From the category archives:
Today I lectured about what I’m now calling “chord cycles”–a series of chords that repeat over and over. In the Baroque, these types of compositions were called “chaconnes.” Composers think of any repeated set of chords as a chaconne, but historians are sticklers about that progression being a set progression. There are more arguments about [...]
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It always seemed to me that you can tell Paul McCartney’s lyrics as he has a penchant for couplets. Not sure that exactly works here, but this graph is a damn fun analysis of the logic of the lyrics to Hey Jude. I think…
[Thanks to my old pal from Green Bay, Rick Larson for finding [...]
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Yesterday in lecture, my colleague Robert Winter took his turn in imparting the core of functional harmony: the tonic-dominant relationship, or V-I. He pointed out that the tritone–once banned by the church–now had rules of how it is to be resolved: augmented fourths expand out to sixths, and diminished fifths contract into a third. He [...]
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I struggle writing my book analyzing songs by Rufus Wainwright because I keep forgetting who I am writing the book for. I simplify the language so that regular music lovers can appreciate it, but then I address issues that are more appropriate to graduate music analysis seminars for composers or music theorists.
What is it [...]
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Having finished my composition projects for the summer, I am finally returning to finishing my book on Rufus Wainwright. Having bought Robert O. Gderdingen’s terrific publication “Music in the Galant Style” I have found the book format that I’d like to have for my book: one with relatively large type, but most importantly, a hardback [...]
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An early Leonard Cohen song revisited in a live performance in San Sebastian in 1988. Cohen’s performance here hasn’t changed much from his original recording. A dark and galloping song. There is no dominant in the opening verse. His sexy flat-six chord has three notes of a French augmented-6th chord (F A B) with a [...]
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Last month I wrote about the very popular chord progression from the 50s: I vi IV V and played you a video of seven versions of that song. In case you didn’t read it:
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” [...]
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Hoagie Carmichael
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” implying that they prefer to not repeat themselves.
One of the most popular chord progressions of the time (1950 – 1963) before the Beatles came on the scene was the I vi IV V [...]
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Here is a lip sync performance of The Byrds singing their UFO hymn, “Mr Spaceman” on The Smothers Brothers show, and judging by the way the band looks, it’s 1967–the year of their NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS where David Crosby had been kicked out of the band. (Funny. It is indeed David’s high harmonies on the [...]
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