EVERYDAY TONALITY

Preface

Why this book?

In 2006, Franco Fabbri asked me to produce a book based on some encyclopaedia articles I’d originally written between 1998 and 2000.1 I didn’t respond initially to his request, mainly because I didn’t then see how updating that work could contribute anything new to our knowledge of music. Two things made me change my mind.
The first was when Franco showed me an Italian music theory textbook. ‘Look’, he said, ‘this is all my students have to go by’. Skimming through its pages I soon saw that, like equivalents in other languages, it dealt only with certain tonal elements of European art music and that it paid particular attention to conventional notions of harmony within that tradition. That quick glance through that textbook reminded me of a recurrent problem I had to confront when writing the original encyclopaedia articles: how to talk about common tonal practices that don’t conform to tonal theory taught in conservatories and departments of music[ology]. For example, explaining something as common as the La Bamba chord loop (as in La Bamba, Guantanamera, Hang On Sloopy, Wild Thing, Pata Pata, Twist & Shout etc.) in terms of tonic, subdominant and dominant is, I think, about as productive as using the physics of combustion to explain how computers work. And yet music scholars are still at the same game, some of them even applying Schenkerian notions of directionality to modal configurations in which the existence of dominant and subdominant is at best questionable and where the identity of a single tonic is taken as read.
If restricted notions of tonality were the only problem with institutionalised traditions of musical learning in the West, things would not be so bad. Unfortunately the problems go deeper because that same tradition has focused almost exclusively on tonal issues and tended to steer clear of parameters like metricity, periodicity, timbre and acoustic space which some scholars still earnestly believe to be of secondary importance. There’s no room here to explain conventional European musicology’s predilection for harmonic, melodic and thematic parameters that can be graphically represented on the page as blobs, lines and squiggles, except to say that Western staff notation developed to record aspects of music in the European art music tradition that were difficult to memorise rather than to register the specifics of other music cultures. The implicit argument seems in short to have been that monometric music whose pitches can be arranged in an octave consisting of twelve equal intervals is analysable because it is notatable; other types of music are, so to speak, neither one nor the other. Indeed, even the downbeat anticipations and ‘neutral’ thirds so often heard in English-language popular music from the twentieth century look incongruous and clumsy in Western notation, while aspects of sound treatment essential to the expressive qualities of music we hear on a daily basis —echo, delay, reverb, saturation, phasing, etc.— are conspicuous by their absence. Conventional approaches to music analysis in the West certainly have their use in helping us understand how a sense of narrative works in a classical sonata form movement but they are also largely graphocentric and tend to ignore unnotated elements that are often central to so much music outside the European art music tradition.
This book will right none of the graphocentric wrongs just mentioned; that task would involve several lifetimes of research and result in a book many times the size of this one. Instead I’ll focus on trying to bring some order into terms denoting a few important tonal aspects of musical structuration. I hope to explain concepts like tone, melody, accompaniment and harmony in ways that relate those phenomena not just to the music of certain minorities living in certain parts of a certain continent during a very limited period of its history (the Central European art music tradition between c. 1730 and c. 1950) but to a wider range of musics and people.

Who’s the book for?

This book contains many short music examples, so it’s really for anyone who can decipher Western music notation. Although not totally essential, some acquaintance with the rudiments of music theory, including conventional Western (classical) harmony, is probably an advantage, too. In fact, when writing this book, I’ve mainly had in mind the music students I’ve known as a teacher over the last thirty-eight years, and the conceptual problems they’ve seemed to encounter when they’ve met me for the subjects I teach (chiefly related to ‘popular’ music, including music and the moving image). However, this book should also interest anyone who, with some notational literacy, wants to understand the tonal mechanisms of widely disseminated types of music.

Caveat about the book’s title

The repertoire I draw on for illustration and generalisation must invariably be music that I’m in some way familiar with because there’s no point in writing about things I know nothing about. That means, just as invariably, that the ‘everyday tonality’ in the book’s title could never possibly be everyone’s everyday everywhere at all times. The problem is that Some tonal elements in widely heard music diffused in mainly, but not means exclusively, English-language cultures in the late twentieth century, i.e. music that Philip Tagg has played, sung or heard is not a good book title. I therefore apologise to readers who feel I have taken the liberty of shortening the book’s title in an untoward manner. However, that abbreviation is, I think for several reasons, not entirely misleading. [1] Significant amounts of the everyday musical fare of individuals in many parts of the world in the late twentieth century was of Anglo-US origin.2 [2] My notion of everyday music is not stylistically restricted: I refer not only to The Beatles but also to Bach and to popular music from the Balkans. [3] With substantial experience of non-Anglophone cultures, I am probably able to refer to more non-Anglophone music than many other speakers of my mother tongue.3

Basic structure and contents

The book proper (13 chapters)

Rationale and reservations

Apart from this preface and the various appendices (addenda, references, index, etc.) which I’ll explain shortly, this book consists of thirteen chapters. The first eight are based on the encyclopaedia articles already mentioned while chapters 9-13 examine everyday harmony in greater detail. That focus might seem odd, given that so many musicologists of the ‘classical’ have already written so much about harmony. But that body of learning, unfortunately, is a major part of the problem because, as it turned out in the hands-on music analysis I had to do to make sense of my ‘everyday tonality’, I just couldn’t apply the theoretical grid of conventional harmony teaching to a significant part of that tonal reality. I had to grapple with preconceived notions about harmonic impoverishment, with assumptions about monotonality (that you can only have one keynote at a time), monodirectionality (that most harmonic motion ‘normally’ proceeds anticlockwise round the circle of fifths) and with several value-laden and often misleading but widely used terms like ‘dominant’, ‘subdominant’ and ‘perfect cadence’. Don’t get me wrong: all these notions and assumptions are really useful if you want to understand how harmony works in a Mozart symphony, even in parlour song or jazz standards, but they are, believe me, serious epistemic obstacles when dealing with La Bamba, Sweet Home Alabama, La flûte indienne, The Who, Haris Alexiou, Carlos Puebla or a twelve-bar blues.
I’ve tried to present as much as possible of useful pre-existing ideas. These range from Glarean’s categorisation of modes (early sixteenth century), through Carlos Vega’s concept of bimodality (1944) to Allan Moore’s useful lists of harmonic departures in rock and pop (1992). Even so, I’ve had to come up with a few home-grown ideas in efforts to make some theoretical sense of my ‘everyday tonality’. Those efforts have inevitably led to a few neologisms like tertial (as opposed to quartal), counterpoise (tonal counterweight to a given tonic) and bimodal reversibility (tonal sequences in one mode which, when reversed, become sequences in another mode). All such terms are explained at relevant points in the book and given a short definition in the Glossary.
Despite valiant attempts to fuse useful pre-existing ideas with my own observations, I regret that much remains to be done before a comprehensive theory of ‘everyday tonality’ can be produced. Readers are therefore asked to take this book for what it is: a work in progress that I hope others, reacting to its probable inconsistencies and definite lacunae, will be able to correct, improve and expand. One practical reason for producing this text is that the body of music to be covered in such an undertaking is too vast and that, faced with the choice between risking error or omission and not writing anything at all, I went for the risky option. I am fully aware that the repertoire to which I’ve had access is, for practical reasons and despite the size of the List of Musical References, but a drop in the ocean of all the music that ought ideally to have been at the basis of writing about ‘everyday tonality’. I therefore apologise for omitting reference to all the music with which readers are familiar and which I either didn’t think of or just didn’t know.
I’ve also had to restrict the tonal area I deal with, especially concerning questions of harmony, so that it would fit into a book I could write in just over a year. I chose to focus on ‘one-chord changes’, chord shuttles (two chords) and chord loops (three or four) for several reasons. [1] Since these phenomena are, thanks to their supposed harmonic simplicity, unlikely to provoke much interest among conventionally trained musos, they are in greater need of being seriously studied and theorised. [2] Since the same ‘harmonically impoverished’ phenomena cause little enthusiasm among institutionally trained music experts but are widely diffused and apparently very popular, they are likely to be extremely interesting if viewed from a less conventional musicological angle. [3] Since shuttles and loops are by definition containable within the limits of present-time experience (see p. See Present-time experience) they highlight short-term tonal processes less commonly studied in conventional music scholarship. Theorising these issues of intensional structuration (Chester 1970; Glossary p. See intensional adj. (Chester, 1970) relating to ‘vertical’ aspects of musical expression and to the limits of present-time experience (p. 275); opposite of extensional.) brings to light structural detail of importance to the understanding of ‘groove’ and to the identification of units of musical meaning (museme stacks; see Glossary p. See museme stack n. neol. (1979) compound of simultaneously occurring musical sounds to produce one meaningful unit of ‘now sound’; components of a museme stack may or may not be musematic in themselves.) which, in their turn, are useful in the development of music semiotics.
Now, this sort of attention to intensional detail is, I believe, necessary but it does mean that I’ve not been able to pursue my main musicological interest (semiotic analyses of popular music) because —and it’s a vicious circle— I think that better structural theory relevant to the issue needs to be developed. OK, I admit lapsing into semiotic mode on a few occasions, particularly in the last chapter about the Obama election video’s chord loop, but I’ve exercised considerable restraint and tried to focus otherwise on the structural theory of short tonal processes.
This focus means of course that I’ve been unable to consider in any detail longer durational units like the 12-bar blues, the 32-bar jazz standard, or even the 8- and 16-bar tonal units so common in popular music. I also had to abandon my original rash idea to include an overview of what is probably the most widely heard source of everyday tonality: film, TV and games music. All these omissions are in my view regrettable and unsatisfactory but I hope readers agree with 10cc (1975) that ‘4% of something’s better than 10% of nothing’.

Summary of chapters

Chapter 1. There is much confusion about very basic terms in music theory. Note, pitch and tone are three of them. This chapter discusses and defines those terms. Extra attention is paid to cleaning up the conceptual chaos of the words tonal and tonality as they are used in conventional Western music theory.
Chapter 2 continues with notions of pitch, focusing on questions of tuning and the octave. This chapter is the most acoustic-physics-orientated of them all and provides a theoretical basis for understanding how tones (as in ‘tonality’) work.
Chapter 3 deals with modes as tonal vocabulary or ‘pitch pools’. After distinguishing between scale and mode, and after discussing the conceptual problem of modality in a tradition of musical learning whose objects of study are overwhelmingly ‘monomodal’ (ionian), the widespread practice of pentatonicism is presented, as are the equally popular heptatonic ‘church’ modes. This chapter concentrates on melodic aspects of modality. Modal harmony is dealt with in Chapters See ‘Non-classical’ harmony and 12.
Chapter 4 is on melody. After an exposition of its defining characteristics, melody is presented according to two typologies, one based on contour (different patterns of up and down), the other on connotation. Melodic identity is discussed in terms of tonal vocabulary, bodily movement, spoken language, varying patterns of repetition and, using concepts from rhetoric, its varying modes of presentation. The chapter ends with brief section on melisma.
Chapter 5 starts by trying to clear up another conceptual mess in conventional Western music theory —polyphony. After that, various categories of polyphony are defined and explained, including drone-accompanied music, heterophony, homophony and counterpoint.
Chapter 6, is the first of several on harmony. A brief definition and history of the concept is followed by a presentation of (European) ‘classical harmony’. After tidying up yet another conceptual mess relating to notions like ‘functional’ and ‘triadic’, the essential term tertial is explained and the basic rules and mechanisms of classical harmony, central to many popular styles from parlour song and polka to bebop jazz, are presented. Also included in the chapter are notions of harmonic directionality, as well as the principles of the circle-of-fifths or ‘key clock’.
Chapter See ‘Non-classical’ harmony Non-classical harmony, deals first with the workings of tertial modal harmony, explaining things like the importance of major common triads in establishing the identity of various modes, the option of permanent Picardy thirds in the tonic triad of minor-key modes, and the link between minor pentatonicism and dorian rock harmony. There’s also a useful chart of typical progressions in each mode and examples of recordings in which they occur. The chapter’s second half is devoted entirely to quartal as opposed to tertial harmony.
Chapter 8 is called ‘Chords’. After the customary definition section, this chapter basically enumerates, describes and explains how a wide variety of tertial chords can be referred to in two complementary and useful ways: roman numeral designation and lead-sheet chord shorthand. The chapter also includes several extensive tables, including a chord recognition chart and a key to over fifty lead-sheet chords, all with the same note as root. The principles of lead-sheet chord designation are explained in detail, complete with anomalies and exceptions.
The title of Chapter 9, ‘One-chord changes’, is intentionally contradictory because it basically shows how one single chord is, in many types of popular music, rarely just ‘one chord’. After refuting prejudices about harmonic impoverishment in popular music and describing the fundamentals of present-time experience, I demonstrate how the single chord of G major becomes, in popular recordings, two or three different chords in sixteen different ways. In this chapter I argue that the tonal elaboration of single chords is an intrinsic part of the ‘groove’ identifying different styles of music.
Chapter 10, ‘Chord shuttles’, increases the number of chords from one to two. Drawing mainly on English-language popular song, a typology of chord shuttles is presented (supertonic, dorian, plagal, quintal, submediantal, aeolian and subtonic). Examination of shuttles in several songs, including ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and the Human League hit Don’t You Want Me Baby (1981), shows that chord shuttles often involve ambiguous tonics and that no overriding keynotes can be established. I argue that chord shuttles are ongoing tonal constellations. They are by definition non-transitional and constitute building blocks in the harmonic construction of form in many types of popular song.
Chapter 11, ‘Chord loops 1’, expands the number of chords from two to three and four. After defining loop, the vamp, one of the most famous loops in popular music is examined. Distinction is made between loop and turnaround. The chapter ends with an explanation of the gradual but radical historical shift from the vamp’s V-I directionality to more ‘modal’ types of harmony in rock-, soul- and folk-influenced styles.
Chapter 12,’Modal Loops and bimodality’ attacks the problem of understanding how modal harmony really works, with how the same chord sequence can be heard in two different modes, etc. Starting with distinction and confusion between ionian and mixolydian, this chapter sets out ways of establishing, where relevant, a single tonic for particular sequences, the role of individual chords within loops, etc. It then examines aeolian and phrygian loops, and proposes a model of bitonal reversibility in efforts to conceptualise harmonic practices quite foreign to what is generally taught to music theory students. The chapter’s final section distinguishes between various mediantal loops like the ‘rock dorian’, the ‘folk dorian’, the ‘narrative ionian mediantal’.
Chapter 13, ‘The Yes We Can chords’, focuses on one single chord loop —that used in the online video supporting Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008— and discusses the connotative value of that chord loop and its contribution to creating the sort of cross-cultural unity that Obama clearly wanted to forge. The main point is that the analysis of music’s tonal parameters should not solely be an arcane technical exercise foisted on music students but, more importantly, a contribution to understanding the basic question of music semiotics: ‘why and how does who communicate what to whom and with what effect?’.

