Revolution (1984)
Dennis Brown
Reggae, Jamaica
key: A minor
Euroclassical function names: tonic dominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: t dscale degrees: i vchord names: Am Em
Em Am
|:/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop for whole song
mode: A aeolian — A B C D E F G A
melody: ltdrmfs
form: intro-verse 1-chorus-verse 2-chorus- verse 2-verse 3-chorus-verse 3-chorus
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
I was quite sure when I first heard this song that it was a tonic-subdominant loop in E minor. After all, the E minor chord is first in the loop and, therefore, first in the phrase. Then I started transcribing the melody and when I realized there’s an F natural in there, I thought, “Okay, but this doesn’t sound like E phrygian…” And that’s when I noticed that A ended each melodic phrase and by golly it sure sounds more like a resting tone than the E does. Tagg might argue that there is no tonic, but to my ears, upon closer listening, A is where it’s at. You have to take the melody into account.
other recordings:
AZE, C# drone
Kazım Koyuncu, G drone
Beşir Bayraktar, G drone
İsmail Türüt, A drone
This is a folksong from a tradition not entirely separate from European, but divergent enough. There are a lot of commonalities, but ultimately the way the structures are and are thought about are different. It’s not unlike how jazz and classical people have most musical things in common, but still the way jazz folk and classical folk talk and think about their music differs. This is all to say that I found this song here. And it looks to me like it’s in D minor with a minor dominant on the fifth degree, because the melody always ends on D and a D minor chord.
Then you listen to the recording above and it’s a pretty different story, isn’t it? First of all, there’s only a drone on A and no chords. The Dm chord sounds a little off. Not horribly so, but not quite right.
It is worth looking at and listening to an acoustic performance by Mr. Bayraktar:
Here you can see very nicely that the guitarist is playing Gm (where we have Am) and instead of playing Cm, he’s playing 002200 = EAEABE = capo 3 GCGCDG. Not a “functional” chord in the European Common Practice sense. In rock, it could be called a Csus2 or a Gsus4. This way we neatly avoid that note that is a sixth above the drone.
Rapper’s Delight (1979)
Sugar Hill Gang
Early Hip-Hop/Rap, USA
key: E dorian
Euroclassical function names: tonic subdominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: t Sscale degrees: i IVchord names: Em A
Em A
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / /:| loop
mode: E dorian — E F# G A B C# D E
melody: Drmfsl
form: chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus
chorus — AA’A’A’ verse — BB’BB’ BBCB
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
Is this a two-chord song? Well, just listening to the bassline, yes. The bass lays down E very clearly and walks on up to A. But then there’s the funky guitar part. And from a guitar point of view, there are four different fingerings to use, which would be thought of as four separate chords. From a classical music perspective — which isn’t the end-all-be-all and may not be entirely appropriate, but is not entirely inappropriate (oh, the conundrum!) — we have a lot of notes that serve more of a “color” function than a harmonic movement function. And that makes sense, because, let’s face it: two chords do not make for much harmonic movement anyway! We have two places to be and let’s bring some color in while we are at it.
Another way to think about it (again, still from a classical perspective) is that we are prolonging the voice leading. Every chord has multiple notes and they all want to move in the easiest way to the next chord — except for the bass, which is allowed to be the leapiest (yup, that’s the most leapy), although we love it when our bass walks places, like it does in this song. Here are the notes of the basic chords we have in root position:
B E
G C#
E A
What we like to hear is something more like this:
E E
B C#
G A
E A
The lowest note leaps and everyone else moves a step or holds. Now, we add a color note:
D E
B C#
G A
E A
< p>The D in the E minor chord is there for color or flavor or whatever your favorite cross-sensory analogy is. (Isn’t it funny how we so rarely talk about sounds as sounds, but via other senses? Color, shape, line, texture… But I suppose we talk about loud colors, too, so there’s just a lot of crossover. I digress…) Next, we are going to slow down the movement from one chord to the next, by not moving all the voices at once. First, we are going to move the G up to A:
D D E
B B C#
G A A
E E A
This happens right as the bass starts walking, so it’s actually an interesting situation: it’s like the chord tries to move, but gets a little stuck because wait-a-minute-what’s-going-on-in-the-bass?! Once the bass lands on A, the root of the chord changes, but one of the other voices is stuck.
