Please help to settle a disagreement

viz · November 2013

Like the thread concept very much. I think of that very same thing when listening to rachmaninov's etudes tableaux - the chord progressions are really strange in some of them and the only thing you can hang onto is the melody, it's like a lifeline.

mike_l · November 2013

@viz I found the notes I was looking for on the J-scale.

Found it, it's exactly as you described the melodic minor.

I stand edumacated.

viz · November 2013

Ah cool, i never thought of melodic minor as a J scale but then i spose jazz is so much more advanced than smoke on the water etc that it uses everything and can claim anything it likes as its own. I'm not arguing with any Jazzers that's for sure.

thisisguitar · November 2013

I remember watching a Howard Goodall program on music theory once, it was on the BBC. I remember doubting I'd learn anything from it, until he started talking about how every note has 6 basic triads that will contain it. He took 'C' as an example. C is found in Am, Ab, C, Cm, F and Fm. I grabbed a guitar and started playing around with these chords and realised that I could modulate to some ridiculous chords as long as they supported a given note in my melody.

I actually got out a sheet of paper and worked out each note with the surrounding chords. Was amazed that I hadn't already thought of this, as it seems obvious.

thisisguitar · November 2013

Anyone interested in the series, it can be found here. Not sure which part my above post mentions, but it's likely to be the Melody or Harmony episode (there were a few)

viz · November 2013

nice.

mike_l · November 2013

viz said:

Ah cool, i never thought of melodic minor as a J scale but then i spose jazz is so much more advanced than smoke on the water etc that it uses everything and can claim anything it likes as its own. I'm not arguing with any Jazzers that's for sure.

But arguing with Jazzerists is fun. And they don't like it when you give them an amp with a bucket-load of gain dialled in (Yep that's my evil streak....)

ddlooping · November 2013

thisisguitar said:
There is no Am in the song...

In the guitar break.

viz · November 2013

I wire my amp's gain knob back to front for them.

ICBM · November 2013

close2u said:

I'm practicing the Stevie Nicks song Dreams from Rumours.
I reckon that the chord progression is simply F to G and back to F. The F chord is sometimes F major7, sometimes F add9 ... and the G chord is sometimes G7. I play one, and one only, bar of A minor in the 2nd repeat of the instrumental guitar part.
So, I have it in C major / F lydian if thinking in modal terms. (G mixolydian at a push is also possible).
Our keyboard player, playing a piano part from a music score reckons it is in A minor and he plays arpeggiated Am to G to F to G repeatedly (with some additional notes making those chords in to 9s etc).
The melody is pretty much centred around the notes C and A and the others in a pentatonic C, D, E, G, A (C major pentatonic or A minor pentatonic - you take your pick).
C Major is the parent of F lydian, G mixolydian and A minor.
But I do not hear / see / think the song as A minor at all.
What do you reckon?

I think you're right. For a start the bass plays F to G repeatedly not A G F G. I know that's not conclusive but it doesn't sound 'minor' to me either - it's wistful, or dreamy, but not sad. It sounds more like a sort of unresolved major-y key (sorry, I don't know the proper names for this sort of stuff, so maybe I shouldn't be contributing at all!), and that's how I would approach it if I was playing it, either on guitar or bass.

viz · November 2013

Thing is, it's either got to be major, minor, diminshed, or amodal. And as it's peppered with 2nds, 3rds and 6ths, and it's not diminished, you gotta plump for major or minor!

and yes it's an unresolved F, so does it resolve to C major or A minor, that's the choice. Both "work" so the question is, which did they have in mind?

mike_l · November 2013

viz said:

Thing is, it's either got to be major, minor, diminshed, or amodal. And as it's peppered with 2nds, 3rds and 6ths, and it's not diminished, you gotta plump for major or minor!
and yes it's an unresolved F, so does it resolve to C major or A minor, that's the choice. Both "work" so the question is, which did they have in mind?

They probably weren't thinking C major or A minor when it was written, they were probably thinking "that sounds good, we'll use it"

viz · November 2013

Wrong. I just asked them and they said "hey Viz, we wrote it in Am, intentionally - cheers mate".

mike_l · November 2013

viz said:

Wrong. I just asked them and they said "hey Viz, we wrote it in Am, intentionally - cheers mate".