Appendices

Addenda

The addenda are short additions to the book that were difficult to incorporate in chapters 1-13 but which explain concepts that either seem to cause problems for music students I’ve met or that are relatively unknown but useful when studying the tonal aspects of popular music. They are: [1] accompaniment, which not only complements Chapter 4 (Melody) but also highlights the importance of different types of ‘backing’ in creating different styles and connotations; [2] antiphony, which, after its own definition, sorts out related concepts like ‘responsorial’ and ‘call-and-response’; [3] enharmonics, a relatively simple issue which nevertheless seem to cause students inordinate problems; [4] hocket, a compositional device that is not only found in some West African and Andean musics, as well as in motets from medieval Europe, but which also pervades virtually every funk number ever recorded; [5] interval counting, a guide to the arithmetic confusion whereby an octave can amount to 7, 8 or 9, depending on what you’re counting and on what you include or exclude from the count; [6] a list of examples of mixolydian tunes from The British Isles; [7] present-time experience, a central concept in understanding music but one that often needs explaining; [8] roman numeral triad designation, including a complete chart of all triads in all modes.

Glossary

Due to problems in grafting concepts from conventional European music theory on to many types of ‘everyday tonality’, I have had to not only clarify the meanings and implications of those concepts (e.g. functional harmony, leading note) but also, regrettably, to invent new concepts, or to adapt existing ones, to cover categories of extremely common tonal phenomena that seem to have no adequate name in the tradition of tonal scholarship widely practised in institutions of musical learning. Such concepts include, for example, chord loop, chord shuttle, ‘classical harmony’, counterpoise, subtonic and tertial. The glossary also includes short definitions of other concepts explained in greater detail in the main body of text, for example present-time experience, mediantal, leading note, heptatonic, diatonic, turnaround and vamp. In such cases reference is usually given to the pages where each concept is provided with a more expansive explanation.

Bibliography

The bibliography largely follows the conventions set out in Assignment and Dissertation Tips (version 5) at | tagg.org/xpdfs/assdissv5.pdf | §11.2, pp. 77-81 and §12.2, pp. 88-89.4 To save space, the initial ‘http://www.’ in internet addresses has been omitted. Most URL addresses are delimited by vertical bars (‘|’) to separate them from punctuation in the surrounding text and are, also for reasons of space, printed in the Arial Narrow font. Dates of visits to URLs are formatted yymmdd and placed in square brackets after the relevant URL, for example ‘|tagg.org| [080402]’ for a visit to my home page on 2nd April, 2008.

List of musical references (LMR)

The LMR lists all musical sources referred to in this book. That includes pocket scores, sheet music, phonograms, online recordings, film and TV productions, etc. In-text referencing and the LMR layout follow conventions set out in Assignment and Dissertation Tips at | tagg.org/xpdfs/assdissv5.pdf |§11.3, pp. 82-85; §12.3, pp. 89-90. See Or just visit |tagg.org| and click Tagg’s Tips (left column just above Text[e]s). For more about cross-referencing and accessing materials listed in the LMR see See Musical source references on page See Musical source references.

Index

The index includes page references to all proper names appearing in the book. That means it includes reference to authors, editors, performers, composers, etc., as well as to titles of musical works, songs, tracks, albums, films, TV productions and so on mentioned in the pages preceding the bibliography. The index also includes page references to all topics and to important concepts covered in the book’s thirteen chapters, its addenda and glossary.

Formal and practical

Cross-referencing and order of topics

Some parts of this book are, as already mentioned, based on encyclopaedia articles. This means that insights, if any, readers might gain from some parts of this book are more likely to derive from conceptual rather than perceptual learning. That in its turn requires quick access to the meaning of terms other than those under current discussion. That’s one reason why the text of this book includes frequent cross-references.
Another reason is that it’s impossible to introduce all terms and ideas in the right order for all readers. For example, although roman-numeral chord shorthand makes an appearance already on page See The terms in column 8 of Table 2, on the other hand, are used almost exclusively about music in the European classical tradition and can only be applied in relation to the relevant keynote or tonic of music in that tradition. For example, although six different rising perfect fifths exist within the tonal vocabulary of a C major scale (fc, cg, gd, da, ae, eb), only g, the note situated a perfect fifth above (or a perfect fourth below) the keynote, and tertial chords based on that same scale degree (G, G7, etc. in the key of C), can be called dominant. By the same token, the note f and tertial chords based on f (F, F7, Fm, etc.) can be called dominant only in the key of B$, mediant only in the key of D$, submediant only in A$, supertonic only in E$, leading note only in G$, and subdominant only in C. Although quite useful in the analysis of musics following the tonal habits of European art music, terms like dominant and subdominant can be quite misleading when applied to music based on modal principles of tonality. For example, the common three-chord mixolydian loop heard throughout Sweet Home Alabama (ND-C-GO in D) and repeated at the end of Hey Jude (NG-F-CO in G) is referred to as I-$VII-IV (’one, flat seven, four’), not ‘tonic, subtonic, subdominant’. And that’s not just because the first designation of the same sequence is more concise: it’s actually because the chord on IV (the G in D, the C in G) just doesn’t work like European classical music’s subdominant and because the sequence includes no dominant (V) to which a chord on the fourth degree of the scale (IV) can reasonably be ‘sub’. Another ethnocentric problem with column 8 in Table 3 concerns the scale’s seventh degree: the ‘leading note’. It’s a problem best explained by example., it isn’t properly explained until page See Roman numerals, in the chapter on chords. That will cause no problems for those with a basic course in conventional harmony under their belts but others may want to read pages See Roman numerals-See Inversions and to consult Table See Roman numeral triad designation in ‘church’ modes (explanations start on page 275; see also pp. 139-141 ) (p. See Roman numeral triad designation in ‘church’ modes (explanations start on page 275; see also pp. 139-141 )) before they go on. On the other hand, readers with no knowledge of lead-sheet chord shorthand (E, G # m 7 , C # m, F # m 7 $ 5 , B 7 and so on) should perhaps read the relevant section (pp. See Lead sheet chord shorthand-See Another anomaly is that musicians often conceptualise chords of the eleventh and thirteenth bitonally rather than in terms of stacked thirds, for example C13+11 as a D major triad on top of C7; or C11 as Gm7 or B$6 with c in the bass. No satisfactory consensus exists as to how such chords might be more adequately encoded. One possible solution to part of the problem may be to refer to some of these chords in the way suggested in table 14, examples 47-50 (p. 149), in line with our discussion of quartal harmony in Chapter 6 (pp. 125-136)., also in the chapter about chords) if they are having trouble following those symbols earlier in the book.
Moreover, since I’m unable to predict what readers will and will not know in advance, I’ve generated a detailed index so that they can hopefully find a topic or a term they want to look up. I’ve also included a glossary of special terms (p. See Glossary, ff.).

Musical source references

Reference system

Musical source references follow the same basic system as bibliographical source references. For example ‘Beatles (1967b)’ refers uniquely to publishing details, found in the List of Musical References (LMR, page See Musical references, ff.), for the Sergeant Pepper album (p. See — (1967b) ‘A Little Help From My Friends’; ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’; ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’; ‘Fixing A Hole’; ‘She’s Leaving Home’; ‘Within You Without You’; ‘A Day In The Life’. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Parlophone PCS 7027.).
Sometimes it is necessary to refer to a whole string of tunes in the text. For example, instead of writing ‘in tunes like Jingle Bells (Pierpoint, 1857), La Marseillaise (Rouget de Lisle, n.d.) and Satisfaction (Rolling Stones, 1965)’, I would probably choose to lighten up the text by just writing ‘in tunes like Jingle Bells, the Marseillaise and Satisfaction’. In such cases the title of each tune included in those strings will be found in the List of Musical References (LMR), either complete or with at least cross-reference to the complete publishing details elsewhere in the LMR. Complete publishing details are provided so that readers will know, in cases where more than one recording exists of the same work, to which version I am referring. Such information is particularly important when I provide timings pinpointing musical events within recorded works.

Accessing and using musical sources

The majority of musical works referred to have at one time or another been issued commercially as recordings. It would in the 1990s have been absurd to expect readers to have access to more than a very small proportion of those recordings. In 2009, however, it is in most cases a very simple matter if you know where to look. Fearing prosecution for inducement to illegal acts, I can’t be more precise here than to say that there are numerous and vastly popular websites where you can hear the majority of recorded works I refer to in this book. Some of those sites are pay-per-download and legal, some are legal and free, some are semi-legal, while others are free and technically illegal. However, this much I can say: using Google to search for |Police "Don’t Stand So Close To Me"| (with the inverted commas) produced 32,200 hyperlinks [2009-06-13], the first two of which, when clicked, took me to actual online recordings of the original issue of Don’t Stand So Close To Me (Police, 1980). Using the on-screen digital timer provided by the site hosting the recording, I was able to pinpoint the song’s change from E $ ↔ Gm to D ↔ A at 1:48 (see p. See Before ending this sad aeolian story, let’s not forget the poor ‘young teacher, the subject of schoolgirl fantasy’, the ‘temptation, frustration, so bad it makes him cry’, the ‘hurt’ and ‘accusations’, etc., all sung over the $VI↔i (E$↔Gm) verse part of Don’t Stand So Close To Me (Police, 1980, ex. 142). With chorus hook lines squarely in D major, the tune’s E$↔Gm is a very different harmonic place to be. Calling it ‘$VI↔i in the key of the refrain’s subdominant minor’ or even ‘I↔iii in the key of the flat supertonic’ might fool a gullible harmony teacher but since the tune starts with repeated changes from E$ to Gm, first quietly and threateningly in the sub-bass register, then chordally with guitar and vocals, there is in reality no key of D major to which the supposed ‘subdominant minor’ or ‘flat supertonic’ can possibly be related. Moreover, the change to D major and ‘Don’t stand so close’ is entirely unprepared (first at 1:48) and the return to the world of E$↔Gm is equally abrupt (bars 4-5 and bar 8 back to bar 1 in ex. 142).). The whole process of checking a precise musical event in just one of a million songs took me a few seconds. Of course, I have to add that while it is not illegal to listen to music posted on the internet, downloading a pop song without payment or permission most probably is.5
I’ve checked many of the recordings referred to in the book to see if they could be heard online. Some I didn’t check at all because I’m certain they’ll be easy to find but others I had to put online myself. These others include: [1] short extracts from recordings under copyright that seemed to be unavailable on line; [2] rudimentary audio recordings I produced using my own equipment to illustrate particular points discussed in the text. These ‘other examples’ can be accessed via my website at |tagg.org| . Click Audio, bottom right under ‘Audiovisual’, then Music examples in “Everyday Tonality” book. Then you’ll see a list of the relevant audio examples on my site ( |tagg.org/audio/FFabBkExx.htm| ). Click on the relevant title to hear the example you need (all in mp3 format).

Formalia

Chords and notes

I’ve used two systems to denote chords concisely: lead-sheet shorthand and the roman numeral system.
Lead-sheet chord shorthand conventions are set out in Table See Lead sheet chord shorthand chart for C (1) (pp. See Lead sheet chord shorthand chart for C (1)-See Table 14 (cont’d): Lead sheet chord shorthand chart for C (2)). To avoid in-text confusion, lead-sheet chord root names are in serif capitals (e.g. A, Bm7$5, C maj 7) while individual note names are in lower-case sans serif (e.g. a, b, c ). Intervallically relative tertial chord shorthand follows the usual roman-numeral conventions — ‘ I ’ for tonic major triad (‘one’), ‘ iv ’ for minor triad on the fourth degree (‘minor four’), ‘ $ VII ’ for major triad on the flat seventh (‘flat seven’), etc. (see p. See Roman numerals, ff., p. See Roman numeral triad designation in ‘church’ modes (explanations start on page 275; see also pp. 139-141 )). I’ve selected a HEWN IN STONE sort of font to make relative chord labels a little easier to spot in the text, but I’ll admit there’s not much scribal difference between ‘I’ (first person singular) and ‘ I ’ (roman 1). A complete chart of all triads in all ‘church’ modes with their roman numeral designations is among the addenda on page See Roman numeral triad designation in ‘church’ modes (explanations start on page 275; see also pp. 139-141 ).
Scale degrees of individual notes are expressed in arabic numerals, e.g. ‘5’ for degree five in relation to a given tonic (‘1’), ‘ $ 3’ for a minor third (‘flat three’), ‘ # 7’ for a major seventh or leading note (‘sharp seven’) etc.
Note names or chord designations occurring in a sequence are usually separated in the text by hyphens or a simple space (e.g. ‘ d g f # a ’ or ‘ d-g-f # - a ’; ‘C Am F G’ or ‘D-Bm-G-A’; ‘ I vi ii V ’ or ‘ I-vi-IV-V ’).
When referring to register it is sometimes necessary to indicate in which octave notes are pitched. In such cases I’ve used the midi convention of numbering octaves from a 0 (27.5 hz) at the bottom of a standard piano keyboard to a 7 (3520 hz) or c 8 at its top end (see p. See Octave, ff.).
To highlight the directional aspect of harmonic progressions I have marked such changes, where directionality is particularly important, with the forwards arrow ‘ → ’, e.g. ‘i i → V → I ’, ‘Gm 7 → C 7 → F’. Chord shuttles (to and fro movement between two chords) are indicated by the double arrow ‘ ↔ ’, e.g. ‘ i ↔ V ’, ‘Gm 7 ↔ C’. Chord loops (short repeated sequences of usually three or four chords) are delimited by arrows turning through 180° before and after the relevant sequence, e.g. ‘ N I-vi-IV − V O ’, ‘ N F-Dm-B $ -C O ’ (the ‘milksap vamp’).
In contexts where confusion may arise between letters indicating major triads and those indicating sections in a piece of music —does ‘A’ mean an A major triad or does it refer to section ‘A’ in the music under discussion?— letters from the end of the alphabet may instead be used as abbreviations denoting musical sections. ‘An Abba song in AABA form with the A section in A’, for example, might instead appear as ‘An Abba song in YYZY form with the Y section in A’.