D D D E
B B A C#
G A A A
E E A A
Now this is a bit simplified. You may be asking, what happened to the E in the A chord? And chances are if you are playing this on guitar or ukulele there is an E in there. It’s just that the fifth of the chord is not essential to hearing its function; we really only need the root and the third. So I'm leaving it out to show the primary voice leading movement. Well, fine, but where’s the third? Well, it should be what the D moved down to, but it’s stuck, and the B could have gone there, but it didn’t. Then yet another interesting thing happens. So far I’ve written down a simple A chord as the goal, but that’s not what we actually get. Here’s the voicing as it comes out on my D-tuned uke, plus the bass:
D D D C#
B B A A
G A A F#
E E E E
E E A A
In jazz and popular parlance, that last chord is an A6, meaning we have an A major triad with the sixth note above A (within the scale of E dorian), which is F#. You may also notice that it’s the same pitch set as F#m7. This is important. In A6, the F# is a note for color and does not affect the function of the chord. In F#m7, the F# is the root of the chord and, therefore, determines the function. As someone who has studied classical music extensively, I do kind of hear this as an F# minor chord in first inversion (that is, with the 3rd in the bass)! And therefore, I do kind of hear this as a change in function. However, from a jazz and popular perspective, an A6 chord is not the same as an F#m7, even though they have the same pitches in them. Now, I’ve also been hearing this song since 1979 — I grew up listening to as much AM radio as I did classical music in cartoons. So I can also hear this very much as staying in the other harmonic pole, to speak in Taggian terms.
Above, I simplified the bass, but it’s also a bit more complex in the chorus (the verse contrasts this with something a lot closer to just two notes) — and why we love that bass line. It adds a little more information to how we analyze and think about our harmonies. First, during the first chord we lay down E:
E E E
Then, during the second chord we walk up the scale:
E F# G A B C# D
During the third chord, we lay down A:
A A A
And lastly, we emphasize the flavor notes:
A F# G F# A (still simplified, but here’s a transcription.)
Oh, look at that. There’s a seventh in there along with the sixth. Hmmm. But here’s the thing: play along to the song with just Em and A and it will sound fine. Not particularly funky, but definitely not off. So is it two chords or not? Again, Taggian thinking helps us out a bit. We definitely have two harmonic poles around E and A. Tagg also writes extensively about one-chord songs that aren’t really just one chord, because, although the bass might stay the same, the voices above it keep moving around and implying different harmonies. I think here we have a combination of both. Using anticipation (moving one voice to the next chord tone before the rest of the voices get there) and suspension (holding a voice over from the previous chord while the other voices move on), two static poles become far more dynamic and interesting. So on a chord chart you might read (as you do here): Em7 Em7sus4 A7sus4 A13 (like A6, but also with the minor seventh), but you can also hear that they are just very fancy versions of two basic chords. On the other hand, by putting these intermediary voice-leading steps on the beat and making them last an entire measure, they become new harmonic places-to-be in their own right. Is it two chords? Yes! Is it four chords? Yes!
Better Must Come (1971)
Delroy Wilson
key: A major blues
Euroclassical function names: tonic dominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: T Sscale degrees: I IVchord names: A D
slow two—
A D
|:/ / |/ / :|
or fast four —
A D
|:/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop
mode: A blues — A B C D D# E G A
melody: S L d r me m f se
form: intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-interlude-verse-chorus
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 2|2, 4|4
other recordings:
Don Carlos, G
Socially-conscious, positive reggae tunes are my new fave. In terms of chord progressions, we are on familiar ground by now, a tonic-counterpoise loop with the subdominant in the counterpoise role. Melodically, there are the lowered third and seventh scale degrees that are the hallmark of blues style. I did not break down the form of the melody into phrase parts, as Mr. Delroy Wilson varies the melodic ideas throughout the song.
