I needed a song with lots of secondary dominants in it for aural skills class, and I realized that Norah Jones’ adult-contemporary smash “Don’t Know Why” has a bunch of them. The song came out in 2002, though it could have been recorded at any time in the 50 years previous.
ii-V-I
My NYU pop theory class is going from non-functional harmony to the most functional harmony there is, the ii-V-I cadence. It’s subdominant to dominant to tonic, Western tonal harmony the way God and Beethoven intended.
The melodic-harmonic divorce in pop
This week in pop theory class, we are talking about the melodic-harmonic divorce, where the chords and melody to a song are all from the same major or minor key, but do not necessarily agree with each other at the local level. This is a common feature of current pop. It’s so common, in fact, that my students are having a hard time hearing it. This is not due to any lack of musicality among my students; it has to do with their listening expectations.
Adding vocal harmony to a Tears for Fears song
My theory students are going to be writing vocal harmonies for one of their assignments. To give them guidance, I will be talking through one possible approach to adding harmonies to “Shout” by Tears for Fears. Here’s the original song:
Here’s the acapella.
I’m not arguing that this song needs harmony vocals; it’s just a good teaching example because it doesn’t have any. Also, the melody and chords are pretty simple without being boring.
Continue reading “Adding vocal harmony to a Tears for Fears song”
Identifying chromatic embellishments
Embellishing tones are non-chord tones that are still within the key or mode. Chromatic embellishments are notes from outside the key or mode. They are easy to spot because they sound characteristically “weird”, or, at least, more colorful than the other notes around them. Thus the “chromatic” part – the word comes from chroma, the Greek word for color.
Here are some examples from different genres and eras. Continue reading “Identifying chromatic embellishments”
Cumberland Blues
Phil Lesh’s passing hit me harder than I expected, probably because I’ve been so immersed in the Dead lately anyway. I persuaded MusicRadar to let me write a column about my favorite Phil basslines, one of which is “Cumberland Blues.” Phil co-wrote the tune, and I assume he was responsible for its moments of intense musical oddness. Here’s the studio version from Workingman’s Dead. It includes Jerry’s only banjo performance on a Grateful Dead song, aside from the last few seconds of the “Dark Star” single.
There is a real Cumberland mine in Pennsylvania, and another in Kentucky. In his collected lyrics, Robert Hunter says in a footnote to this song: “The best compliment I ever had on a lyric was from an old guy who’d worked at the Cumberland mine. He said, ‘I wonder what the guy who wrote this song would’ve thought if he’d ever known something like the Grateful Dead was gonna do it.'” I half suspect that Hunter made this story up, but the lyrics do sound legitimately folkloric. In his Pitchfork review of Workingman’s Dead, Steven Thomas Erlewine compares Hunter’s lyrics on the album to Robbie Robertson’s writing with the Band, because both of them have that plausibly timeless Americana quality.
Identifying suspensions
Today in pop aural skills, we identified suspensions, that is, melodies that place unexpected non-chord tones on strong beats, before resolving to the expected chord tones. These are melodic suspensions, which are not the same thing as sus4 or sus2 chords, but they are related concepts.
Western European classical theory has a lot of clear and unambiguous rules for suspensions. Pop follows those rules to varying extents, but not strictly. There is less of an expectation that the chord tones will be on strong beats in the first place, or that the chord tones are even the main melody notes. So some (maybe all) of these examples are debatable.
Dark Star part two
RIP Phil Lesh, who passed on while I was writing this.
In the first part of this post, I analyzed the Live/Dead recording of “Dark Star” and compared it to several other versions. In this part, I survey the academic literature about the tune, of which there is a surprisingly large amount.
First, let’s consider the phrase “dark star” itself. It’s widely used in non-Grateful Dead contexts. It’s a theoretical predecessor to black holes, a so-so Crosby, Stills and Nash song, a science fiction movie by John Carpenter, a company that makes concealed carry holsters, a company that makes marble countertops, and many other random things. I guess the phrase is just very evocative.
Dark Star part one
Just after I posted this, I learned that Phil Lesh died. RIP Phil.
See also the academic literature review in part two.
Space: the final frontier. “Dark Star” is the ultimate Grateful Dead jam vehicle, and the purest experience of the band, at least as far as the true believers are concerned. The song also represents everything that nonbelievers find annoying about them. Brian Marchese satirizes the attitude: “deedle deedle noodle noodle wanky wanky crash boom dum dum da da noodle noodle Dark Star something/ space rock lyrics total dork fest doodle dee smoke another, dude, stoner twirly spinny dancer psychedelic space rock…” I have felt this way myself at times. But if you are in the right frame of mind, “Dark Star” can be a magical journey.
I first heard the tune on What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, the studio recording that the band (very optimistically) released as a single in 1968. It sold a few hundred copies and vanished.
If you know “Dark Star” by reputation as a long and unfocused jam, this two-and-a-half-minute recording will be quite a surprise. I have a special place in my heart for it, because while it’s silly in some ways, I admire its creative ambition. The stereotypically hippie-ish tambura drone has not aged well, but the last few seconds are really special: the Lydian ending chords fade into Robert Hunter reading a nonsensical poem, which in turn fades into a tiny snippet of Jerry playing uptempo bluegrass banjo. The Dead gave up on that kind of studio adventurism quickly, but I appreciate it while it lasted.
Modern Band Music Theory
I met Dr Jim Frankel, the founder of MusicFirst, back when I was a grad student. We have been mutual admirers in a passive way since then. It was a pleasant surprise when, over the summer, he asked me to contribute to their new Modern Band curriculum, specifically, the music theory component. It’s now being used in schools across the US. Read more about it here.