Timings and durations

Given that most recordings exist in digital form and that most playback equipment includes real-time display, the exact indication of musical events discussed in this book is mainly presented in terms of timing. With ‘0:00’ indicating the start of the recording in question, ‘0:56’ means at a point 56 seconds after 0:00. Durations are expressed in the same form, e.g. ‘4:33’ meaning 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Footnotes

The software used to produce this book, Adobe FrameMaker v8.0, is very useful but has one irritating bug: if there isn’t enough room at the bottom of the page for the complete text of a footnote, the software puts the entire footnote text at the bottom of the following page, rather than starting the footnote text at the bottom of the correct page and continuing it on the next one. Therefore, if there is no text at the bottom of the page on which a footnote flag number occurs in the main body of text, do not be alarmed. The complete footnote text will appear at the bottom of the next page.
You will occasionally find the same footnote number6 occurring in the main text twice in succession, like this. See Both in-text references are intentionally to this same single footnote. That is intentional. Both refer to the same footnote.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to first of all to Franco Fabbri (Milano) for having persuaded me to start on this book and for encouraging me in my struggle with it. I would also like to thank: [1] Simon Bertrand, Audrée Deschesnaux, François de Médicis, Danick Trottier (Montréal) and Bob Davis (Leeds) for taking time to discuss the issues of tonality and harmony I raised in person or over the phone; [2] my postgraduates, especially Dylan Kell-Kirkman, Alison Notkin and Nic Thompson (Montréal), who put up with my rants about the inadequacies of conventional music theory when I should have been discussing their work; [3] Bob Clarida (New York) for musicological input and free legal advice; [4] Allan Moore (Guildford) for having published his useful Patterns of Harmony in 1992; [5] all my popular music analysis students (Göteborg, Liverpool and Montréal) who over the years asked the sort of questions that provoked attempts to explain some of the issues addressed in this book; [5] to my neighbour Mme Ouellet (Montréal) to whom I felt I owed down-to-earth, ‘non-muso’ explanations about work on this book that meant I rarely left our apartment block between early May and late July 2009; [6] my two Swedish mentors, Jan Ling (Göteborg) and Margit Kronberg (Mölndal), without whose encouragement and guidance I doubt I would ever have dared start on a project like this; [7] my daughter Mia Tagg and her cousin Anna Jacob for personal encouragement from the other end of the generational spectrum.

Note, pitch, tone

Many languages have no direct equivalent to the English word music but no culture is without the phenomenon we call ‘music’. In several European languages music, or its equivalent, seems to mean a form of interhuman communication based on non-verbal sound, a symbolic system often associated with other forms of communication like language, dance and drama. Since this book is about the tonal elements of everyday music and since tones are a particular subset of musical sounds, we’ll obviously need first to define tone and tonal but it’s difficult to do that without using two very basic musical terms: note and pitch.

Note

When talking about music, note can mean three different things:

any single, discrete sound of finite duration in a piece of music;

such a sound with easily discernible fundamental pitch ( p.See Pitch, ff.);

the duration, relative to the music’s underlying pulse, of any such sound, pitched or unpitched.

According to the third meaning, and as evidenced by German and North American nomenclature, note can be used to refer solely to the relative duration of a minimal musical sound event, for example ganze Note or ‘whole note’ ( w , semibreve, ronde, etc.), Viertel or ‘quarter note’ ( q , crotchet, noire, etc.). This use of note in the sense of ‘note value’ (value in this sense relating only to duration) is of marginal interest to the definition of tone, so let’s concentrate on the first two meanings of note.
Note in its musical sense originally referred to the scribal marking of a minimal element of articulation on the page but the word has in English come to denote any discrete minimal sonic event in music without reference to lines, blobs or squiggles on paper. It is this meaning that is used in, for example, midi sequencing where a note is identified by such factors as: [i] the points at which a given sound event will start and end in a piece of music; [ii] the type of sound (timbre, volume, attack, envelope, decay) that will occur at that point in time; [iii] (if the note is pitched) the frequency at which the sound will be articulated.

Sweet Home Alabama (intro extract): partial MIDI piano roll view
(Lynyrd Skynyrd 1974)

The horizontal aspect of Figure 1 shows some variation of note length in all parts except for the drumkit with its regular hi-hat, snare and kick drum hits. Little dots indicate not only those very brief events but also the very short anacrustic notes in the bass and piano parts. Small horizontal bars show the relative duration of normal-length notes, each of which is held slightly longer in the bass than in the piano part. The pitch of each note is visualised vertically for all instruments except for the drumkit, each of whose constituent parts (hi-hat, snare, etc.) is assigned its own ‘pitch’ line with the bass drum at the bottom and cymbals on top. Other encoded note information —volume, timbre, attack, envelope, decay, etc.— is not shown in MIDI piano roll screens.
According to this, the first and most important meaning of the term, a note is, as stated above, any single, discrete sound of finite duration within a musical continuum. It can have any timbre and it can be long, short, high, low, loud, soft, etc. However, although a note may theoretically have any duration, it is difficult to perceive as such if it sounds for less than about thirty milliseconds ( y at q =120) or for more than about ten seconds (o wVwVwVwVw at q =120). This seems to be why certain types of ornamentation, which from a technical viewpoint involve more than one ‘note’, are generally perceived as single notes of a particular type (e.g. drum rolls, tremolandi, vibrati, fast trills), while extremely long notes are heard as pedals or drones. Similarly, every note played on a mandolin or twelve-string guitar consists strictly speaking of two ‘notes’ because each string pitch is doubled and because those two strings can never be in total unison. The same goes for several other instruments, including the French accordéon musette whose every note consists of two pitches slightly out of tune with each other to create the instrument’s characteristic sound. In all these cases the strictly speaking two (or more) pitches to each note phenomenon is intrinsic to the identity of the sound as a single entity and should in general be regarded as just one note.7 In any case that’s how musicians tend to treat those sounds and that’s how we as listeners identify them. Still, it’s really the second meaning of note that relates most directly to the subject of this book: —a single, discrete sound of finite duration… with easily discernible fundamental pitch.8

Pitch

In acoustic terms, pitch is that aspect of a sound which is determined by the rate of vibrations producing it and which can be denoted in acoustic terms as a frequency, for example ‘440 cycles per second’ or ‘440 hertz’. 440 hz also happens to be standard concert pitch in the West and is situated four octaves9 above the bottom note on most pianos ( a = 27.5 hz) and three octaves below the instrument’s highest a (3520 hz). Words like ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘top’ and ‘bottom’, not to mention the French and German words for musical pitch (hauteur and Tonhöhe),10 all indicate that our cultures conceptualise pitch on a vertical axis covering the range of low, medium and high frequency sounds that humans can hear. This metaphor of vertical placement —high-frequency sounds on top, low-frequency sounds down below— is so strong that we use terms like ‘high e ’ to designate the guitar string situated lowest in playing position and ‘low e ’ when referring to what is clearly the top string when making music on the guitar. This anomaly suggests that synaesthesis may be more important than visual observation in our spatial conceptualisation of pitch. High pitch is in general much more likely to be associated with light in both the ‘not dark’ and ‘not heavy’ senses of the word, not least because small gusts of wind can scatter feathers, leaves, plastic bags and other small, light objects, blowing them up into the air —towards the sky, the clouds and the sun— whereas heavy objects tend be larger, more difficult to move and therefore more likely to stay down on the ground, which is understandably imagined as darker and heavier than air. Indeed, not only do large heavy objects tend to need lots of energy —a tornado or vast amounts of jet fuel, for example— to get them off the ground; their very weight and inertia makes them appear less volatile and less mobile, more likely to be understood as heavy, dark and massive rather than quick, light and small.11 Besides —and with apologies for the tautology— babies and small children have smaller bodies and vocal equipment producing ‘higher’, ‘lighter’ sounds than grown-ups. The process whereby male voices break and descend an octave or so at adolescence further reinforces the synaesthetic patterning just described, as does the fact that singers tend to use the head register to produce high notes, the chest register for low ones. Moreover, you are much more likely to feel the vibrations of a loud bass instrument in the stomach whereas, for example, dissonant high-pitched sounds are often used in film music as a sort of sonic headache to accompany scenes of madness, relentless sunlight, etc. Whatever the reasons may be for spatially conceptualising pitch vertically rather than horizontally, it is clear that pitch, —low, medium or high— is, along with volume and timbre, an essential element allowing humans to distinguish between sounds, for example between a hi-hat and a big gong struck in the same way or between the top notes of a piccolo and the lowest ones played on alto flute played at the same volume with the same sort of attack for the same duration.
There’s an obvious problem at the end of the previous paragraph because the high or low pitch of flute notes is different from the high or low pitches of cymbals or gongs, even though the sound of a big gong contains a lot of low frequencies and the hi-hat sounds high. We’ll return to that contradiction at the start of the section See Tone, tonal, tonality.

Tonal note names

It’s virtually impossible to explain concepts of tone and tonality without referring to notes by name. There are basically two main ways of referring to those ‘single, discrete sounds of finite duration and with easily discernible fundamental pitch’ (p. See such a sound with easily discernible fundamental pitch ( p.19, ff.);): absolute and relative.

Absolute note names in English, French and German

Absolute note names in English and German use the first few letters of the Roman alphabet. They usually designate notes of previously and unequivocally determined fundamental pitch, like the note a at 440 hz or c # at 554.37 hz.12 The Latin convention, exemplified by French names in Figure See Absolute note names in English, French and German, and used in parts of Eastern Europe as well as throughout the Latin world, serves the same purpose but can cause confusion with relative pitch names (Fig. See Relative note names (heptatonic)) whose actual notes can of course be transposed to B $ minor, D major, G # minor, E major, or to any other tonal centre.

Relative note names (heptatonic)

The problem with the Latin note-naming convention is in other words that it can be difficult to know whether, for example, La means La in absolute terms (e.g. a at 440 hz), or if it means La relatively, as in tonic sol-fa. If La is relative, it can be, for example, a as scale degree 6 in C major or as scale degree 1 (tonic) in A minor, and La can also be f # in A major or in F # minor. In other words we’ll stick to the English-language note-naming convention, not only because this book’s in English but to avoid confusion between absolute and relative note names. With the tonic sol-fa system doh (major) or la (minor) can be set to any of the octave’s twelve pitches, as initial indications like ‘doh = B $ ’ clearly suggest. The Northern Indian relative note names (sa ri ga ma pa dha ni) follow a similar principle to heptatonic scale-degree indications by number. For instance, sa, like ‘one’, is always the keynote or tonic, pa always the fifth degree (‘five’) and so on, whether or not the tonal material sounds to a Westerner like a minor (la) or a major (doh) mode and no matter with which fundamental frequency doh or sa is identified.

Tone, tonal, tonality

On page See There’s an obvious problem at the end of the previous paragraph because the high or low pitch of flute notes is different from the high or low pitches of cymbals or gongs, even though the sound of a big gong contains a lot of low frequencies and the hi-hat sounds high. We’ll return to that contradiction at the start of the section ‘Tone, tonal, tonality’ on page 22. I raised the problem of the difference between notions of pitch applied to the flute and those applied to the high pitch of a hi-hat and to the low pitch of a large gong. The difference is of course that flute notes, high or low, almost always have one clearly discernible fundamental pitch while hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum and gong notes in general do not. It is this factor of discernible fundamental pitch that determines whether the note in question is a tone and that is exactly how the word should be defined: a tone is a note of discernible fundamental pitch. Now, some readers, especially those believing in absolute natural-science truths, may object to this definition because of the word ‘discernible’ implying that, despite some grounding in acoustic physics (periodic vs. aperiodic sounds, etc.),13 awareness of fundamental pitch also relies on culturally acquired patterns of perception. That is certainly a correct observation but hardly a valid objection to the definition since music, even the concept itself, is, as intimated earlier, an intrinsically social and cultural phenomenon whose understanding de facto requires social and cultural consideration. A more serious problem is caused by conflicting meanings of the adjective tonal.

Tonal means relating to or having the character of a tone or tones. However, in conventional Eurocentric music theory the adjectives tonal and atonal, both qualifying ‘music’, are often used in another sense altogether. According to that conceptual dichotomy, music featuring relatively clear tonal centres (tonics, keynotes) is labelled ‘tonal’ and music that doesn’t is called ‘atonal’. Atonal music, used in this sense, doesn’t mean music without tones but refers to various modernist currents, including twelve-tone music, i.e. music that treats each of the Western world’s twelve semitones independently without reference to any intended keynote. The trouble with this use of the dichotomy tonal/atonal is that any music using twelve tones is invariably jam-packed with tones and rarely includes notes that aren’t tonal. After all, neither Boulez nor Webern are known for their use of hi-hat, kick drum or claves. True, the music may feature no intended keynote but the music relies entirely on tones and semitones for its identity as ‘atonal’.

This paradox may be due to the fact that several European languages use equivalents of the English word tonality (tonalité, tonalità, tonalidad, Tonart and so on) to designate what Anglophones usually call key (as in keynote, key signature, etc.). The assumptions seem to be that: [1] it’s perfectly OK to use the same adjective, tonal, to mean both ‘relating to tones in general’ and ‘relating in particular to music with a keynote’, as if music filled with tones but without a clear keynote were not tonal in the first sense of the word; [2] that it’s perfectly acceptable if the abstract noun tonality, deriving from the already polysemic adjective tonal, shifts meaning between (a) the particular system according to which tones are organised in any type of music and (b) just one, and one only, of those innumerable systems: that of the Central European art music tradition of course (c. 1730-c. 1910). This semantic mess has an obvious ethnocentric aspect but it may also be partly due to woolly thinking, linguistic laziness and the inability to recognise that the adjectival suffixes for abstract nouns ending in -ity (English) or -ité, -idad, -ità and -ität (French, Spanish, Italian and German) are -itarian, -itaire, -itario and -itär respectively, as in humanitarian (from humanity), universitaire (from université) or totalitario (from totalità or totalidad). So, just as human and total differ from humanitarian and totalitarian, tonal really needs to be distinguished from a word like ‘tonalitarian’. Or, if that’s no good, why not follow the even more common linguistic practice set out in Table See Adjectival derivatives from root nouns and their abstract noun suffixes?

