Jump to content


Please subscribe to MPN’s YouTube Channel!

Mjazz

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    233

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Mjazz

    Chords (well, bass notes) for "Ride Like The Wind"

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Here's the guitar chart that Christopher Cross prepared for publication on his website. He doesn't show the bass player's bass line, just his own guitar part, but it's interesting to see how he conceptualizes the chords.

     

    Many of you over the years have asked for true guitar tabs for my songs. I have finally begun to assemble them. I considered creating an app, but as a thank you for all your support I"m putting them on my site for you to enjoy.

     

    These are the actual chords and fingerings I used in writing, recording and as well as performing the songs. The process is quite tedious so it has taken me while, but please check back from time to time, my goal is to create these for my entire catalog.

     

    Happy Pickin,

    Christopher

    The Girl From Ipanema, a video that taught me a lot.

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Mjazz I follow your thinking, and not that it"s wrong, but I don"t hear the bridge that way. I hear it"s melody-line as a repetition of: ti, do, ti, la, ti la, sol, la

    This would lead me to hear Gb Lyd as a temporary I, B7+4 as its IV7, then F#m7 as the next temporary i minor (Dorian mode) and then D7 (bVI of previous F#-7) also acting as V7 of G-7, then to Eb7(bVI of precious G-7) which acts as bVII7 backdoor to F, then back home in F via its iii VI ii V; on to the last A section.

    Thanks, understood.

     

    Thinking of it that way is harder for me because it treats each of the four-bar sequences as its own different thing. I hear those sequences as being essentially the same thing, transposed and repeated:

     

    subdominant - bVII7 (pivot V7)

    subdominant - bVII7 (pivot V7/ii)

    subdominant - bVII7 (home key)

    then 3 - 6 - 2 - 5 in home key back to the tonic.

    The Girl From Ipanema, a video that taught me a lot.

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    The guy in the video says something like, when in F, the first 4 bars of the bridge is in Db and the next 4 in E.

    Uh

    ... correct, because:

     

    (a) all the melody notes within each four-bar sequence are in those respective keys,

     

    (b) the first chord in each four-bar sequence is one of the subdominant chords (either IVma7 or iim7) in the respective key (IVma7 of Db in the first four bars, ii7 of E in the second four bars) (which is why substituting an Ebm9 for Gbma7 works and sounds great in the first bar of the bridge; it's ii7 in Db), and

     

    © the second chord in each four-bar sequence is the bVII7 relative to the respective key, functioning *as if* it was going to be a bVII7 backdoor dominant approach to the tonic, but which turns out instead to pivot to function as V7 in the new key in first sequence or V7/ii7 of the new key in the second sequence. You can hear the bVII7 function, as it would've sounded without a pivot, by just ending each four-bar sequence with the tonic of the respective key: first four bars, play Gbma7 ... B7(Cb7) ... Dbma7, End. Second four bars, play F#m7 ... D7 ... Ema7, End.

     

    The brilliance is in never hitting any of those tonics, and using a bVII7 -> V7 pivot chord to change keys.

     

    Same analysis applies to the third four-bar sequence, in F: Gm7 (ii7) ... Eb7 (bVII7) ... Here, though, the bVII7 doesn't pivot to become V7 of a new key, it just sets up a iii7 - VI7(V7/ii) - ii7 - V7 in F: Am7 - D7 - Gm7 - C7.

    OT: Piano Elbow

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    For this exact problem, piano elbow, I started doing a physical therapy exercise called the Tyler Twist Protocol. It worked great, eliminating the pain, and I've continued to do it daily over the years. It stretches out the top of the forearm.

     

    The exercise is demonstrated in the video on this page. Here are links to PDFs of the underlying research article and the exercise protocol. It requires a simple rubber twist bar, which can be had on Amazon for about 13 bucks. (There are different color versions with different degrees of resistance. I've always used the red.) Alternative products would probably also work.

     

    I don't have any stake in this, by the way. It's just something that worked - extremely well - for me. I first heard about it from a New York Times article 10+ years ago. Press articles about it are linked on that page with the video.

