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help me understand the theory of this beautiful progression


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Another take on this progression could be IV I biii ii in the key of D. The flat iii chord being a chord borrowed from the parallel minor. This sounds like a good explanation on paper but it doesnt quite sound this way to my ears when I play it.

 

Also my feeling. My theoretical instinct is to say modally borrowed, because we only have the four chords and it's faster for my brain, but my ears hear a modulation to C.

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?! It's a MAJ7 vamp in D with the chromatic descent from the the I, starting of with the IV. There are many of those, and of course some of those chords when played in the right stride style (or jazz fingering if you feel up to it) sound pretty without being too obvious for pop listeners. Rhythmically, if you play them on certain instruments (like an el. piano) the M7 chords when played proper lend themselves to comping in a nice swirly motion because of the tone interferences.

 

Most likely if you happen to find these exact chords sound relatively wonderful (though there are many like it) it's probably a thing your digital piano machine or software happens to do better than the others, because of sampling related reasons. I think on a well tuned epiano or electric guitar, there wouldn't be a major advantage to these particular chords to sound "that way".

 

T.

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Responding to comments above that we can't really know what's going on in konaboy's 4-chord progression (which he then uses in a loop to create his song Dorothy) because we don't have enough context, we don't know what comes next, etc.:

 

Listen to Dorothy, which konaboy linked above. It consists entirely of the Gmaj7-Dmaj7-Fmaj7-Em7 loop, repeated for the entire song until the very end, when he hits a final Dmaj7. But that ending doesn't come across as inevitable. He might just as well have done a fade-out on the loop itself. Or ended on Cmaj7. Or Em9. Etc. Nothing about how we relate to listening to the song, as it unfolds, depends on that eventual ending.

 

That's a fundamental characteristic of many songs built on chord shuttles or loops: There IS no "next". There's the loop, and it repeats. The loop is its own context.

 

The Philip Tagg book I mentioned above, Everyday Tonality II, observes that in songs built on chord loops "the identification of a tonic is not always an easy or necessarily possible task." A chord's position in the loop is by no means conclusive. He gives a series of inquiries that can help identify a tonic:

 

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He then illustrates by discussing at length two famous loop tunes, La Bamba and Sweet Home Alabama, and others.

 

But he also asks: So what? Does it really matter? Do we gain anything by trying to fit these structures into euroclassical movement-towards-a-tonic analysis?

 

 

Mike
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Responding to comments above that we can't really know what's going on in konaboy's 4-chord progression (which he then uses in a loop to create his song Dorothy) because we don't have enough context, we don't know what comes next, etc.:

...

 

 

I doubt if the OP recorded those 4 chords with the book Tonality II in mind. It's a wild guess, but it seems he played 4 chords that sounded good to him and then he wanted to understand the relationship between them in a 'euroclassical' way. Trying to analyze them in a non-euroclassical context does not answer the question at all. It just provides a different possibility or perspective. Even if you see this from a non traditional way, I don't know of many respected loop-based songs/pieces that are just that. Even with looped chords there's always a 'next' which does not have to be a new chord necessarily. It could be the melody or voicing of the chords or something/anything... . This does not mean you have to repeat the progression 100 times to get the point across, but you still need to provide enough information.

 

Konaboy believes he has provided more than enough context and he's happy with the answer, so that's good enough for me.

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Why can't we hear, F to Em as a phyrgian cadence in Em, and Em is so closely associated with Dmajor?

 

I am not so quick to throw away Diatonic harmony though.

You don't have ideas, ideas have you

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are. "One mans food is another mans poison". I defend your right to speak hate. Tolerance to a point, not agreement

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I think also it is E minor (oscillating between Aeolian and Dorian). G7maj is III, D7maj VII, F7maj Phrygian (Neapolitan) II and Emi tonic.

 

Phrygian II was used the same way in Night in White Satin from The Moody Blues.

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I can get the theoretical dilemma of Alabama

 

But La Bamba!!!

 

This. The pull to the tonic being the first chord seems extremely strong in La Bamba. Not to mention the vocal lead-in which is dominant or subdominant, again suggesting the first chord is no doubt the tonic.

 

Barry

 

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Gigs: Yamaha CP88, Crumar Mojo 61, A&H SQ5 mixer, ME1 IEM, MiPro 909 IEMs

 

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Interesting to read all the different theory's on this. I'm an Occams Razor kind of guy, the simplest explanation is usually correct. It's in D and all it is is a chromatic descent of the top note G, F#, F, E and D. You need to add the final D but you could cycle the four chords if you wanted but to me the final D completes it. The F chord is simply the relative minor of D, you hear that all the time. It could be played in dozens of ways and tempos but I just played it on my piano as a ballad and it sounds very nice. To me I don't need all the cadence talk, modulations to C, none of that. It's just a nice progression in D. KISS it, play it, have fun.

 

Bob

Hammond SK1, Mojo 61, Kurzweil PC3, Korg Pa3x, Roland FA06, Band in a Box, Real Band, Studio One, too much stuff...
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