Adjectival derivatives from root nouns and their abstract noun suffixes

root noun	adjective 1	abstract noun	adjective 2
centre	central	centrality	centralist
crime	criminal	criminality	criminalistic
form	formal	formality	formalist[ic]
sense	sensual	sensuality	sensualist
TONE	TONAL	TONALITY	‘TONALIST’

It’s simple: if the adjective centralist derives from central (from centre), socialist from social (from Latin socius), criminalistic from criminal (from crime), sensualist from sensual (from sense) and formalist from formal (from form), why is there no word like tonalist or tonalistic deriving from tonal (from tone)? That would at least get rid of one absurdity and allow us to correctly denote two types of music filled with tones: those with and those without intended keynotes. But that terminological improvement doesn’t help much in the study of everyday tonality where ‘non-tonalist’ music only occurs on a regular basis as underscore for horror and suspense scenes in film, TV and games music.

The main problem with tonal and tonality as they are used in conventional musicology is of course the latent assumption that there’s really only one tonal, only one tonality, that counts. The most absurd expression of that arrogation is the ridiculous but widely propagated dichotomy tonal versus modal. Given that music based on other modes than the ionian (or harmonic minor) is both tonal (contains tones) and tonalist (has a keynote, sometimes even two), there is absolutely no logical (nor moral) excuse for polarising the two phenomena in terms of tonal in a culturally very restricted sense and of ‘something else’. Such ethnocentric conceptualisation makes the study of popular music a very arduous task in seats of musical learning because many received ‘truths’ are uncritically accepted without their validity being verified or falsified on a sample of repertoires much more representative of ‘everyday tonality’ than that on which those ‘truths’ are based. That’s why the only rational course of action is to dump conventionally propagated notions of tonal and tonality. It’s definitely wisest to stick with the idea that tonal just means relating to or having the character of tones (tone as defined on page See On page 20 I raised the problem of the difference between notions of pitch applied to the flute and those applied to the high pitch of a hi-hat and to the low pitch of a large gong. The difference is of course that flute notes, high or low, almost always have one clearly discernible fundamental pitch while hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum and gong notes in general do not. It is this factor of discernible fundamental pitch that determines whether the note in question is a tone and that is exactly how the word should be defined: a tone is a note of discernible fundamental pitch. Now, some readers, especially those believing in absolute natural-science truths, may object to this definition because of the word ‘discernible’ implying that, despite some grounding in acoustic physics (periodic vs. aperiodic sounds, etc.), awareness of fundamental pitch also relies on culturally acquired patterns of perception. That is certainly a correct observation but hardly a valid objection to the definition since music, even the concept itself, is, as intimated earlier, an intrinsically social and cultural phenomenon whose understanding de facto requires social and cultural consideration. A more serious problem is caused by conflicting meanings of the adjective tonal.) and that tonality means the quality of being tonal and, by extension, a system according to which tones are organised in any type of music.
Of course, tone means lots of other different things in relation to sound. It can, for example, refer to aspects of speech that express feelings or attitudes, as in ‘I don’t like your tone’. You can even like or dislike the tone of a letter someone has written to you without a sound being uttered. Tone can also refer to particular pitch sequences allowing speakers of languages like Chinese, Ewe, Navajo and Norwegian to distinguish between the meanings of phonetically otherwise identical words or syllables.14 Tone can sometimes even mean the same thing as timbre, as with the ‘tone’ knob on a Fender Stratocaster, where tone is probably short for tone colour meaning timbre (see below). More frequently, tone is also commonly used to mean not so much ‘a note of discernible fundamental pitch’ as the intervallic distance between two such tones, as in the expression ‘whole tone’, i.e. a major second, where frequency differences between the two notes are in the ratio 9:8. This interval (pitch difference) can also be understood as the step between degrees 1 and 2 or 4 and 5 in the standard Western major and minor scales. Semitone, a pitch step half the size just described, as between degrees 3 and 4 or 7 and 8 in the standard Western major scale, obviously derives from this intervallic sense of the word tone.

Timbre and tone

We already mentioned (pp. See According to this, the first and most important meaning of the term, a note is, as stated above, any single, discrete sound of finite duration within a musical continuum. It can have any timbre and it can be long, short, high, low, loud, soft, etc. However, although a note may theoretically have any duration, it is difficult to perceive as such if it sounds for less than about thirty milliseconds (y at q=120) or for more than about ten seconds (o wVwVwVwVw at q=120). This seems to be why certain types of ornamentation, which from a technical viewpoint involve more than one ‘note’, are generally perceived as single notes of a particular type (e.g. drum rolls, tremolandi, vibrati, fast trills), while extremely long notes are heard as pedals or drones. Similarly, every note played on a mandolin or twelve-string guitar consists strictly speaking of two ‘notes’ because each string pitch is doubled and because those two strings can never be in total unison. The same goes for several other instruments, including the French accordéon musette whose every note consists of two pitches slightly out of tune with each other to create the instrument’s characteristic sound. In all these cases the strictly speaking two (or more) pitches to each note phenomenon is intrinsic to the identity of the sound as a single entity and should in general be regarded as just one note. In any case that’s how musicians tend to treat those sounds and that’s how we as listeners identify them. Still, it’s really the second meaning of note that relates most directly to the subject of this book: —a single, discrete sound of finite duration… with easily discernible fundamental pitch.-See According to this, the first and most important meaning of the term, a note is, as stated above, any single, discrete sound of finite duration within a musical continuum. It can have any timbre and it can be long, short, high, low, loud, soft, etc. However, although a note may theoretically have any duration, it is difficult to perceive as such if it sounds for less than about thirty milliseconds (y at q=120) or for more than about ten seconds (o wVwVwVwVw at q=120). This seems to be why certain types of ornamentation, which from a technical viewpoint involve more than one ‘note’, are generally perceived as single notes of a particular type (e.g. drum rolls, tremolandi, vibrati, fast trills), while extremely long notes are heard as pedals or drones. Similarly, every note played on a mandolin or twelve-string guitar consists strictly speaking of two ‘notes’ because each string pitch is doubled and because those two strings can never be in total unison. The same goes for several other instruments, including the French accordéon musette whose every note consists of two pitches slightly out of tune with each other to create the instrument’s characteristic sound. In all these cases the strictly speaking two (or more) pitches to each note phenomenon is intrinsic to the identity of the sound as a single entity and should in general be regarded as just one note. In any case that’s how musicians tend to treat those sounds and that’s how we as listeners identify them. Still, it’s really the second meaning of note that relates most directly to the subject of this book: —a single, discrete sound of finite duration… with easily discernible fundamental pitch.) that single notes played on, for example, mandolins, twelve-string guitars or French accordions, in fact consist of two simultaneously sounded pitches. Those paired pitches are an essential element in the timbre of each instrument. The question here is how to distinguish between timbre and tone. Timbre is, in simple terms, a complex of acoustic features that lets us distinguish between two (or more) notes sounded at the same fundamental pitch. The most important acoustic constituents of timbre are attack, envelope, decay and frequency spectrum.15
Attack refers to the initial fraction of a note corresponding to the way in which the note is struck, hit, plucked, scraped, blown, etc. on an acoustic instrument, or ‘attacked’ by the voice. For example, it is easy to distinguish the same note of the same duration played at the same volume in the same position on the same guitar string if the instrument is plucked with the flesh of a thumb rather than with a plectrum. Similarly, hitting the same cymbal in the same way with the same force in the same place using a soft mallet and then a drumstick produces two quite different sounds. Attacks can even be eliminated, either digitally (using audio editing software) or electro-mechanically (using a volume pedal), to produce slightly ‘unreal’ or ‘disembodied’ timbral effects.
Decay refers to the way a note ends. For example, xylophone and unsustained piano notes end more abruptly than piano notes played with the sustain pedal pushed down, or than undamped or unclipped notes on, for example, guitar, French horn or cello.
Envelope refers to the middle or ‘body’ of a note, i.e. to the part of a note that is most likely to be tonal in the sense defined on page See On page 20 I raised the problem of the difference between notions of pitch applied to the flute and those applied to the high pitch of a hi-hat and to the low pitch of a large gong. The difference is of course that flute notes, high or low, almost always have one clearly discernible fundamental pitch while hi-hat, snare drum, bass drum and gong notes in general do not. It is this factor of discernible fundamental pitch that determines whether the note in question is a tone and that is exactly how the word should be defined: a tone is a note of discernible fundamental pitch. Now, some readers, especially those believing in absolute natural-science truths, may object to this definition because of the word ‘discernible’ implying that, despite some grounding in acoustic physics (periodic vs. aperiodic sounds, etc.), awareness of fundamental pitch also relies on culturally acquired patterns of perception. That is certainly a correct observation but hardly a valid objection to the definition since music, even the concept itself, is, as intimated earlier, an intrinsically social and cultural phenomenon whose understanding de facto requires social and cultural consideration. A more serious problem is caused by conflicting meanings of the adjective tonal.. An easy way of conceptualising envelope is to see it in terms of onomatopoeias like ding and pling (two small bells?) or dang, twang and blang (three electric guitar sounds?), where the initial consonants represent the sound’s attack, ng its decay and the vowels i and a its envelope. Compared to attack, a note’s envelope has a relatively consistent ‘ongoing’ sound whose timbral specificity is acoustically determined by its frequency spectrum, i.e. by how much of which frequencies it contains.

As already suggested, some musical sounds, like those of the hi-hat or gong, despite being heard as high- and low-pitched respectively, are non-tonal because no unequivocal fundamental pitch is audible. Lack of discernible fundamental pitch is due to an aperiodic frequency spectrum, i.e. to the fact that the various frequencies constituting the specific timbre of the instrument’s envelope are not necessarily interrelated as integral multiples of each other. The frequency spectrum of tonal instruments and singing voices, on the other hand, is periodic in relation to their fundamental (1f). This means that an essential determinant of tonal timbre is how much, if any, of which pitches in the harmonic series is present when a single note is played or sung. As exemplified in Figure See Harmonic series based on fundamental pitch c2 (65.5 hz) with a low c (65.4 hz) as fundamental, the first harmonic is situated one octave higher at twice that frequency, hence the abbreviation 2f (‘two F’), and the second harmonic, 3f, at three times the fundamental frequency which is a twelfth, or one octave plus a fifth, above the fundamental. 4f, four times the fundamental frequency, is of course two octaves higher, 5f two octaves plus a major third above the fundamental, and so on.16

Harmonic series based on fundamental pitch c 2 (65.5 hz) Sound waves for flute and clarinet playing the same fundamental pitch.17

For example, flutes, whose spectrum contains a strong element at twice the fundamental frequency (2f, one octave higher), have a simpler spectrum than clarinets which lack that first harmonic (2f) and whose sound is characterised by the strong presence of a pitch three times the frequency of the fundamental (3f), one twelfth (one octave plus a fifth) higher. This basic difference in frequency spectrum is one reason why the same note at the same fundamental pitch and volume played on a flute and a clarinet produces two quite different sound waves enabling us to distinguish between the two instruments (Figure See Sound waves for flute and clarinet playing the same fundamental pitch.). The sound of a seriously overdriven guitar, as used in various (rock) metal styles, derives from the very strong presence of higher pitches in the frequency spectrum to the extent that individual overtones can occasionally emerge as if they were fundamental pitches.18 Of course other timbral traits for other instruments, voices and sounds are determined by other combinations of frequencies specific to each of them.
The aim of this brief excursion has been to distinguish between timbre and tone. The main conclusion is that the simultaneous occurrence of several periodically related pitches, preceded by a particular attack and followed by a particular type of decay, do not in themselves constitute different notes or tones. They are produced and heard as one single unit, as a single note with an identifiable fundamental pitch. In other words those frequencies help define the timbral specificity of a tone.

Tuning, octave, interval

Tune and tuning relate etymologically to tone. In fact, tuning systems are culturally specific conventions regulating how tones are fixed and organised in relation to each other. By tuning is also meant the manner or process by which instruments adjust to those tonal conventions. This second type of tuning is instrument-specific and will be considered after an explanation of the two general types of tuning schemes which, for reasons that will become evident, I call extra-octave and intra-octave.19

General tuning systems

Extra-octave tuning

Extra-octave tuning is best exemplified by international concert pitch which was by 1939 established as a fixed frequency rate for one designated note: 440 hz for the a above middle c ( a 4 , see Fig. See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves). The pitch of other notes can be determined from this single absolute reference point. Previously, especially before the mid nineteenth century when a 4 converged on the 1½-semitone range between 410 and 450 hz,20 travelling keyboard players had to transpose, wind instrumentalists include extra lengths of tubing in their baggage, and string players retune, all in accordance with the local norm.21 Thanks to standardised concert pitch, musicians can go from one venue to another without having to perform the same music at a different pitch. Two other areas benefitted from the establishment of internationally recognised concert pitch: the mass production of instruments, not least those with some sort of keyboard, and the worldwide dissemination of recorded music.
Extra-octave tuning conventions like concert pitch are used to ensure, for example: [i] that, before a performance or recording session, musicians playing portable pitched instruments in the same ensemble will produce the same pitch (in unison or at octave intervals from that pitch) for the same designated note, or for its sounding equivalent on transposing instruments; [ii] that the overall pitch of non-portable instruments (e.g. piano, pipe organ) matches that of an agreed overall standard, in order to facilitate tuning when such instruments are part of an ensemble; [iii] that unaccompanied vocalists start at a pitch allowing them to reach, with a minimum of difficulty, the highest and lowest notes of whatever they are about to sing.
Concert pitch has helped globalise musical activity but it is of less relevance to musical traditions whose note names are relative rather than fixed (p. See Absolute note names in English, French and German, ff.), or in which no note names are used, or where participants have no need to interact with musicians who do depend on concert pitch. While concert pitch is useful in music featuring instruments whose overall tuning cannot be radically adjusted from one performance to another (piano, organ, harmonica, accordion, and, to some extent, wind instruments), it is by no means a necessity for other tonal instruments such as banjo, bass, bouzouki, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, saz, ud, or even a synthesiser equipped with the requisite retune, detune or transpose options.22
One remarkable side effect of extra-octave tuning is absolute pitch, by which is meant an individual’s ability, based on experience and long-term memory, to identify and/or reproduce a particular pitch independent of musical context. This ability, often called perfect pitch, is useful in standardised tonal situations because it can speed up transcription work, but it can be inconvenient in non-standard pitch contexts, for example if a guitar or fiddle playing patterns characteristic for a particular key (e.g. G, D, A or E) is heard a semitone higher or lower than concert pitch. For example, students with ‘perfect pitch’ will claim that The Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready To Make Nice (2006) is in E flat minor, an extremely unusual pop key, when it is quite obvious to anyone who has ever played the simplest guitar chords that we are hearing E minor guitar chord shapes, whether the absolute pitch of the song’s keynote in octave four is at 311.13 ( e $ ) or 329.64 hz ( e 8 ).