Artist and educator Lynda Barry outlines a simple method in her book What It Is as well as in the video for documenting the everyday things happening in your life. In short slots of time you free write lists of what you saw, what you heard, and what you did in the previous 24-hours. You also get to draw a picture! (Don’t worry — it doesn’t have to be amazing.) The point of the exercise is to simply notice what you notice — what impresses you, what sticks in your memory, as well as to get in the habit of noticing.
Barry advises not reviewing these exercises until weeks or months later, but I usually use it immediately in tandem with free writing. After going through the exercise, I have the students pick out anything that seems like a salient idea and to free write more thoughts on that. One young student I had created some lovely songs with this method, writing one about the bunnies he saw during his morning and afternoon commute to and from school, and a round about all the times his parents have to say no (a common issue among youth, I hear).
mode: A dorian — A B C D E F# G A
melody: Sldrm
form: intro-break–verse–break–vamp 1–break–verse–breakdown–vamp 2–break–breakdown–vamp 2a–break
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Celia Cruz, G dorian
Santana, A dorian
Arturo Sandoval, A dorian (but with lots of reharmonization!)
There are two iconic recordings of this one: the original and the Santana version, the latter of which is actually fairly respectful and almost conservative with regards to the original. What I’m calling a vamp is a polyrhythmic layering of different sections of the big band playing riffs over the tonic-subdominant shuttle that is the meat of the song. The piccolo improvises on top of this, but it’s not quite the main attraction. This is still dance music, after all, not bebop.
Two interludes break the song up and provide some variety, and they couldn’t be more different from one another. The “break” (this is still my terminology, because what else am I going to use?) has these jaunty, uneven hits from the two chords; whereas the “breakdown” builds the counterpoise chord from the bottom up over the length of a phrase, suspending the harmonic action completely for a moment.
mode: F major — F G A Bb C D E F
melody: Ldrmsltd’r’
form: intro-verse-interlude-verse
verse — AA'A''BB
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Neil Young, Bb
Here is another wistful song with major seventh chords. I will have to find an example that isn’t wistful! Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I find that cut-and-dry associations of sounds and moods get you in trouble pretty quickly (i.e., the old canard “major = happy/minor = sad,” which we can debunk right away with pretty much all of Johnny Cash’s oeuvre but let’s start with “Folsom Prison Blues” and on the other side, my go-to example is the Hollies’ “Bus Stop.”). I’d like to point out here that the major seventh in a major seventh chord has no particular melodic job — it doesn’t push or pull us up or down like the dominant seventh does. Its job is really one of color and mood. It is most common in jazz, but also late 19th century classical (listen to our old friends Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Erik Satie, for example), and as mentioned before Simon and Garfunkel.
The introduction to this song does an excellent job of establishing F as the resting tone and we need that, because once the lyrics kick in the subdominant comes first. If we started there, we run the risk of perceiving Bb as the tonic and F as the dominant. The melody doesn’t really dwell on the resting tone until the very last line of the song. Hanging out on F for four measures does the trick. Then the intro moves into a tonic-subdominant shuttle, a foreshadowing, if you will, of what is to come, and then another brief stop on F, just to make sure. The rest of the song is a subdominant-tonic shuttle and it almost is a bit surprising when it happens. A magical song.
mode: E aeolian — E F# G A B C D E; or E dorian — E F# G A B C# D E; or E blues — E F# G A A# B D E
melody: drmsl’
form: 12-bar blues
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Gary Burton, E minor
< p>Don’t let the beautiful big band orchestration scare you, it’s still just a two-chord song. The tango feel is a little more prominent in the Gary Burton version, at first, then it ventures into a chill hip-hop vibe.
