Rolling Music Theory Thread

I guess, as with the Corrs's version of "Dreams", the cover is imo less interesting because it is more conventional - but the conventionality does indicate something to me.

Ha, in this live version, Jane's played it a semitone lower but they not only introduce the song with a vamp on the Db chord but actually end the song with a cadence on the Db triad, making it clear that the Gb and Ab chords were IV and V!

https://youtu.be/-PzoKyv9fvk

Wait, I was getting too excited about my thesis. They ends it on the Gb, which supports the Lydian hearing.

Clearly I need to watch TV and let my ears rest.

Dreams is in A natural minor. They resolve to the A minor chord twice in the instrumental bridge before the see-saw from F to G resumes.

Yeah, A minor is what I was saying - thanks for spotting that in the bridge, though. Also, welcome if you're a new poster and hi if you're a new name for an old poster!

Yeah, welcome!

They ends it on the Gb, which supports the Lydian hearing.

tbf every band was ending songs with a ringing IV chord in '97

I hear "Jane Says" as IV-V as well and not Lydian. it's hard for me to feel any piece of music as truly Lydian though

Helen Reddy recently passed away, and it reminded me how much I love the chord progression in 'I Am Woman'. It feels like a classic country music modulation when the verse goes to a flat 3rd to set up the chorus in F. At least that's how I hear it playing, with the song being in G.

i thought about "landslide" just now and how the melody strays from the repeating chord structure. thinking about what the "correct" chords would be. this just popped into my head so i haven't actually dug into it at all but to my ears it sounds like it could be re-harmonized.

(i mean the verses)

Hm, we were singing/playing it recently and I just checked the sheet music - the verses mostly seem built around chord members to me. The chorus strays a little more, although a lot of it can just be explained as suspensions and anticipations. What were you thinking of?

specifically the "i saw my reflection in the snow covered hills" part

It seems to be the standard Buckingham/Nicks "withholding the I" idea that happens in "Dreams" and "I Think I'm In Trouble" and probably many others. The melody outlines the I chord but the chords themselves dodge it-- in "Landslide"'s verses we're going IV - I6 - ii - I6, that inversion is enough to feint the ear, I think.

Interesting: you would intuitively hear the Eb-Bb/D-Cm7-Bb/D progression as I-V6-vi-V6 in Eb and in the first verse, the melody mostly does outline the Eb chord. In the second verse, a lot of the Ebs in the melody become Ds and there's more of a suggestion of the Bb chord. It's not obvious to me that Bb is the tonal centre until the chorus, though, when the Bb chord finally appears on strong bars.

Wait, by "second verse" I meant the part that starts "mirror in the sky..." and by "first verse", I meant the part before that, although those aren't the same, actually.

Actually, the line crüt mentions is the first that outlines Bb instead of Eb.

I posted a question over here that may be of interest to some of you:

Halloween Music

Can anyone recommend good books or videos or articles on the music theory of John Coltrane that goes a little beyond just “here’s how giant steps changes work” ?

Good question. Not me, sorry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbj6bn6mZto

Been waiting for him to finish this book for years.

Was just working on BWV 38.6 with James Redd:
https://www.bach-chorales.com/BWV0038_6.htm
https://open.spotify.com/track/6tgIyDZKQ3i4G2kOMNR7Q2?si=I13lPCy_RgWqYfY9pn6MqQ
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/Chorale085-Eng3.htm

It's probably the most dramatic example I've seen of a chorale where Bach has tried to graft a functional harmonization onto a modal hymn melody. The melody is very obviously in E Phrygian but Bach has harmonized it in A minor despite the fact that only the third phrase of the melody lends itself at all to a tonal centre on A. The hymn begins on a B and ends on an E. The first, second, and final (!) phrases all end with half cadences on E (V in A minor). The third is the only one that ends with an authentic cadence. The fourth modulates to G, which is obv the relative major of E minor but is an unusual key change for a piece that is otherwise in A minor. I'm not sure it even works completely but it is interesting that we get the only authentic cadence in the home key on "He alone is the good shepherd"; we also get an authentic cadence in G on "who can free Israel" but are denied resolution on "from all his sings".

*The third is the only one that ends with an authentic cadence in A minor.