Are you sure you didn't dream that? together with the other dreams of Ms Nicks you have?

viz · November 2013

it is a possibility ...

close2u · December 2013

it's amazing how the absence of something (a tonic, a resolve chord) can leave something so ambiguous and vague ... and maybe that is its power ... I have read that when Stevie Nicks brought it along to the band everyone thought it was unfinished, a 2-chord vamp ... but then Lyndsey Buckingham played over it in a way that made it sound like it had more going on, more sections

I don't mind giving up my thought that it is F lydian if it isn't ... although I think that there isn't a definite either way other than saying C Major is the parent major scale ...

I just wish our keyboard player would give up playing his over-fussy arpeggios (including Aminor chords) that sound so wrong

viz · December 2013

You're right, he absolutely should refrain from lumping Am all over it, that's the whole point imo. As you say, it's the absence of the tonic that makes it so unresoved and dreamy and circular sounding.

frankus · December 2013

The quickest way to resolve an argument is violence - I'd recommend a chop to the neck ... push the head down punch it a couple of times, kick one the back legs so he's kneeling then twist his head off. There are other approaches replace the chop with a hook ... but in the main ...

ThePrettyDamned · December 2013

I dno't do theory (if anyone can help me identify the key of that Andy James song I posted...) but I just recorded the two chords as a backing on the piano, and found that you can make nice melodies ending on a C, G, F or A.

So ambiguous. I'd just play until you get the sound you want out of it, as you're improvising. If you were composing for a feel, or learning note for note (as I will be with the AJ song) it can help to know the key just to have a good idea of where you want to be,

Cacofonix · February 2014

I think Dreams is in Am, based on the discussions above.

Whilst not a hard and fast rule, lack of resolution as a device usually revolves around the fourth (ie the F), which drives the key back to C, but as the tonality is minor, creating the wistfulness of the piece, the relative minor of C is the key, so Am.

It is more implied than stated though, which I think someone already said adds to the dreamlike quality. There was an interesting piece on Fleetwood Mac in the papers recently (last 6 months anyway, talking about the unresolved tensions in the band at the time of Rumours.

Also, not really looked at the chord structures of FM songs generally (note to self: do so), but the more common chord structure is the 4,5,1 and that would fit here.

Tunez · March 2014

Wow.

There's a lot of shakey analysis here. The tune is modal, F Lydian. Whilst Lydian is a major mode, in that the 3rd degree is a major third above the tonic, modal harmony exists alongside the strictly major/minor paradigm. Often modal cadences feel less resolved than their more traditional (to western ears) major/minor colleagues, but this is part of their purpose. In short, and for the purpose of meaningful analysis at least, it is unhelpful to think of the tune as Am or C even though it's constituent melody and harmony are diatonic to these signatures.

As an aside and to counter an assertion made here and in other threads on this site, music theory has it's origins in the analysis of functioning music and not the reverse. 'Rules of harmony' is a Victorian notion which remains, stubbornly, with us. In truth what we really have are a number of, very useful, models of explanation for the logic of good practice observed in the works of received masters. Nothing is set in stone and each model very much serves the time for which it was intended. The best explanations of tonal musical harmony and use that I have ever read are Arnold Schenberg's 'Structural Functions of Harmony' and 'Fundamentals of Musical Composition'...awesome books, it doesn't matter what style you're playing, knowledge is power!

meltedbuzzbox · March 2014

thisisguitar said:

...Also, piano players often believe the score is god. They are often wrong!

This is why they are called pianists

plangertinyclanger · April 2014

Hello, newbie to the board here! Really enjoying this discussion, as I was teaching a student this song a few months ago and I had the same sort of argument in my head.

To me, the verses are there to serve building tension and setting a sort of mood, which only briefly resolves in the chorus, bringing in the A minor tones. But the song is not in A minor - it sounds slightly moody, but more dreamy than sad. For this reason if I had to choose ONE tonality for the whole song to be described as being in, it would have to be F Lydian.

Personally, I don't hear the C major possibilities at all, even though yes technically the correct tones are in there. The F Lydian influence in the verse is the only prominent major tonality I hear.

I think this is a perfect song to have a theory discussion about because it's not as simple as it seems, and everybody seems to hear it slightly differently.

Hurray for Fleetwood Mac!

GuyBoden · April 2014

A lot of modern compositions don't have key centres, some move through chord sequences using voicings with leading notes to link the chords. (voice leading?)

FMaj#11 - Emin9 - EbMaj#11 - Dmin11 - BbMaj#11 - Aminb13 - AbMaj7 - Gmin11 - GbMaj7

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