Interestingly, it’s a twelve-bar blues form, but only with tonic and subdominant (basic 12-bar blues, for those not in-the-know, usually also has a dominant chord in the ninth measure, but there are many, many, many variations in chord progressions when it comes to 12-bar blues). The first phrase is just Em and the second and third phrases are a subdominant-tonic shuttle.
The melody, as in Big Mistake, is la-based pentatonic minor, and uses even fewer pitches, five in total. It’s a fantastic tune to use with beginners to jazz (really — two chords and a five note melody — can you make a great tune more basic?), but it clearly appeals to the professionals, too. Hat tip to Darcy James Argue for the suggestion.
interlude over first four phrases of verse
first two verses
mode: E aeolian — E F# G A B C D E
melody: MSldrms
form: verse — AA’A’’A’’’BA’’’’BA’’’’
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 2|4
The guiro part on this song is magic! Usually guiro parts are faster and more in the background and this one is super-simple and really forward in the mix. You can really savor how the timbre changes as the instrument is scraped. It’s as though you can hear the sound of someone’s neck as they slowly shake their head in admonition… You made a big mistake.
As far as I can tell, the Bassies only recorded a handful of singles that were released or included on compilations with other artists and that was it. Ah, how the industry has changed. They’d probably fare better now on Bandcamp!
The gamut of the melody is a la-based minor pentatonic and the melody is made up of two basic shapes, the first of which (A) is run backwards (A’), then transposed (A’’) and then that’s run backwards (A’’’). Then the second half of the verse has a new idea (B) coupled with a slight variation on A’’ (A’’’’ — this is perhaps a bit picayune; we could probably get away with calling it A’’). It doesn’t take much to make a catchy song. In the same way we have only two chords, we have two melodic shapes.
Roadrunner (1972)
Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Rock/Proto-Punk, USA
key: A major/mixolydian
Euroclassical function names: tonic subdominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: T Sscale degrees: I IVchord names: A D
A D
|:/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop (except for two tiny bits, see below)
mode: A mixolydian — A B C# D E F# G A
melody: RMsltr
form: hmmm…
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
The Greg Kihn Band, A
The Jazz Butcher, A Joan Jett, B
Another 99 percenter: there are two V chords (E) in here, one at the end of the “third verse” (if we can call it that… the line “I’m in love with rock and roll and I’ll be out all night”), and the other at the very end, right after he says “Bye bye.” So, not 100% purely two chords, but not a dealbreaker.
The form here is, well, almost formless. There’s some small instrumental interludes separating out the lyrics, but there’s nothing you could really call a verse or a chorus. It’s just an ecstatic rant about driving around Boston. There’s something about Richman’s work that simultaneously embraces the basic conventions of rock’n’roll and ignores/smashes them.
interlude:
G D
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / :|
D G
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / :|
mode: D major — D E F# G A B C# D; guitar solos with blues — D E F G G# A C D
melody: Ldrmfs
form: intro-verse-interlude-verse-interlude-solo on verse & interlude
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
Somehow I missed this song when I was in high school, which is a bit strange, since I lived near Boston and this was a Boston band and I listened to this kind of stuff. Well, better late than never. Most of the song is a tonic-subdominant shuttle, with three moments of a subdominant-tonic shuttle. Other points of interest: the singer’s vocal range and timbre, the use of cymbals, the bass playing a countermelody, the un-bluesyness of the song yet the guitar solo is all blues.
Lively Up Yourself (1974)
Bob Marley & the Wailers
Reggae, Jamaica
key: D major blues
Euroclassical function names: tonic subdominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: T Sscale degrees: I IVchord names: D G
D G
|:/ / / / |/ / / / :| loop
mode: D blues — D E F G G# A C D
melody: S TA d r me m f s
form: intro-verse-chorus-verse-interlude-solo-intro-interlude-chorus-solo
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Gilberto Gil, C (in Portuguese!)
I mentioned that we would see many reggae songs with plagal shuttles, and here is another one. The genius in this song resides entirely with that bass-and-horns riff, which beautifully plays against the sense of meter.
How do you know whether a progression is tonic-dominant or tonic-subdominant?