The discussion of which also made me think of this quote for some reason: rolling enlightenment music discussion thread

Now I've got my kid's piano teacher involved in this.

WIkipedia agrees about the Phrygian nature of this section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aus_tiefer_Not_schrei_ich_zu_dir,_BWV_38

But not this gentlemen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1VFPJj-950

The hymn melody itself is an E Phrygian melody but the Bach chorale functions (if somewhat awkwardly) in A minor because of the way it's harmonized.

Unless that guy is using some notation system I've never come across, his harmonic analysis seems wrong? I've never heard of anyone writing Roman numerals based on the relative major key for a minor-key piece and can't imagine why you would want to - he also makes no distinctions between different chord qualities or inversions.

Notable that Gs are always natural in the melody but G#s are used in the harmony parts to make it function in A minor.

Yup.

Somehow this controversy is not lighting up the borad in quite the same way as “Sweet Home Alabama” vs. “Werewolves of London.”

Is there a controversy? I just thought it was an interesting example.

Ha, no, was just making a joke, I agree.

Right now though it seems to just be a folie à deux. #OneThread.

I just came across this, but am too tired to even read, so I am putting it here:

The basic texture of these settings seems to have been adapted from the Calvinist psalters, but the melody is placed consistently in the soprano part rather than the tenor, so that a listening congregation could the more easily sing along by ear, as the title recommends. The idea of transposing the cantus firmus to the soprano may have merely been an obvious solution to a practical problem, but it may also reflect the influence of the villanella or other Italian song styles that were making their way in Germany thanks to the book trade. In any case, Osiander’s were the first “Bach chorales.” They not only show the antecedents of the practice that J. S. Bach would bring to its stylistic peak a century and a half later, but they also give some idea of the extreme utilitarianism and stylistic conservatism of the atmosphere in which Bach would work his compositional miracles.

Taruskin, Richard. Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music . Oxford University Press.

Can anyone recommend good books or videos or articles on the music theory of John Coltrane that goes a little beyond just “here’s how giant steps changes work” ?

I actually just started reading Lewis Porter's article "John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme': Jazz Improvisation as Composition" from the Autumn 1985 issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society when listening to ALS tonight and working out what's going on.

It seems pretty thorough.

I have his Coltrane bio, which is quite good.

Nobody: "Are academic music theorists above Navy SEAL copypasta?"

4llen C4dwallader:

whoops, didn't properly edit out emails last time, let's try again https://t.co/Ioi0VjcO0t pic.twitter.com/KOPeu6IEqJ

— Megan Lavengood (@meganlavengood) February 25, 2021

Every time I see the name "Cadwallader" I think about that Twilight Zone episode

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Clause

Click the link to "Mr. Cadwallader", wiki can be quite eloquent

Haha

Haha Wikipedia has Megan's back (for now): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Cadwallader

Apologies for more ILE but I somehow missed that Timothy Jackson is suing his whole department, the Board of Regents, and a grad student for conducting an investigation, "criticisms of 'the review and editorial practices' of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies", and "threats to remove [ him ] from the Journal":

For anyone interested, here are pdfs of the complaint and exhibits: https://t.co/2cmBIuzV88

Tl;dr: Jackson, represented by Michael Allen and Jonathan Mitchell, is suing under 1983 for violation of 1st and 14th Am. rights as well as state law defamation for calling him racist

— Nick Curry (@ncurr) January 15, 2021

its 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.

Rereading this old discussion now, this no longer seems outlandish, given how many people in rock and popular music do have a formal musical education these days, and how much pop gets taught academically.

Whoa, for a second I thought that Momus had rejoined us.

For some actual music theory, I started reading Lavengood's article in the current MTO issue on timbral analysis in 80s pop music, looking particularly at DX7 presets: https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.3/mto.20.26.3.lavengood.html

Not totally sure what I think yet.

Ned posted this link somewhere-else:

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/decolonizing-electronic-music-starts-with-its-software/

When I first saw the headline I thought "oh good! they're making DAWs free?" But then I realized it was about alternate tunings-- AND the DAW is also free :)

It occurred to me tho "withdrawing from Western systems of tuning" is only half the work, we need somebody to design malleable grids in the sequencing software, get actual rhythms happening instead of the metric stuff we have now