the get-go, no fakeout. Closest thing to a fakeout is signature Hal Blaine quarter note triples on the fadeout.

I guess the agogic accent in "Be My Baby" makes the downbeat more obvious right away.

xpost

Well, I just meant that in this case, once the drums enter and you can hear the 1 clearly, you can go back and count the number of beats between the accented chord and the 1 and then extrapolate. (It's easy here since it comes exactly one beat before the 1.) If a song is obviously in 4, you could just use trial and error too, of course. (I guess I did just count starting on 1 when I listened to this today tbh. I just wasn't sure it was good as a general principle.)

Yeah, it is trail and error, but I just found it useful to concentrate, to plant a claim stake in the timeline if you will. Maybe will try using letters, A,B,C, D or "subtracting" as you seem to be suggesting.

You know what's an incredibly tricky one? "Bang a Boomerang" by Abba has this part at the end of the verse where they're accenting upbeats. First verse goes "Every smile and every little touch/Don't you know that they MEAN SO MUCH."

Those last three notes are what I'm talking about. I find it very hard to sing those notes in the right place. If I got it, I'd imagine it would also be hard to find the downbeat again afterward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CsJCa2TlXU

Actually, the upbeats start on "Don't you know." Wild.

See if you guys can stream the studio version of Cheo Feliciano's "Esto es el guaguanco" from the classic album Cheo and count out the intro and notice where the accents fall.

That is great.

In a way, that first downbeat comes in when you think it's going to, but the melodic line throws you off. That first melodic descent ends (and yeah, is accented) on the note after it. (I don't know if you'd call it an upbeat or a weak beat. Depends on how you count it.)

I could discern the downbeat immediately, but I've been listening to a lot of samba-influenced latin + brazilian music lately

:)

This tune is why I came up with my takeaway 1) upthread.

Only started to figure it out when l realized that the end of the intro was kind of a variant of what Sund4r would call the "Be My Baby" beat.

Confession: I had stopped playing any kind of musical instrument for a decade and completely lost the ability to count out simple beats and it took forever to get some of it back. The mind is a terrible thing.

crüt, see if you can not got lost in the part starting around 2:35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MX__RFXq4s

Also have any of you guys spent time thinking about drop-2 voicings or did you just memorize them and forget about it?

xpost ha yeah that one got me!

Maybe have to run if through some slowdown software.

Also, sometimes I do this weird thing on the subway whilst listening of alternate tapping my left and right foot on quarter notes so I can see and feel the beat better. Sometimes works.

lol, there was some free music in Bryant Park this Friday that I was not alerted to until too late but one of the acts was named The Guidonian Hand.

See if you can guess what sort of ensemble they are before googling.

The guitar intro to "I Go to Pieces" (Del Shannon/Peter and Gordon) starts on the upbeat of one.

Did you see the live version of Hommy the other day? A friend of mine posted on facebook that he took the train from Philadelphia to see it.

No! I wanted to go but got into something else then forgot. It got rained out before the second half, I read

There was a similar event at Lincoln Center about 4 years ago, maybe Ruben Blades and Willie Colon were involved, that set some kind of attendance record. I meant to jump of the train and soak up some atmosphere then jump back on the train but I plumb forgot.

Maybe it was Larry Harlow in 2011. Looks like another thing This August

Guess that was last year

Thoughts on drop-2 voicings:
Middle voices are adjacent- top two are a fourth or fifth apart, as are bottom two.
Moving up a string set to next inversion , bottom two voices move up an octave, maintain orientation, top two voices drop an octave or two and invert. For dominant seventh chord tritone is invariant under inversion so one can "follow the bouncing tritone" as it goes above and below the "equator."

Raising or lowering by an octave the even or odd pair of voices creates another drop-2 voicing of same chord.

Raising next to lowest voice by an octave creates a drop-3 voicing, as does lowering the top voice by two octaves when possible.

The tritone pair of seventh chord up or down a fourth/fifth is a half-step away. To get to that chord if desired, shift the tritone pair a half-step and flip the relevant note of the fourth/fifth pair a whole step on the other side of the dividing line. In this the four voicings per stringset are broken into two pairs.

That is all for now.

The tritone pair of seventh chord up or down a fourth/fifth is a half-step away

Now back to p i m a torture