Query failed: connection to localhost:9312 failed (errno=111, msg=Connection refused).
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
@viz ;
will hopefully be along to explain it better than I just did
When I add9 to the chords, I see a scale emerging that's something like: G# A B C# D E F
https://youtu.be/rr6f26I2cBI
As D69 says, it’s “in A”; whether it’s A major or A minor is a tad ambiguous, because, out of the three chords, two aren’t diatonic. But I’d say A major just inches it, what with it being the first and last chord and all. But it’s a pretty wistful A major.
The II is like a secondary dominant (though it’s not used as one in your progression) and it’s very popular in ska and punk as well as other stuff, especially when the IV is major. It’s a Kind of Magic, for example.
But to do the major II chord AND the minor iv chord is really special. It’s really cool that you’ve stumbled across this little gem and picked up on its charms!
The IV -> iv change I had come across a few times - first one I remember was Love Me Tender, where it's possibly a bit too 'sweet' for modern ears. Context is everything, because Creep and DLBiA don't feel like that at all!
Thanks - much appreciated. I'll loop it and experiment more with some melody.
Good spot!
I'll experiment with some inversions and maybe a pedal tone.
The G#dim is also darn near a D6, so it sounds nice to do a G#dim-Dmin-A sequence (a vii-iv-I that kinda masks as a IV-iv-I).
I don’t pretend that my new discoveries aren’t old news. I’m just sharing my recent epiphanies.
So a maj third chord in an otherwise standard maj chord progression is going to throw you unless you know it's coming and sharpen your home key 5th. The minor 4th is common as well and creates a lovely melon cony sound but again, you need to know it's coming and it's got a flat third.
That's mainly how I improvise in my limited fashion. I also use a lot of arps as well but generally use close cousins rather than the obvious ..... F#m over Dmaj which is essentially a Dmaj7 I know but attacking it as an F#m creates a different flavour.
There was a guitar teacher on the old forum, Paulo I think who said you should be able to remove the underlining chords of a well written solo but still be able to hear them because the solo on it's own is referencing them constantly. I've always remembered that.
I'd say:
0) The fact that minor and major are related is not NEARLY as important as the sounds they provide on their own merits. Yes, C MAJOR and A MINOR are related a bit like a brother and sister are related, but minor and major are no more related than "boys" and "girls".
1) When analysing a bit of music, the first thing to do is establish the home note. Maths and counting and theory are irrelevant to this. It's about feeling where the music flows towards and rests. It's like those black hole demonstrations with a stretched trampoline with a hole in the middle; all the balls travel along different paths but they ultimately flow towards the hole. That's the home note, the tonal centre, the note of resolve, etc. In this case it's Bb, and it's not really relevant to mention Db at this stage. Just listen to where the home note is. And practise listening to music and identifying what the home note is. But don't try it on Sweet Home Alabama or you will go mad.
2) The next thing to do is discover whether the key is major or minor, which is determined by one thing only, and that's the 3rd note of home note's chord. The 3rd note of the Bb chord is a minor 3rd (Db) not a major 3rd (D), so the key is Bb minor.
3) The next thing is to harmonise the minor scale to find out what the song's "vanilla" minor chords are. I really wouldn't use the relative major as a yard stick here, it's an unnecessary deviation from the story, though I like your chap's mention of tones, semitones, and the 3rds / 5ths / 7ths. But it needs to be based on the minor scale, which has TSTTSTT as its intervals, and the chords are min dim maj min min maj maj (min). You just have to learn that. OK you can derive the relative major from this, and vice versa, but that's less relevant than the Bb minor harmonised scale on its own merits.
4) So we expect the following chords: Bbm Cdim Db Ebm Fm Gb Ab (Bbm)
5) If we add the 7ths, we expect: Bbm7, C half-diminished, Dbmaj7, Ebm7, Fm7, Gbmaj7 Ab7 (Bbm7)
6) But what we get in this song is (I'm adding the 7ths in to all the chords even if they don't necessarily sound): Bbm7 - Gb7 - Ebm7 - Fm7 - Gbmaj7 - F7
7) the first interesting chord is the Gb7 which "should" (I say "should", I really mean "should, if the world was very boring") be a Gbmaj7, but the 7th has been flattened. It's actually an augmented 6th not a flattened 7th, it's known as a "German 6th chord" in classical music, but the important thing is it gives you the blues note. It's the augmented 4th of the Bb root. It's an E instead of an Eb. It's nice and juicy.
8) the next interesting thing is that F7 instead of an Fm7. In minor keys, you "should" have a minor dominant chord (a v chord instead of a V chord). But the major 3rd of a proper V chord has certain advantages, so he chooses to break away from the vanilla harmony and apply a "harmonic minor" device, which is to raise the 3rd, converting v to V, and thus play F7. This is really common in minor keys; in fact it's more common to do it than not to. Yer brain tends to do it automatically.
(The above two things aren't secondary dominants. Secondary dominants are when you take a chord that's not the V (like, say, the Cdim which is a iidim) and make it a C7, before resolving to the chord 4 notes above - ie the F chord. In other words pretending for a moment that the iidim - v progression is working like a V-i). That's not happening here, so they're not secondary dominants. So I wouldn't mention that at all in this analysis)
I always look forward to your posts and enjoy the way they put music theory into real world perspective.
I love doing that! Take an old standard and warp it beyond all recognition. Keep the original melody of course. I've got a really sick version of Silent Night somewhere in the depths of my hard drive.
just because you do, doesn't mean you should.