You’ll notice that in, say, C major, the tonic-dominant pair is C and G, and in G major the tonic-subdominant pair is G and C. They have the same exact chords, but somehow the relationship between them is different. Let’s explore how.
Looking at the individual notes in the chords, we have C E G in a C chord and G B D in a G chord. When we are in C major, those notes have the following “jobs”:
C D E F G A B
do re mi fa so la ti
In major tonality, the “job” of ti is to lead up to do, the resting tone/home note/tonal center/tonic. We often like to add the 7th above the root of the dominant chord, to create a “dominant 7th chord” — this would be the note F, which has the job fa — because fa’s job is to lead down to mi, which is the note that gives the major scale its major quality. So if one of the chords is a dominant 7th and the other is not, then we are 99.9% of the time (there are always exceptions, especially when you can’t think of any) looking at a tonic-dominant pair. And if you are playing along at home and you don’t know your dominant chords yet, play the regular version and you’ll be fine.
When G is the tonic of the major scale, the notes now have different jobs:
G A B C D E F#
do re mi fa so la ti
Here C is now fa and therefore has the job of leading us down to mi, which is B. If we only use G and C, there is no ti in the harmony leading us back up to do. In a strict Western Classical Music sense, this is a weaker cadence because of the absence of the ti-do combination. Sadly, people have used this to then say that music that uses this cadence is somehow not-as-good, but we don’t say that here, because we know that’s ridiculous. The resting tone is emphasized a different way, however, in songs that only use tonic and subdominant. The note that is common to both chords happens to be do, which makes it a drone of sorts that the other notes of the chords dance above. The common tone in a T-D progression is so, but with the ti-do action happening as the chords switch, we perceive do as the resting tone instead of the common tone of so. Melodies are also working to emphasize our perception of do as the resting tone, as well.
That’s a nitty gritty explanation of what is going on with the chords. What are the other ways in which we make a home chord sound like a home?
• it has the most air time [e.g. “Ceniv u popa,” “Day-O,” “Clementine”]
• it happens in places of rhythmic importance (e.g., the end of the whole song; a cadence; the beginning of the song or phrase)
You can use both strategies, but you can also use just one of them and it will be enough to convince a listener of the primacy of one pitch set over another.
Yet, there’s another issue, what if the chords are paired evenly and symmetrically, as in a shuttle, counterpoise sandwich, or counterpoise inversion? Since the two chords get the same amount of air time, we have to look at places of rhythmic importance, as well as what is going on in the melody. In a counterpoise sandwich and a counterpoise inversion, the tonic appears at both the beginning and the ending of the phrase, that is, the two places of rhythmic importance. In a shuttle, it can be more difficult. However, most shuttles begin with the tonic and at the end of the song, it either fades out or end on the downbeat of the beginning of the shuttle, that is, the tonic. When all else fails, listen to what the melody is doing and where it seems to come to rest.
Tagg proposes two other possibilities: a) there is only one chord, or b) there are two chords but there is no tonic. In the first case, the resting tone is usually omnipresent as a drone or, in classical parlance, a pedal — I touched on this above. In the second case, the perception is in the ear of the “behearer.” I tend to hear no tonic/two poles more if each chord is in play for longer than what would be considered a shuttle (see “Life During Wartime”) or if there is no real linear melody — we haven’t looked at any songs/pieces like that, but we might find them in more dance-oriented techno-related styles, perhaps some rap songs, or in the more experimental corners of minimalist classical music. But! You may hear things more like Tagg does and that is fine.
mode: G minor/aeolian — G A Bb C D Eb F G
melody: MSltdrmsl’t’
form: intro-verse-refrain-solo-verse-refrain
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
Another one that would be a two-chord song if it weren’t for those meddling bridges/interludes/guitar solos! If I were too strict, we would miss out on this lesser-known (at least to those of us on the peripheries of ska/rocksteady/reggae/dub) gem with Johnny’s sweet, sweet voice. Otherwise, nothing here that we haven’t seen before in terms of form. Note the counterpoise sandwich that comprises the second half of the verse.