Intra-octave tuning

Intra-octave tuning, as the name suggests, regulates pitches internally within the octave which it organises into a number of constituent pitches and intervals. The functions of intra-octave tuning are: [i] to enable any particular pitch included in a performance or recording session to be sounded in unison by all ensemble members designated to play that pitch; [ii] to regulate intervals between the octave’s constituent pitches so that they are sounded in a consistent fashion; [iii] to facilitate the learning and application of tonal conventions. This brief description of intra-octave tuning begs questions about the term interval.

Intervals

In everyday speech an interval is usually understood as the ‘horizontal’ distance in time between one specific event from another. In music theory, however, an interval is the ‘vertical’ distance in pitch between one tone and another. If temporal intervals are quantified in units ranging from milliseconds to millennia, intervals of pitch are quantified in terms of octaves, tones, semitones and cents (hundredths of a semitone, sometimes abbreviated ‘¢’). Intervals are produced and understood in two ways: [i] melodically, as the pitch gap between two notes sounded one immediately or very soon after the other; [ii] harmonically, as the pitch gap between two simultaneously sounding notes. As we already implied, one such pitch distance, the octave, is central to the understanding of all other intervals in music.

Octave

Two tones at the same pitch —in unison— are in a pitch frequency ratio of 1:1. Two tones an octave apart are always separated by a frequency factor of 2. For example, the first note in each of the pairs a 3 (220 hz) and a 4 (440 hz), or c 4 (261.63 hz) and c 5 (523.25), or e $ 3 (155.56) and e $ 4 (311.13), is each one octave lower than the second (see Table See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves). With its simple frequency ratio of 2:1, the octave is also the interval between a note’s fundamental pitch and that of its first harmonic, which is, in its turn, an intrinsic part of the timbre of every singing voice and of most acoustic tonal instruments. This interval is called an octave because it is the eighth note you arrive at in the heptatonic (seven-note) scale (see Chapter 3) if you ascend or descend one heptatonic step at a time, for example a b c d e f g [a] (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [8], rising) or a g f e d c b [a] (8 7 6 5 4 3 2 [1], descending).
All known music traditions tend to treat two pitches an octave apart as the same note in another register. Men are understood to be singing the same tune as women and children if both parties follow the same pitch contour at the same time in parallel octaves. The octave’s property of unison in another register is also illustrated by the fact that: [1] a common chord consisting of the tonic, third, fifth and octave is treated as a triad, not a tetrad, because it contains only three, not four, different notes (tonic, third, fifth); [2] any single note sounded on instruments like the twelve-string guitar, or using common types of organ registration, produces two pitches an octave apart; [3] parallel octaves are commonly used to enhance melodic timbre in jazz piano and guitar playing, not as a harmonic device (e.g. Erroll Garner, Wes Montgomery); [4] lower octave doubling of bass notes is used timbrally and dynamically in a huge variety of styles (classical, jazz, rock) to boost the power of the bass line, not as a harmonic device; [5] the octave is closely associated with the concept of register.
Music’s range of audible fundamental pitches is often divided into octaves so that register can be referred to in a user-friendly way without having to mention cycles per second (Hertz). A standard piano keyboard spans just over eight octaves from a 0 (27.5 hz) to c 8 (4186 hz), a normal synth keyboard five octaves from c 2 to c 6 (see Table See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves, p. See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves). The average human singing voice usually spans about two octaves. According to this system of labelling octaves the first note of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction riff is b 2 , middle c is c 4 , concert pitch is a 4 and the first sung note of Abba’s Dancing Queen (1975c) is c # 5 .

The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values
and divided into octaves

Table See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves shows a piano keyboard divided into seven octaves plus three extra notes at the bottom (octave 0) and one at the top (octave 8). Octave numbers appear below the keyboard and the identity of the 88 individual notes, each with its fundamental frequency in cycles per second (hz), above it. Table See The piano keyboard’s 88 notes with Hertz values and divided into octaves also shows the characteristic pattern of black and white notes and the same twelve note names (seven white and five black) that recur for each of the seven octaves. The eleven intervals inside the equal-tempered octave are set out in Table See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1).

Intervals and intra-octave tuning

Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from c n to c n+1 )

1. Note name (doh = c )	2. Semitones above doh	3. Scale degree shorthand	4. Frequency ratio to tonic	5. × > frequency of tonic (just temperament)	6. × > frequency of tonic (equal temperament)	7. Interval name (here in relation to lower tonic)	8. Scale degree name
c	0	1	1:1	1	1	prime (unison)	tonic
c #	1	# 1	25:24	1.042	1.060	[raised prime]	[raised tonic]
d $	1	$ 2	25:24	1.042	1.060	minor second or semitone	[flat supertonic]
d	2	2	9:8	1.125	1.123	major second or whole tone	supertonic
d #	3	# 2	6:5	1.2	1.189	augmented second	[raised supertonic]
e $	3	$ 3	6:5	1.2	1.189	minor third	[flat mediant]
e	4	3	5:4	1.25	1.260	major third	mediant
f	5	4	4:3	1.333	1.335	perfect fourth	subdominant
f #	6	# 4	45:32	1.406	1.414	augmented fourth or tritone or	[raised subdominant]
g $	6	$ 5	45:32	1.406	1.414	diminished fifth	[lowered dominant]
g	7	5	3:2	1.5	1.498	perfect fifth	dominant
g #	8	# 5	8:5	1.6	1.587	augmented fifth	[raised dominant]
a $	8	$ 6	8:5	1.6	1.587	minor sixth	[flat submediant]
a	9	6	5:3	1.667	1.682	major sixth	submediant
[a # ]	10	# 6	9:5	1.8	1.782	augmented sixth	[raised submediant]
b $	10	$ 7	9:5	1.8	1.782	minor seventh	subtonic
b	11	7	15:8	1.875	1.888	major seventh	leading note
c	12	8	2:1	2	2	(perfect) octave	tonic

See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1)

See

See Equal-tone tuning

Although the interval names in column 7 of Table See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1) are all given in relation to the lower tonic ( c ), they can in fact be applied in relation to any note. Indeed, f is situated, as shown in Table See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1), a perfect fourth (5 semitones or guitar frets) above c , but it is also a perfect fourth below b $ and a perfect fifth (7 semitones) below c , as well as a semitone or minor second (or a single guitar fret) above e ; f is also, for example, a major third (4 semitones) above d $ , a major sixth (9 semitones) below d , and a major second or whole tone below g , as well as a minor seventh (10 semitones) above g .
The terms in column 8 of Table See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1), on the other hand, are used almost exclusively about music in the European classical tradition and can only be applied in relation to the relevant keynote or tonic of music in that tradition.24 For example, although six different rising perfect fifths exist within the tonal vocabulary of a C major scale ( f  c, c  g, g  d, d  a, a  e, e  b ),25 only g , the note situated a perfect fifth above (or a perfect fourth below) the keynote, and tertial chords based on that same scale degree (G, G 7 , etc. in the key of C), can be called dominant. By the same token, the note f and tertial chords based on f (F, F 7 , Fm, etc.) can be called dominant only in the key of B $ , mediant only in the key of D $ , submediant only in A $ , supertonic only in E $ , leading note only in G $ , and subdominant only in C. Although quite useful in the analysis of musics following the tonal habits of European art music, terms like dominant and subdominant can be quite misleading when applied to music based on modal principles of tonality.26 For example, the common three-chord mixolydian loop heard throughout Sweet Home Alabama ( N D-C-G O in D) and repeated at the end of Hey Jude ( N G-F-C O in G) is referred to as I- $ VII-IV (’one, flat seven, four’), not ‘tonic, subtonic, subdominant’.27 And that’s not just because the first designation of the same sequence is more concise: it’s actually because the chord on IV (the G in D, the C in G) just doesn’t work like European classical music’s subdominant and because the sequence includes no dominant (V) to which a chord on the fourth degree of the scale (IV) can reasonably be ‘sub’.28 Another ethnocentric problem with column 8 in Table See Intra-octave intervals in just and equal temperament concerns the scale’s seventh degree: the ‘leading note’. It’s a problem best explained by example.

Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’);
(b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.).

There are seven sevenths in example See Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’); (b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.). of which only one is strictly speaking a leading note. Example (a) contains two sevenths, both major or ‘sharp sevens’ ( # 7), the first one descending from the tonic, the other [2] rising back up to the tonic. The five sevenths in example (b) are all minor or ‘flat sevens’ ( $ 7), two of them [4, 5] descending from the tonic, two [3, 6] ascending to the tonic and one [7] going in both directions. So which of the seven sevenths is definitely a leading note? Well, the seventh degree in the Central European major, ascending minor and harmonic minor scales (see p. See European art music’s four scales, ff.) is called leading note because in those modes it is a major seventh ( # 7) which generally leads to the tonic (scale degree 1) a semitone above, (e.g. b 8 → c in C, f # → g in G). Yes, that means the only unequivocal leading note in example See Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’); (b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.). is number 2.
Leading note can by extension also designate any note that leads by a single semitone step, ascending or descending, to a note contained within the subsequent common triad, e.g. the note f in a G 7 chord descending one semitone to the e in a C major triad (see p. See Voice leading, the ionian mode, modulation and directionality, ff.). However, leading note usually and primarily means the note situated one semitone below the keynote and which generally leads to that keynote. The terminological trouble is, however, that, as example See Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’); (b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.).b suggests, widely disseminated styles of popular music often use minor sevenths ( $ 7) which by definition are situated not a semitone but a whole tone below the tonic and which can just as well descend to the sixth or fifth as ascend to the tonic, or arrive from or depart to other scale degrees. And, as the first seventh in example See Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’); (b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.).a shows, not even a major seventh need always lead to the tonic. In short, the term leading note is misleading if it designates the sort of minor sevenths shown in example See Subtonic or leading note? (a) Handel: Antioch (‘Joy To The World’); (b) The Foggy Dew (Irish trad.).b since none of them have to lead to any other place in particular. It is for these reasons advisable, when referring in relative terms to the seventh scale degree, to use the term subtonic and to restrict the meaning of leading note to major sevenths alone and where appropriate.

Equal-tone tuning

The most widely accepted intra-octave tuning system for music in the modern world is equal temperament or equal-tone tuning. It divides the octave into twelve equal intervals (semitones) and has been used in the West since the late eighteenth century. It was developed to solve problems caused by discrepancies between certain intervals as constituent parts of the octave and the same intervals in their ‘pure’ form. Pure means in this context the acoustically unadjusted simple frequency ratios of intervals used in just tuning or just intonation (see Table See Intra-octave intervals in just and equal temperament).

Intra-octave intervals in just and equal temperament

→ Interval Tuning type ↓	Prime/Tonic	Minor 2nd	Major 2nd	Minor 3rd	Major 3rd	Perfect 4th	Augmented 4th/ Diminished 5th	Perfect 5th	Minor 6th	Major 6th	Minor 7th	Major 7th	Octave/Tonic
Just	1:1 1	25:24 1.042	9:8 1.125	6:5 1.2	5:4 1.25	4:3 1.333	45:32 1.406	3:2 1.5	8:5 1.6	5:3 1.667	9:5 1.8	15:8 1.875	2:1 2
Equal	1	1.060	1.123	1.189	1.260	1.335	1.414	1.498	1.587	1.682	1.782	1.888	2
in C	c	c # d $	d	d # e $	e	f	f # g $	g	g # a $	a	b $	b 8	c

→

Interval

Tuning

type ↓

Prime/Tonic

Minor 2nd

Major 2nd

Minor 3rd

Major 3rd

Perfect 4th

Augmented 4th/
Diminished 5th

Perfect 5th

Minor 6th

Major 6th

Minor 7th

Major 7th

Octave/Tonic

Just

1:1
1

25:24 1.042

9:8 1.125

6:5
1.2

5:4 1.25

4:3 1.333

45:32
1.406

3:2
1.5

8:5
1.6

5:3 1.667

9:5
1.8

15:8 1.875

2:1
2

Equal

1.060

1.123

1.189

1.260

1.335

1.414

1.498

1.587

1.682

1.782

1.888

in C

c #
d $

d #
e $

f #
g $

g #
a $

b $

b 8

For example, the top note of three stacked pure major thirds, each at the frequency ratio 5:4 above the previous one, is out of tune at the octave with the bottom note. That means the g # at the top of the pile of pure major thirds a $ - c , c-e and e-g # is, in just temperament, one fifth of a tone (40¢) lower than the octave above the initial a $ . Similarly, the top a $ in the four stacked just-tone minor thirds29 g # - b - d - f - a $ is over a quarter-tone (>50¢) lower than the octave above the initial g # . These natural acoustic discrepancies posed particular problems for keyboard players needing to produce, say, both g # (as in an E major triad) and a $ (as in an F minor triad) in the same piece: one or the other would be seriously out of tune.30 Equal temperament tackled the problem by slightly detuning eleven of the octave’s constituent semitones so that the interval between each of them became identical. As Table See Intra-octave intervals in just and equal temperament shows, the equal-temperament perfect fourths (e.g. c-f ) and fifths ( c-g ) have virtually the same values as their just-tone equivalents. Thirds, sixths and sevenths, on the other hand, have clearly been the object of more significant adjustment.
Equal-tone tuning is essential in most types of Western music, including classical, romantic, twelve-tone, parlour song, musicals, marches, waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, hymns, evergreens, most types of jazz, bossa nova, choro, symphonic film scores, etc., etc. It is, however, unnecessary in music requiring no enharmonic alignment (between d # and e $ , g # and a $ etc.) for purposes of modulation or harmonic colour. Moreover, equal temperament is either unnecessary or inappropriate in, for example, most types of blues, bluegrass, blues-based rock, folk rock, not to mention the traditional musics of Africa, the Arab world, the Balkans, the British Isles, the Indian subcontinent, Scandinavia etc., i.e. in any music whose tonality is modal and/or drone-based (see p. See Drone, ff.). One reason for the relative incompatibility of such music with equal-tone tuning may be the frequent or constant sounding of tonic and fifth to produce natural overtones inconsistent with equal-temperament intervals. Another reason might be the centrality of each interval’s expressive character in relation to a permanent tonic, as in the raga traditions of India whose aesthetics also often require microtonal pitch distinctions. Artificially adjusting intervals by as much as a quarter-tone, as in equal-tone tuning is incompatible with the principles of such music.

