Identifying plagal cadences

This week in aural skills, we’re working on various harmonic tropes based on IV-I root movements. This chord progression is technically called the plagal cadence, but is more memorably nicknamed the “Amen” cadence because it’s a traditional European hymn ending. (It has nothing to do with the Amen break, though they do sound good together.) The plagal cadence is the mirror image of the classical V-I authentic cadence.

Where does the word “plagal” come from? The Online Etymology Dictionary says that it’s probably from Greek plagios, meaning “oblique” or “side”, and that word in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *plak-, “to be flat”. This root also gives us flag (a flat stone for paving), flake, and plank. Plagal probably shares an etymology with “flatness” because the important voice-leading element is scale degree four resolving down to three. While we’re talking about word origins, amen comes from a Hebrew word meaning “truth,” in this context meaning “an adverbial expression of agreement.” Continue reading “Identifying plagal cadences”

Identifying I, IV and V chords

The I, IV and V chords are beginner-level music theory concepts. However, in my pop-oriented aural skills class, we are covering them in the context of the blues, where they are more complicated than they are in the standard tonal theory context. Let’s begin with a review of the basic I, IV and V from the major scale. Here they are in C.

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Identifying the diatonic modes

In Aural Skills class we continue our sprint through harmony concepts with the diatonic modes. These are an advanced topic in classical theory, but for popular music, you need to deal with them up front, especially Mixolydian and Dorian.

Here are the tunes I’m giving the class to practice distinguishing the modes from each other. Continue reading “Identifying the diatonic modes”

Identifying pentatonic scales

It’s pentatonic scales week in aural skills class. This would seem to be the easiest thing on the syllabus, but I discovered while doing listening exercises with the students that even these simple scales have their subtleties.

Major Pentatonic

You can understand the C major pentatonic scale to be the C major scale without scale degrees four and seven. These are the ones that create all the tension and dissonance, and without them, the major pentatonic sounds uncomplicatedly sunny and cheerful. (Or does it? More on that in a minute.) Click the image to play the scale in the aQWERTYon.

You can easily explore the G-flat major pentatonic scale: it’s the black keys on the piano. Guitarists will find that G major pentatonic is particularly easy to play. (Too bad they can’t so easily play it with the pianists.)

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Identifying added-note chords

My NYU aural skills students are working on chord identification. My last post talked about seventh chords; this post is about chords with more notes in them, or at least, different notes. My theory colleagues call them added-note chords. They are more commonly called jazz chords, though many of the examples I list below are not from jazz. You could also call them extended chords, or complicated chords, or fancy chords, or cool chords. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the numbers and symbols. My preferred way to organize all this information is to think of chords as vertically stacked scales. It is intimidating to try to learn to distinguish between C7, C9, C13, C7sus4, C9sus4 and C13sus4, but they are really just different combinations of the notes in C Mixolydian mode, and they all convey a similar “Mixolydian-ness”. But before we get to those, let’s start with extended chords you can make from regular old C major.

Major scale chords

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Identifying seventh chords

In aural skills class, we are practicing identifying seventh chords. This is second nature for guitarists and pianists who play anything jazz-related, but I appreciate that it’s harder for singers and players of monophonic instruments. Here’s my reference guide to the four (non-diminished or –augmented) seventh chords.


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Call Me Maybe

For the first day of my new pop-oriented Aural Skills II class at NYU, we analyzed “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. I have been using this song as a listening example in music tech classes for many years because it is the apex of maximalist brickwall-limited caterpillar-waveform 21st century pop production. In the music tech context, I tend not to talk much about the song itself, but it’s a perfect entry point into pop aural skills too. Here’s the video, in case you have been trapped in a well since 2012.

Delightful though the song is, at first it seemed to me to be too simple and repetitive to be interesting from a notes-on-the-page perspective. However, once I dug in, I found more going on than I had thought.

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New monthly column for MusicRadar

My newest side hustle is a writing gig for MusicRadar, in which I will be analyzing well-known songs in terms of music theory, production and larger cultural context. The first one went live today, a study of “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish from the Barbie movie. The next one is going to be about the Beatles. Check it out!

As it turns out, I will be teaching aural skills at NYU this semester

A couple of weeks ago I posted about how a couple of NYU’s new progressive music theory and aural skills classes have been assigning this blog. Either coincidentally or as a result of the post, the department offered me a section of  Aural Skills II – Popular Music. That feels good, and it’s an opportunity to put a lot of long-held ideas I’ve had about how to teach this material into practice. It’s not a lot of prep time, and I have some nerves about that, but they have offered me plenty of materials to draw on. I’ll be posting updates about it here.

Jack Straw

After spending their first few years writing abstract psychedelic tunes, the Grateful Dead took a hard turn into Americana. They wrote a bunch of songs inspired by blues, country and folk, and in doing so, they massively expanded their listener base. Several of these songs involve outlaws and drifters in the Wild West. I think the best of the Dead’s cowboy songs, both lyrically and musically, is “Jack Straw”.

When I was a kid, my older stepbrother had a bunch of Dead albums stored in our apartment. I avoided listening to them at first because their covers suggested that they would be too heavy and frightening for my tastes. Imagine my surprise when I finally did try them and they turned out to be affable psychedelic country. I first heard “Jack Straw” on What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been, the hugely better of the two Grateful Dead greatest hits compilations. (The other is Skeletons from the Closet, which has some baffling choices – “Mexicali Blues”, why?)

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