mode: G major — G A B C D E F# G
melody: drmfsltd’r’m’f’
form: intro-verse-verse-chorus-intro-verse-chorus-intro
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Ben Hobbs, Db
Kelly Duplex, E
This wistful ditty is made up of two chord shuttles of different lengths and different positioning of the two chords. Most of the song consists of a tonic-subdominant shuttle, in which each chord lasts one measure. The chorus’ shuttle is twice as long and it is a subdominant-tonic shuttle, providing a sort of counterpoise kickback and putting the home chord at the end of the section. The song itself ends with the short shuttle and a single G downbeat.
The major seventh chord is more common in jazz and some styles of classical music, but it does pop up in popular music like this occasionally. I once saw Kristen Hersh in concert and segueing out of her guitar-tuning banter, she played a chord and said, “This is a major seventh chord. You can use major seventh chords if you’re old… or if you’re Simon & Garfunkel. I just turned 36, so now I’m old enough to use them.” I say, don’t wait. Enjoy them at all ages.
mode: G mixolydian — G A B C D E F G
melody: stdrmfs’l’t’
form: chorus-verse-verse-chorus-verse-verse-chorus-outro
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
How do we know that this song is in G mixolydian and not C major, seeing as the song starts on a C major chord and the two scales have the same pitch set? I will go into more details on how to differentiate tonic-subdominant from tonic-dominant in a future post. For now, let’s just focus on how this song emphasizes G as the tonic.
Simply looking at time spent on the chords, G gets 15 measures out of 20 in just a single chorus and verse. Both sections end on G, the chorus ends with a whole phrase of it. The verse begins with two phrases of G. Just in terms of time allowance, G wins.
Another aspect to look at is when the change in chords happen. In the verse, the C happens in the beginning of the last phrase — it’s a good counterpoise position. A little visit somewhere else and then straight back home.
So in a sense, the chorus happening at the beginning of the song is where the potential ambiguity lies, right in that first phrase, which is mostly C. The melody here helps establish G as the tonic: The first “paperback writer” is do-re-mi-mi-re, and re is part of the G chord; this is answered by another “paperback writer” on so-la-ti-ti-so, so and ti being part of the G chord. When this answer goes down to mi at the end, it is part of the C chord, but does not sound final. The guitar jam over G for the next four measures, however, does sound final, like this is the home place.
Time allowed to a certain chord, where in the structure chords change, and what notes are emphasized melodically are things to look and listen for when deciding what key a song is in and how the chords function.
Everyday People (1968)
Sly & the Family Stone
Rock/Soul/R&B, USA
key: G major blues
Euroclassical function names: tonic subdominantTagg: tonic counterpoiseRiemann: T Sscale degrees: I IVchord names: G C
G C G
|:/-/-/-/-|/-/-/-/-:| loop
mode: G major blues — G A Bb C C# D F G; G pentatonic — G A B D E
melody: drmfsld’r’m’
form: verse-chorus-verse-chorus-chorus; verse — ababc; chorus — dda’def (final chorus ends with c instead of f)
meter: duple
suggested time signature: 4|4
other recordings:
Joan Jett, G
The Staples Singers, G
Jeff Buckley, G
The original recording is actually microtonally somewhere in between G and Ab, which makes it a tad frustrating to play along with. You may want to play along with one of the other recordings, but you certainly should have several good listens to the original.
This is another song which makes me want to improvise with a blues scale, despite the lack of blue notes in the melody and harmony. The sung melody is mostly pentatonic, a common melodic pitch set for American folk musics from both white and black peoples.
The loop is a counterpoise sandwich, but with the counterpoise coming on the “& of four” or the second half of the fourth beat, and returning to the tonic on the “& of one” (symbolized by dashes up there). Despite its brief duration in the loop, the counterpoise’s syncopated position gives it a nice kick — a very groovy beat, in every sense of groovy.