Intra-octave tuning examples

Within the general framework of just temperament there are a wide variety of tunings used in different music traditions. Despite a few exceptions, such as the various pelog and slendro systems of Java (Malm 1977: 45-47, see Table See Intra-octave tuning examples), most just tunings include the natural fourth (4:3) and fifth (3:2) scale degrees (see Tables See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1) and See Intra-octave tuning examples). However, Arab and Indian music theories divide the octave into 16 and 22 unequal steps respectively, reflecting intra-octave tuning conventions which differ markedly from those of the urbanised West. For example, the heptatonic Arab mode closest to our major scale (ionian mode) is called Rast and features a ‘neutral’ third and seventh roughly half way between Western major and minor pitches, while Bayati (similar to our dorian or aeolian modes) contains a ‘neutral’ second and sixth.31
The Western adjustment of natural intervals into the twelve equal intervals shown in Tables See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1) and See Intra-octave intervals in just and equal temperament has only been in operation for a couple of centuries in urban Europe and America, but it has during that short period managed to replace most earlier vernacular tuning patterns in our part of the world, patterns that can only be heard today in archival recordings from what were relatively isolated areas like the Outer Hebrides or the Appalachian backwoods.32 It is impossible to say whether the global spread of Anglo-North-American music during the latter half of the twentieth century, together with the equal-tone tuning of piano, organ, accordion and synthesiser keyboards —plus the inclusion of general MIDI in personal computers, plus the overwhelming use of equal-tone tuning in globally disseminated film and games music—, will eventually bring about the demise of other tuning systems. In fact, it currently seems highly unlikely that tonal diversity will disappear because, as we shall see later in our discussion of modes, intra-octave tuning systems are by no means the only factors affecting tonality. Besides, tuning, in the second sense of the word presented in the first paragraph of this chapter, provides plenty of other opportunities for tonal variety .

Instrument-specific tuning

The holes in the celebrated Neanderthal bone flute recently unearthed in Slovenia would have allowed its user, some 60,000 years ago, to produce the pitches of a standard pentatonic scale.33 Since then, a vast number of other wind instruments have been made using similar or different materials, with holes, mouthpieces, reeds, keys, valves, tube lengths, bell shapes and bore sizes constructed and arranged in an infinite variety of ways. All these factors affect the sound of each instrument and determine its tonal vocabulary, i.e. its range and placement of possible pitches as well as their intervallic relation to each other. For example, a shakuhachi flute doesn’t sound distinctly ‘shakuhachi’ (perhaps ‘traditional Japanese’ to Western ears) just because of its timbre, however important that may be. The fact that its five holes also correspond to the five notes of a standard anhemitonic pentatonic scale and that tonal complexity can be increased by exploiting the considerable amount of pitch bend available for each note are factors determining its tonal identity. Using my MIDI software to assign a rapid run of staccato chromaticism to the best shakuhachi sample bank in the world will not make that lick sound like a shakuhachi any more than 64 quantised kick drum semiquavers in a row can ever sound like a real live drummer. In short, the physical construction of a wind instrument affects the tonal as well as timbral identity of the instrument and of the musical culture to which it is assumed to belong.

Most wind instruments are monophonic and players need, like vocalists, to ensure the notes they produce respect the basic pitch rules of the musical culture to which they belong. A monophonic wind instrument player must also, when part of an ensemble, adjust to a common reference pitch like a =440. Polyphonic instruments (actual or potential) require further internal tuning. Piano and pipe organ tuning is usually carried out by specialists but portable string instruments are tuned by their players. The pitches to which open strings are tuned vary considerably from one instrument to another. Table See Some common string-instrument tunings shows examples of standard tuning variants for some common string instruments. String note names are provided for clarification and do not necessarily indicate concert pitch.34

Some common string-instrument tunings 35

instrument	Low string				high string		instrument
Banjo		G	D/C	G	B	D	Banjo
Banjo – Tenor	C	G	D	A	C		Tenor Banjo
Bass	E	A	D	G			Bass
*Bouzouki			G	D	A	D	Bouzouki*
Charango		G	C	E	A	E	Charango
Fiddle			G	D	A	E	Fiddle
Guitar (see Table See Some alternative guitar tunings)	E	A	D	G	B	E	Guitar (see Table See Some alternative guitar tunings)
Mandolin/Violin			G	D	A	E	Mandolin
*Saz			C/D	G	C		Saz*
*Sitar (e.g.)	sa-1 C-1	pa-1 G-1	sa C	ma E	pa G	sa+1 C+1	sa+2 *Sitar C+2 (e.g.)
*Ud (Arabian)	D	G	A	D	G	C	Ud (Arabian)*
Ukelele			A	D	F #	B	Ukelele

Several instruments listed in Table See Some common string-instrument tunings have common alternative tunings. For example, a saz can be tuned c-f-c , while a bouzouki can be tuned c-f-a-d or d-a-f-c (2×4-string), or d-a-d (2×3-string, common in rebetiki). Ud tunings vary considerably from region to region (Turkey, Armenia, etc.) and fiddle tunings are often adjusted to the character of the music to be played, typically to create tonic-and-fifth drone effects ( g-d-g-d, g # -d # -g # -d # , a-d-a-d , a-e-a-e , etc.). Some common alternative guitar tunings (a.k.a. scordatura) used in Anglophone music traditions are set out in Table See Some alternative guitar tunings. All these tunings can be transposed using a capo. It should also be noted that several string instruments used in the Middle East, the Arab world and the Indian subcontinent (e.g. saz, tambur) are provided with ligatures which function as moveable frets allowing the musician to accommodate tunings based on a division of the octave into more than twelve intervals (see Table See Intra-octave tuning examples).

Some alternative guitar tunings

Name	Low string				high string		Usage
STANDARD	E	A	D	G	B	E	general
Open E	E	B	E	G #	B	E	Delta blues, folk
Open D or Vestapol	D	A	D	F #	A	D	Delta blues, folk
Drop D	D	A	D	G	B	E	folk
Drop double D	D	A	D	G	B	D
D modal	D	A	D	D	A	D
DADGAD	D	A	D	G	A	D	folk, esp. Irish etc.
Open G or Taropatch	D	G	D	G	B	D	slide, Delta blues
Dobro	G	B	D	G	B	D	Delta blues, Country
Open A or Hawaiian	E	A	E	A	C #	E	Hawaiian, slide
C sixth	C	G	C	G	A	E	‘New Age’

As mentioned in the section about note, many instruments are provided with double sets of strings, for example the twelve-string guitar (2×6), the bouzouki (3×2) and different types of balalaika, each pair of strings being tuned in unison or at the octave. Moreover, each of the piano’s upper keys is assigned its own triple set of strings. The point of such unison or octave duplication is to create a brighter or richer sound for each note. The ‘bright’ effect is due to doubling at the octave or higher, as in the case of 4-foot, 2-foot and mixture stops, tabs or drawbars on the organ. The ‘rich’ effect, however, more likely relates to unison doubling and works as follows. Two simultaneously sounding strings, pipes or reeds tuned to the same pitch rarely produce that pitch in perfect unison, with the result that a greater number of partials is created for each note than issues from just one of the two. Western music exploits this timbral aspect of tuning in many ways, of which three can be summarised as follows.

The characteristic ‘rich’ sound of the French accordion derives from each note being assigned two reeds slightly out of tune with each other.

Recorded tracks are often doubled, sometimes several times, either digitally or ‘live’, to create an effect of multiplicity. Not only can the copied or repeated tracks be offset from the original by a few milliseconds, they can also be slightly detuned, either naturally or by digital manipulation. The effect of slightly detuning a copied track without simultaneous offsetting resembles the ‘wider’ sound produced by applying chorus or modest amounts of phasing to the same signal source (Lacasse 2000: 126-131).

Digitally detuning a copied piano track and playing it back with the original produces a ‘ragtime’ effect similar to that created by an out-of-tune piano or by one that has been intentionally ‘soured’.

Although, in cases like these, tuning has an obvious timbral rather than tonal function, it should be clear that tones and timbres are interrelated. Indeed, as we shall suggest later in our section about dissonance, what we hear as two or more separate notes may in another cultural context be perceived as one single sonority. There is in other words a sort of no-man’s-land between tone and timbre where one of the two will attract more of our attention than the other.
So far I’ve tried to explain most basic concepts of tonality —note, pitch, tone, tuning, interval and octave. The next chapter deals with ways of conceptualising tonal vocabulary, i.e. with ways of describing the various tonal constellations that help us aurally distinguish between musical moods, functions and cultures.

Modes and modality

Scales and tonal vocabulary

UK national anthem

The well-known tune shown as example See UK national anthem contains all seven notes of the standard Western major scale, numbered as scale degrees in relation to the tune’s keynote, g . The order of their first appearance is, as example See UK national anthem shows, 1 (= g ) 2 ( a ) 7 ( f # ) 3 ( b ) 4 ( c ) 5 ( d ) 6 ( e ). Example See Heptatonic ionian mode in G

See UK national anthem

See Scales and tonal vocabulary

See Heptatonic ionian mode in G

Even though, in everyday Western musical parlance, example See Heptatonic ionian mode in G would most likely be referred to as a G major scale, it is not the sort of hands-on scale that students of European classical music have to practise ad nauseam or that you might hear in a Mozart piano sonata. No, it represents a particular mode containing a particular configuration of seven particular notes. Mode is simply more accurate than scale as a description of example See Heptatonic ionian mode in G simply because its constituent notes will rarely be heard complete in that scalar form.

Another problem with the ‘G major scale’ description of example See Heptatonic ionian mode in G is the qualifier major. The trouble here is that while conventional Euro-North-American music theory has in general only had to contend with ‘major’ and ‘minor’, there is, as we shall see later, a broader array of tonal vocabularies in daily operation outside that tradition. Therefore, even if God Save The Queen is conceived within the central European tonal idiom, it is, if we want to consider the tune in relation to other musics, more accurate to name its tonal vocabulary in modal terms. That’s why it’s been labelled ‘heptatonic ionian mode’: it represents a store of seven different notes (heptatonic) with its two semitone steps from third to fourth (3-4) and from seventh to octave (7-8) or prime (1). As we shall shortly see, that particular configuration of tones and semitones (the ‘major scale’) is known as the ionian mode, while the ‘descending minor scale’, also qualified as ‘natural minor’ contains the same notes as the aeolian mode. Using the keys of C and E by way of illustration, example See European art music’s four scales shows the four scales that performers of European art music have to practise starting on each of equal tone tuning’s twelve notes as tonic (first and eighth degree).36

European art music’s four scales

The numbers above each mode in example See European art music’s four scales indicate scale degrees in that mode. Only degrees 3, 6 and 7 vary between these modes whereas degrees 1, 2, 4 and 5 (plus of course 8) remain unchanged. Due to its overwhelming presence in the European classical tradition the ionian mode or major scale is, so to speak, default setting. That’s why the sharp signs ( # ) in front of 3, 6 and 7 in the top line of example See European art music’s four scales are in brackets: the major third, sixth and seventh are, in a manner of speaking, taken as read. The three minor-mode variants, so called because they all contain a minor third ( $ 3 or ‘flat three’) diverge from the institutionally hegemonic ionian mode, not only because of that ‘other’ third but also because degrees six and seven are configured differently: the descending melodic minor variant (aeolian mode) contains both a minor sixth ( $ 6 or ‘flat six’) and a minor seventh ( $ 7 or ‘flat seven’) while the harmonic minor contains a minor sixth ( $ 6, ‘flat six’) but a major seventh ( # 7, ‘sharp seven’).

As we shall in Chapter See ‘Classical’ harmony, the major seventh or leading note is so central to the mechanics of tonal direction in European classical harmony that a ‘natural’ or ‘pure’ minor mode, such as that produced on the white notes of a piano keyboard with a as keynote (the aeolian mode, see p. See The seven European heptatonic ‘church’ modes) only exists in descending melodic, not ascending, contexts. Moreover, as the label harmonic minor suggests, the ‘natural’ minor seventh of a minor-mode triad based on the fifth degree of the scale (e.g. an E minor triad containing the note g in the key of A minor) is, in classical harmony, almost inevitably altered to a major seventh ( # 7 or ‘sharp seven’, g # in A minor) to produce a major chord that can function as ‘dominant’ to the home key (e.g. E or E 7 in A minor) and produce the ‘perfect cadence’ E 7 → Am ( V → i ) rather Em → Am ( v-i ). The latter is heard as less directional or less final because it contains no leading note ( $ 7 or g 8 instead of # 7 or g # in A minor).37

We’ve jumped the gun here, rushing into intricacies of classical harmony before explaining how even melody, let alone harmony, can be understood as drawing on modes as sets of tonal vocabulary that contribute to the creation of difference, variation and identity in music.

Modality

Although patterns of rhythm and metre were also treated as modes by medieval and renaissance theorists in Europe, we shall treat modes and modality solely in their tonal guise. Modality, from Latin’s modus (= measure, manner, mode), is a term used to denote certain types of tonal vocabulary which, as we just mentioned, diverge from the major/minor dualism operational in Central European art music (c. 1730-1910) and in forms of popular music using that tonal idiom (e.g. national anthems, hymns, marches, waltzes, polkas, evergreens).
Current usage of mode and modality in music theory derives from two main sources: [1] attempts by medieval European scholars to systematise the tonal vocabulary of liturgical music according to Ancient Greek and Arab concepts —the ‘church modes’ (p. See Diatonic ‘church’ modes, ff.); [2] ethnomusicological classification of tonal vocabulary used in musics outside the Central European art music tradition.
Modes differ from melody types like the Hindu ragas or Arab maqamat, which contain not only modal templates but also basic formulae for the improvised performance of melodic contour, mood and direction. Nor are modes mere scales: they are, as already explained, reductions or abstractions of particular tonal practices to single occurrences of notes used within those practices.
This chapter deals only with the monophonic aspect of modes. Modal harmony is discussed in Chapter See ‘Non-classical’ harmony (pp. See Tertial modal harmony-See Cowboy half cadences: (b) Brooks/Morris: Blazing Saddles (1974)).