    Dark mode

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    I don"t know if default to normal UBBT77 happened by accident, but I"ll gladly take it!

     

    I don"t have to log in anymore just to be able to read it ð

     

    Thanks dB ð

    Not an accident. I did it on purpose.

    Thank you!!!

     

    "Michelle" (Beatles) correction

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    This just popped back into mind ... McCartney actually talked about that particular chord in Michelle, and how it came about, in this 2014 interview at Rollins College.

     

    The story starts at 17:01, when the interviewer asks, "Were there some chords in the early songs that were surprises ...?" McCartney's answer takes a couple of minutes. Funny.

     

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8OY2MKVhpY

    [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8OY2MKVhpY

    So unequivocally a #9, not approach tones; hardwired into the harmony there.

    Yes. You can really hear it when he's playing live on a six-string ... (around 0:28)

    [video:youtube]

    "Michelle" (Beatles) correction

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    This just popped back into mind ... McCartney actually talked about that particular chord in Michelle, and how it came about, in this 2014 interview at Rollins College.

     

    The story starts at 17:01, when the interviewer asks, "Were there some chords in the early songs that were surprises ...?" McCartney's answer takes a couple of minutes. Funny.

     

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8OY2MKVhpY

    [video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8OY2MKVhpY

     

     

    "Michelle" (Beatles) correction

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    Funny how you you learn things when you actually listen to a recording of a song you assumed you "knew". In "Michelle", every one I've ever played it with, and every fake book version, has the second chord of the verse as a iv (four minor). In the record key of F, that would be a Bbmi, and indeed, the melody there is Db - Ab ("...my belle...") implying Bbmi7. However a listen reveals that the backing vocals (the only chordal content at that point) are actually singing a Bb7 chord, making that chord actually a Bb7(#9).

    Very interesting, never noticed.

     

    It's actually even a little bit more dissonant than that, listening closely. He sings the word "ma" as a slur starting on B-natural (the b9 relative to the Bb7) up to the D-flat (the #9 relative to the Bb7)!

    (Excerpt here at 35% speed, original pitch)

     

    help me understand the theory of this beautiful progression

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    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:

     

    Tagg2.jpg

    tagg3.jpg

     

    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?

     

     

    help me understand the theory of this beautiful progression

    in The Keyboard Corner

    Posted

    that's a strange response Sam. I provided chords and an example of me playing them with a hint of a melody, so what more context could one need? It seems that everybody else was able to come to a satisfactory conclusion so maybe just you?

    Honestly, to me it seems like everybody else tried their best to come up with an answer with what was given to them. Maybe some strongly believe that's the only possible answer with no other strong candidates? Totally possible.

     

    I'm sorry you find my answer strange, but that doesn't change the fact that you can take 4 chords and twist them in so many different ways depending on what happened before and what comes next. You can take the same 4 chord and use them to module...or just use them to create color/contrast and stay within the same key. Call it strange, but there's no one right answer to this. Your example is too short.

     

    One thing this discussion points up is that a LOT of popular music is constructed using chord shuttles or chord loops. A 2-chord shuttle or a 4-chord loop can be an entire song (as in konaboy's Dorothy), which may or may not resolve at the end (his does); often they just fade out. These shuttles and loops very often have no V-I cadence.

     

    There's a very interesting modern harmony book, Philip Tagg's Everyday Tonality II, that addresses this phenomenon at length. What he concludes is that trying to fit this type of music into the Euroclassical theory of directional movement toward a tonic often just doesn't work. (For example, from the Preface: "Explaining something as common and as ostensibly simple as the La Bamba chord loop (as in La Bamba, Guantanamera, Wild Thing, Pata Pata, Twist & Shout etc.) in terms of tonic, subdominant and dominant had for some time struck me as about as productive as using theories of combustion to explain electricity. And yet some music scholars still try to apply Schenkerian notions of harmonic directionality to tonal configurations in which notions like dominant and perfect cadence are at best questionable, if not altogether irrelevant.")

     

    His view is that often these shuttles and loops should be viewed as essentially entities unto themselves, not directional movements toward a tonic. The repetition is its own purpose.

     

×
×
  • Create New...