Pentatonicism

The most widely used modes outside the European classical sphere are almost certainly pentatonic. Not only could the 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute found in Slovenia produce an anhemitonic (= without semitones) five-note scale (see p. See The holes in the celebrated Neanderthal bone flute recently unearthed in Slovenia would have allowed its user, some 60,000 years ago, to produce the pitches of a standard pentatonic scale. Since then, a vast number of other wind instruments have been made using similar or different materials, with holes, mouthpieces, reeds, keys, valves, tube lengths, bell shapes and bore sizes constructed and arranged in an infinite variety of ways. All these factors affect the sound of each instrument and determine its tonal vocabulary, i.e. its range and placement of possible pitches as well as their intervallic relation to each other. For example, a shakuhachi flute doesn’t sound distinctly ‘shakuhachi’ (perhaps ‘traditional Japanese’ to Western ears) just because of its timbre, however important that may be. The fact that its five holes also correspond to the five notes of a standard anhemitonic pentatonic scale and that tonal complexity can be increased by exploiting the considerable amount of pitch bend available for each note are factors determining its tonal identity. Using my MIDI software to assign a rapid run of staccato chromaticism to the best shakuhachi sample bank in the world will not make that lick sound like a shakuhachi any more than 64 quantised kick drum semiquavers in a row can ever sound like a real live drummer. In short, the physical construction of a wind instrument affects the tonal as well as timbral identity of the instrument and of the musical culture to which it is assumed to belong. and ex. See Common anhemitonic pentatonic modes); such pentatonic modes also occur today on every continent and constitute the entire tonal vocabulary of melodies in many music cultures. One reason for the ubiquity of this type of anhemitonic pentatonicism may be that all five notes are acoustically related in terms of simple pitch ratios. For example, the frequency ratio between g and c is 3:2, that between g and d 2:3, between d and a 3:2, and 2:3 between a and e . Rearranged in ascending order of pitch, those five notes constitute standard pentatonic scales, either major — c d e g a — or minor — a c d e g .

Common anhemitonic pentatonic modes

For Westerners the most familiar pentatonic modes are anhemitonic and can be easily produced by sounding only the black notes on a piano keyboard, as shown in the right-hand column of example See Common anhemitonic pentatonic modes, with 1b (in G $ ) being the major version and 2b (in E $ ) the minor variant. Those notes are transposed down a semitone in the left column to produce anhemitonic five-note modes in more common keys. The F major (1a) and D minor (1b) variants can of course be transposed to any other tonal centre and are also referred to respectively as doh-pentatonic and la-pentatonic modes.38 Variants 3a and 3b are the same as 2a and 2b except in descent. They are included because they are heard so much more often with that profile in blues and blues-based rock styles.
The doh-pentatonic mode shown in example See Common anhemitonic pentatonic modes includes, in ascending scalar motion, two steps of a whole tone ( f-g-a ) followed by a minor third ( a-c ), another whole tone ( c-d ) and another minor third ( d-f ). The la-pentatonic mode in D starts with a minor third ( d-f ), followed by two whole tone steps ( f-g-a ), another minor third ( a-c ) and a final whole tone ( c-d ). Both modes contain the same notes but the two variants sound quite different because they are configured in relation to different keynotes. The only relative scale degrees the two modes share are 1 and 5, the other three being exclusive to each mode on its own (2, 3, 6 for doh and $ 3, 4, $ 7 for la). In fact, anhemitonic modes can theoretically be constructed on any one of the five notes, but it is unusual for such modes to lack a third or fifth, for example 1-2-4-5-6 (e.g. c-d-f-g-a in C) or 1- $ 3-4- $ 6- $ 7 (e.g. a-c-d-f-g in A).
Of course, some pentatonic modes are hemitonic while others are not entirely pentatonic. A clear example of hemitonic pentatonicism is the Japanese mode zokugaku-sempô (ex. See Three other pentatonic modes), based on common koto tuning patterns, which descends 8- $ 6-5-4- $ 2-1. Among examples of extended pentatonicism are the descending patterns of many blues phrases. As example See Three other pentatonic modes shows, tonal slides on the third degree are the norm in pentatonic blues modes and the slurred diminished fifth is a common additional feature in minor-mode blues pentatonicism.

As stated earlier, pentatonic modes are very common throughout the world. Popular melody from such widely flung areas as Eastern Asia, the Andes, Subsaharan Africa and the British Isles makes extensive use of the kind of anhemitonic pentatonicism mentioned earlier. Anhemitonic pentatonicism from Subsaharan Africa and the British Isles has exerted particularly strong influence on the development of popular music in North America.

Diatonic ‘church’ modes

Church modes (a.k.a. ecclesiastical modes) presuppose: [1] the diatonic division of the octave into seven constituent pitches, five separated by a whole tone, two by a semitone;39 [2] a tonal centre, keynote or tonic, which may sometimes be identified as a (real or potential) drone or as the final, or most frequently recurring, melodic note. The seven heptatonic church modes are tabulated in example See The seven European heptatonic ‘church’ modes. The left column shows each ‘church’ mode, its tonic as numbers 1 and 8, using only the white notes of a piano keyboard instrument. The right column shows each mode transposed to E, this highlighting each mode’s configuration of intervals. Four interrelated factors determine each mode’s unique sonic character: [1] the position of the two semitone steps (square-bracketed in the left column, shown as numbers in the right); [2] the one tritone interval (marked with a slur in the right column); [3] the relation of these two phenomena to the tonic. Thus, only the ionian mode has its tritone between perfect fourth and major seventh (4– # 7), only the dorian between minor third and major sixth ( $ 3– # 6), only the phrygian between minor second and perfect fifth ( $ 2–5) etc.

The seven European heptatonic ‘church’ modes

More general distinctions are often drawn [1] between major and minor modes, i.e. those containing a major or minor third in their tonic triad and [2] between those including major and minor sevenths. The major modes are therefore ionian, lydian and mixolydian, the minor modes dorian, phrygian and aeolian. Only two ‘church’ modes —the ionian and lydian— contain major sevenths. The ionian mode, using the white piano keys with c as its keynote, is, as already stated, equivalent to the central European classical repertoire’s ‘major scale’, the aeolian to the same tradition’s ‘melodic minor’. The locrian mode is alone in having no perfect fifth and is seldom used on an everyday basis except perhaps by thrash or death metal musicians with their predilection for the tritone interval ( $ 5 or # 4), a.k.a. the diabolus in musica, which, quite appropriately, is also the title of a 1998 album by thrash metal band Slayer.

If you are unfamiliar with any of the modes just mentioned there is an easy and effective hands-on way to experience their sound. To learn the dorian ‘feel’, for example, go to a piano keyboard and hold down the keynote d with your left hand in the bass register. Repeating that droned keynote once in a while, play short melodic phrases of white notes with your right hand, checking in particular how it sounds when you include e and f or b and c in a phrase that finishes on the keynote or on the fifth ( d and a in the dorian mode). You can apply this white-notes-only trick with the e - f or b - c semitones. The only thing you have to change is the keynote and the fifth ( e and b for phrygian, f and c for lydian, and so on).

‘Hypo’ modes40

Before leaving the relatively familiar territory of heptatonic, diatonic ‘church’ modes it’s worth taking a very brief look at one aspect of early Renaissance theory about modality: the ‘hypo’ modes. This issue may seem esoteric and out of place in a book about music in everyday urban life but it can, as we shall see in Chapter See Modal loops and bimodality , help us understand the nature of bimodal harmony that occurs on a regular basis in several types of widely disseminated popular music. Here, though, I’ll just present the rudiments of that old ‘theory’ and refer back, where appropriate, to this subsection when dealing with issues of bimodality and keynote identification.

It was the Swiss German scholar Heinrich Glarean (1488-1563) who, in his Dodecachordon (1547), organised ‘church’ modes into the system with which modern readers of Guitar Player magazine41 are surely familiar and which I’ve set out in example See The seven European heptatonic ‘church’ modes. The dodeca (12) in his Dodecachordon does not include the locrian mode. That leaves the other six —ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian and aeolian— each of which Glarean provided with its ‘hypo’ variant (6 × 2 = 12). Three of those six pairs are relevant to the understanding of bimodality in contemporary forms of popular music.

Three of Glarean’s six ‘hypo’ modes

As we shall see in Chapter See Modal loops and bimodality, popular use of modal harmony can alternate between ionian and mixolydian (1a and 1b in example See Three of Glarean’s six ‘hypo’ modes), or between dorian and mixolydian (2b and 2a), or between aeolian and phrygian. In all three cases, Glarean’s ‘hypo’ concept underlines the close tonal link between the two modes set out in the (a) and (b) columns of example See Three of Glarean’s six ‘hypo’ modes. Each row of example See Three of Glarean’s six ‘hypo’ modes presents: (a) a given mode (ionian, mixolydian, aeolian); (b) the mode located one fifth above or one fourth below (a) (mixolydian, dorian, phrygian); and (c) the ‘hypo’ mode containing the same notes covering the same range as the (b) mode but with the tonal centre of the (a) mode (hypoionian, hypomixolydian, hypoaeolian). It is, however, important to remember, when discussing modal harmony, that Glarean’s system of modes dealt with tonal aspects of melody and not at all with polyphony.

Non-diatonic modes

Many widespread tonal vocabularies are neither pentatonic nor can they be categorised according to the diatonic framework of heptatonic church modes. Such modes include: [1] the hexatonic whole-tone scale, often used in Hollywood as a mystery cue and by jazz musicians as improvisation material to fit chords containing an augmented fifth (ex. See Some non-diatonic modesa); (2) the octatonic scale which runs in alternate steps of whole and half tones: like the whole-tone scale it is another film music mystery mode, often used by Bernard Herrmann, as well as being a favourite with jazz musicians who need to improvise over diminished chords (ex. See Some non-diatonic modesb); (3) variants of the Hijaz (or Hejjaz ) mode (a.k.a. Hicaz , Bhairavi ), including the Northern Indian purvi mode (ex. See Some non-diatonic modesc, d). These last two modes each contain three semitone and two 1½-tone steps. Among the more common heptatonic modes containing 1½-tone steps are what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Gypsy’ mode (ascends 1 2 $ 3 # 4 5 $ 6 # 7) and the related European ‘harmonic minor’ scale (1 2 $ 3 4 5 $ 6 # 7, ex. See European art music’s four scales, p.See European art music’s four scales). Such modes are used frequently in popular melody from the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Southern Spain, the Arab world and parts of the Indian subcontinent. It should be added that much popular melody (e.g. Arabic, Indian, Indonesian) uses modes containing pitches incompatible with the Western division of the octave into twelve equal semitones (see Table See Western intra-octave intervals (ascending from cn to cn+1)).

Some non-diatonic modes

Perceived characteristics of modality

Mode names often reflect hegemonic identification of tonal vocabulary in ethnic terms like ‘Gypsy’; even the ‘church’ modes are named after ancient Greek provinces. From a contemporary Northern European or North American viewpoint, the phrygian mode is often thought to sound ‘Hispanic’, while other modes, already mentioned, are heard as ‘Arab’, ‘Balkan’, ‘Irish’ etc. US film music frequently uses such hegemonic perception of modality to transmit cultural stereotypes of place. In fact modes are probably just as efficient as instrumental timbre when it comes to establishing cultural location in audiovisual contexts. For example, while the sound of a koto or shakuhachi might in itself conjure up ‘traditional Japan’ to some non-Japanese listeners, it would be so much clearer if those instruments played something in the zokugako-sempô mode (ex. See Three other pentatonic modes).
Given that mode and mood are etymologically related it is no surprise to find that different modes are also perceived as connoting different moods. Such connotations are culturally specific, the equation of minor modes with ‘sad’ and major with ‘happy’ being largely valid within the Central European tonal system of art music and related styles but inapplicable to the music of most other cultures. Similarly, rock and pop music using aeolian harmony in a certain way has a tendency to be associated with alienation and the ominous,42 while mixolydian film and pop music veers more towards a mood of wide open spaces. Within African American music, descending minor pentatonic modes with ‘blue’ fifths are more likely to connect with blues, old times and oppression while melismatic major pentatonic melodies link with the positive ecstasy of gospel music.43
During the hegemony of Central European major-minor tonality, music from the continent’s ‘fringe areas’ (Spain, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans and British Isles) was often characterised by the musicological establishment as ‘modal’, because, although much music produced in those areas conformed to the central (ionian) norms of tonality, much of it — usually older forms of rural popular music— did not: it conformed to modes regarded as archaic by the European bourgeoisie during the ascendancy of that class. Some of these modes, notably those containing a flat seventh (dorian, mixolydian, aeolian) and the two anhemitonic pentatonic modes are regarded, rightly or wrongly, as typical of rural music from the British Isles. These modes blended with compatible tonal vocabularies of West African origin to contribute to the development of North American popular styles challenging the global hegemony of European major-minor tonality to the extent that the latter is now more likely than the former to own connotations of ‘the old order’.

Melody

Melody derives from the two ancient Greek words mélos (= a song, or the music to which a song is set) and ôdé (= ode, song, poem). In English the word seems to have three main meanings: [1] a monodic44 tonal sequence, accompanied or unaccompanied, perceived as a musical statement with distinct rhythmic profile and pitch contour; [2] the monodic musical foreground to which accompaniment and harmony are generally, at least within most popular music traditions of Europe and the Americas, understood as providing the background; [3] all such monodic tonal sequences and/or aspects of musical foreground within one complete song (e.g. ‘ Auld Lang Syne is a popular Scottish melody’). It should be noted in the latter case that mélodie, Melodie, melodia, melodi (French, German, Latin and Scandinavian languages respectively) can in popular parlance sometimes denote the entirety of any tune or song, including lyrics and accompaniment, in which melody, according to definitions [1] and [2], is a prominent feature.

Defining parameters

General characteristics of melody

It is difficult to be precise or consistent about which characteristics constitute melody since its definition according to [1] and [2] above is contingent on cultural consensus. Nevertheless, the following parameters, most of them documented by Stefani and Marconi (1992: 13-24), seem to determine what is more likely to be popularly understood, at least within a mainstream European or American context, as typically melodic about a monodic tonal sequence:

easy to recognise, appropriate and to reproduce vocally;

perceptible as occupying durations resembling those of normal or extended exhalation (the ‘extended present’, i.e. consisting of phrases lasting between about two and ten seconds);

delivered at a rate usually ranging from that of medium to very slow speech;

generally articulated with rhythmic fluidity and unbroken delivery of tonal material within one sequence: legato rather than staccato;

distinctly profiled in terms of pitch (melodic contour) and rhythm (accentuation, metre, relative duration of constituent events);

delivered with regularity and metric articulation of breathing;

relative simple in terms of tonal vocabulary;

tending to change pitch by intervallic steps rather than by leaps;

spanning rarely more than one octave.

In other words, a monodic tonal sequence is less likely to be considered melodic if it is not clearly tonal, or if it is difficult to appropriate and reproduce, or if it is too long or too short; or if its constituent notes are delivered too fast, or if it consists of no more than one or two very long notes, or if it is broken up into very short units consisting of just one or two notes, or if there is little or no metrical regularity between phrases, or if it exhibits no clear tonal or rhythmic profile, or if it is too chromatic, or if it contains too many large intervallic leaps or covers too large a pitch range. Indeed, it is for the following reasons that monodic sequences of the following types, even though they may exhibit some melodic traits, are less likely than, for example, nursery rhymes, folk tunes or jazz standards to be considered melodic: rap declamation and Sprechgesang because of unclear tonal articulation, recitative because of irregular metricity, riffs because they are too short. Even so, some riffs are more singable than the melodic lines they accompany (e.g. the ‘verse’ parts of Satisfaction (ex. See Rolling Stones: Satisfaction), Layla (ex. See Derek and the Dominoes: Layla) and Hoochie Coochie Man (Waters, 1970)), while some literally monotonous monodic sequences of tones still qualify as melody (e.g. the verse parts of Samba de una nota só (ex. See A. C. Jobim: Samba de una nota só), Un homme et une femme (Lai, 1966) and Subterranean Homesick Blues (Dylan, 1965a)). Moreover, important sections of some well known melodies are based on little more than repetitions or sequential variations of motifs almost too short to qualify as melodic phrases, for example Volare (ex. See D. Modugno: Volare) and Les feuilles mortes (ex. See J. Kosma: Les feuilles mortes).

Rolling Stones: Satisfaction

Derek and the Dominoes: Layla

A. C. Jobim: Samba de una nota só

D. Modugno: Volare

J. Kosma: Les feuilles mortes

Metaphorical nomenclature

The nature of melody can also be understood by examining words and expressions either commonly associated or partly synonymous with melody. For example, melodic line emphasises the monodic and sequential (horizontal) aspects of melody while melodic phrase and melodic statement draw attention to the relationship between melody and human speech or declamation. Motive and motif denote movement by definition and melodies are thought of as movement in two-dimensional space — forwards, upwards, downwards, etc. —, often with culturally specific patterns of implication (expected or unexpected continuation, see Meyer 1987), while melodic profile, contour and figure refer to qualities of distinct linearity, shape and gesture. Strain, meaning tune, also links melody with notions of distinct characteristics (cf. ‘a genetic strain’) while lay, another archaic synonym, is defined as ‘a song’ or ‘short poem meant to be sung’ ( Oxford Concise Dictionary , 1995).
Tune, Middle English variant of tone, highlights melody’s tonal nature, while air, in the sense of tune, suggests speech, gesture and movement that have metaphorically taken off (‘melody hath wings’, ‘ volare - cantare ’, see ex. See D. Modugno: Volare), thereby emphasising the notion of melody as heightened discourse transcending speech.
These transcendent notions of melody can in turn be related to the connotations of monodic pitched declamation necessitated, in the interests of comprehension and before the invention of microphones and PA systems, by acoustic settings characterised by long reverberation times, for example the chanting of prayers and biblical texts in cathedrals and large churches, or the muezzin’s call to prayer from the minaret across the town in the relative stillness of dawn or dusk. They are also related to the everyday observation that emotionally heightened speech exhibits greater variation in pitch and resembles melody more than does talking in a normal voice.
In short, melody is tonal monodic movement, temporal and spatial, which is inextricably connected with human utterance, both gestural and vocal.

Typologies of melody

Structurally, melodies resemble or differ from one another according to several factors: [1] pitch contour, [2] tonal vocabulary, [3] dynamics and mode of articulation (incl. phrasing), [4] rhythmic profile, [5] metric and periodic organisation. They can also be categorised in ‘experiential’ (perceptual, semiotic) categories (Stefani and Marconi, 1992: 111-229). Structural and experiential typologies are interrelated.

Structural typologies

Pitch contour

Figure See Melodic contour categories shows the basic pitch contour types used by ethnomusicologists in the classification of melody (Skog 1977). Each contour type is illustrated by the following examples: [1] rising – ex. See Cole Porter: I Get A Kick Out Of You (1934), See (a) Misirlou; (b) E. Y. Harburg: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (phrase 1); [2] falling – See The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies (English trad.), See (a) Misirlou; (b) E. Y. Harburg: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime (phrase 2) and [3] tumbling – ex. See Muddy Waters (cited by Miani, 1992), See Nashville Teens: Guitar intro. to Tobacco Road (Loudermilk, 1964), See Beatles: Can’t Buy Me Love (1964), See Vigneault/Rochon: Je chante pour (1978) (bars 1-2); [4] V-shaped – ex. See Ellington: Satin Doll (1953, start of middle 8), See Warszawjanka (Polish trad.) (bars 3-4), See The Grand Old Duke of York (English trad.) (bar 1); [5] centric – ex. See Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas: From A Window (1964), See Mark Snow: X-Files Theme (1996); [6] terraced ( falling ) – ex. See Warszawjanka (Polish trad.) (bars 1-2), See The Grand Old Duke of York (English trad.) (bars 3-4) and [7] ( rising ) – ex. See The Grand Old Duke of York (English trad.) (bars 2-3), See Vigneault/Rochon: Je chante pour (1978) (bars 4-9); [8] oscillatory – ex. See Beatles: If I Needed Someone (1965). and the double V-shape of ex. See Ellington: Satin Doll (1953, start of middle 8); [9] arched – ex. See Ack Värmeland du sköna (Swedish trad.), See Beatles: Yesterday (1965) (phrase 2); [10] wavy – ex. See P. De Rose: Deep Purple, See Beatles: Yesterday (1965) (phrase 4-6).

Melodic contour categories

Boundaries between melodic contour types are fluid. For example, the double V-shape of ex. See Ellington: Satin Doll (1953, start of middle 8) has an oscillating character while parts of ex. See Beatles: If I Needed Someone (1965).’s oscillatory profile have the shape of a flat V. Similarly, many centric contours (ex. See Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas: From A Window (1964)-See Mark Snow: X-Files Theme (1996)) can also be heard as oscillating, while some ‘wavy’ phrases can be heard as short arcs (ex. See P. De Rose: Deep Purple, bars 2-4, 4-5). Moreover, a ‘tumbling strain’ is little more than an overriding melodic descent with initial rising anacrusis or with intermediate, subsidiary rises in pitch (hence ‘tumbling’). It should also be noted that certain styles show a predilection for particular contours, for example blues-related styles for the ‘tumbling strain’ (ex. See Muddy Waters (cited by Miani, 1992)-See Beatles: Can’t Buy Me Love (1964)).
However, pitch contour alone is not enough to distinguish the style or character of one melody from another: example See (a) Misirlou; (b) E. Y. Harburg: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime illustrates how tonal vocabulary, rhythmic profile and metricity, not pitch contour, can be the operative distinguishing factors.

Cole Porter: I Get A Kick Out Of You (1934)

The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies (English trad.)

Muddy Waters (cited by Miani, 1992)

Nashville Teens: Guitar intro. to Tobacco Road (Loudermilk, 1964)

Beatles: Can’t Buy Me Love (1964)

Ellington: Satin Doll (1953, start of middle 8)

Warszawjanka (Polish trad.)

Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas: From A Window (1964)

Mark Snow: X-Files Theme (1996)

The Grand Old Duke of York (English trad.)

Beatles: If I Needed Someone (1965).

Ack Värmeland du sköna (Swedish trad.)

P. De Rose: Deep Purple

Beatles: Yesterday (1965)

(a) Misirlou; (b) E. Y. Harburg: Brother, Can You Spare A Dime

Vigneault/Rochon: Je chante pour (1978)

Tonal vocabulary

God Save the Queen: commutations of tonal vocabulary

The popular device of putting major-key tunes into the minor and vice versa testifies to the fact that changing tonal vocabulary can radically alter the character of a melody. Example See God Save the Queen: commutations of tonal vocabulary shows the first six bars of the UK national anthem’s melody: [1] as is, in the major key (ionian mode) and with the same melodic contour, rhythm, metre, etc., but in the following modes — [2] aeolian (or dorian); [3] phrygian; [4] Hijjaz; [5] doh-pentatonic; [6] la-pentatonic (see pp. See Common anhemitonic pentatonic modes,See The seven European heptatonic ‘church’ modes). All these variants would most probably be heard by members of the UK cultural mainstream as ‘ethnic’ or ‘folksy’: ([2], [5] and [6] as possibly ‘Celtic’, [5] and [6] conceivably also as ‘Chinese’, [3] as vaguely ‘Spanish’, and [4] most likely as ‘Arabic’. The same six bars could also be changed, without altering other parameters, to create a whole-tone or octatonic mode, or even a dodecaphonic tone row if you wanted to produce a more unsettling effect on your listeners.

Dynamics and mode of articulation

The structure and character of a melody are determined also by [1] how loud or soft it is presented in part or as a whole (yelling and crooning the same tune produces radically different effects); [2] what timbre or instrument is used to articulate it — imagine Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love delivered bel canto, or your national anthem played on kazoo; [3] in what tessitura it is executed (influences whether it will sound growled or screeched, squeaky and strained); [4] if lyrics are included, what kind of accent and diction are used — imagine Queen Elizabeth II delivering a Grandmaster Flash ‘message’, or a stirring union song crooned by Bing Crosby or mumbled in the manner of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke in the verse part of Creep (1992).
The characteristics of a melodic line are also determined by [4] its phrasing and accentuation. Examples See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tunea and See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tuneb are of identical length, melodic contour and tonal vocabulary, but differ so radically in phrasing that ex. See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tuneb needs notating alla breve . Whereas the original version (ex. See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tunea), with its staccato punch and syncopation, is well suited to the funky trickster character played by Eddy Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop , ex. See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tuneb resembles more some lyrical or pastoral theme with an archaic flavour and would be more appropriate played by strings than by a synthesiser of mid nineteen-eighties vintage.

Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tune

Rhythmic profile

As much as showing difference in phrasing, example See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tune also illustrates how difference of rhythmic profile influences the affective character of melody. But rhythmic profile is also related to bodily movement and posture, as well as to patterns of language.

Body and melodic rhythm

Example See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tunea’s rhythmic profile — its staccato quality with short pauses, its lack of anacruses, its sudden disjunct leaps for agogic effect, its anticipated downbeats (especially bar 4) — corresponds much more closely with skipping or jumping movement than with the flowing, legato, constant type of movement immanent in the regularly measured downbeat dotted crotchets, crotchets and upbeat quavers of example See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tuneb.

Song of the Volga boatmen (Russian trad.)

Similar links between melodic rhythm and body movement can be found in work song. For example, the slow, heavy task of hauling barges, with its repetitive to-and-fro of body and arms, is better helped by the kind of steady, measured rhythm and short phrases (as well as restricted oscillatory pitch contour) evident in ex. See Song of the Volga boatmen (Russian trad.) than by the brisk 2/4 or 6/8 call-and-response patterns of continuous melody spanning an octave which can be found in numerous British shanties sung to help with nautical work involving quicker, more circular types of movement (‘capstan’ and ‘windlass’ songs, the latter sung when hoisting sails with a winch). A-Roving, Billy Boy (ex. See Capstan Shanty Billy Boy (English trad., Northumbria)) , Bound For The Rio Grande, What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor (ex. See The Champs: Tequila (1958) – mixolydian shuttle in F.) Fire Down Below and Johnny Come Down To Hilo all belong to this category.

Capstan Shanty Billy Boy (English trad., Northumbria)

Clear links also exist between body and melodic rhythm in dance music. The mazurka, polka, schottische, jig, reel, slow waltz, Viennese waltz, samba, cueca, cha-cha-cha, rumba, tango, etc. exhibit unique and easily identifiable traits of melodic rhythm. Similar observations can be made about differences between the melodic rhythm of lullabies, marches, dirges, cattle calls, field hollers etc. whose melodic rhythm tallies with the relevant type of bodily activity and/or acoustic conditions of that activity.

Language and melodic rhythm

Since melody is so often a matter of singing words, melodic rhythm is also determined by the rhythmic particularities of the language in which those words are sung. For example, a melodic phrase in 6/8 ending e | eq , especially with descending pitch contour (ex. See Ferlosio: El gallo negro. at ‘negro’, ‘roja’, ‘el día’, ‘cantaría’), is less likely to occur in English than in Latin language song, as evidenced by the following trisyllabic words and phrases: ‘volare’, ‘cantare’, ‘amore’, ‘nel cuore’ (Italian), ‘querida’, ‘contigo’, ‘belleza’, ‘te quiero’, ‘llorando’, ‘tristeza’, ‘tan solo’, ‘en pena’, ‘tus ojos’, (Spanish). On the other hand, phrases in 2/4 or 4/4 starting with the onbeat ‘Scotch snap’ | eq. or | xq.. (‘inverted dotting’), especially with rising pitch contour, are unlikely to appear in Germanic or Latin-language song simply because, with the exception of Gaelic and Hungarian, English is the only European language to feature this trait (e.g. ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘do it’, ‘hit it’, or, in ex. See Comin’ Through The Rye (Scottish trad.), at ‘Jenny’, ‘body’, ‘pettie’, ‘coatie’, ‘coming’).

Ferlosio: El gallo negro.

Comin’ Through The Rye (Scottish trad.)

Culturally specific melodic formulae

Melodies can also be recognised as belonging to particular cultures not only due to idiosyncrasies of language rhythm but also because particular turns of melodic phrase have become by convention associated with those cultures. This observation applies not only to patterns of melodic ornamentation, for example the onbeat jjjq q figure often found in popular notions of Hispanic melody (ex. See jjjq q Hispanicisms in library music: (a) Cordigliera; (b) Duncan: Wine Festival; (c) Haider: Spanish Autumn) or in the semiquaver triplets of Irish traditional music (ex. See Poitín (Irish trad.) – semiquaver triplets), but also to more substantial patterns of pitch contour and rhythmic profile (ex. See (a) Rossa’s Farewell to Erin (Irish trad.); (b) The Boys of Wexford (Irish trad.); (c) Soldier, Soldier (English trad.)-See Vårvindar friska (Swedish trad.)).

jjjq q Hispanicisms in library music: (a) Cordigliera; (b) Duncan: Wine Festival; (c) Haider: Spanish Autumn

Poitín (Irish trad.) – semiquaver triplets

Major key phrases descending to degree 6 (the final notes of ex. See (a) Rossa’s Farewell to Erin (Irish trad.); (b) The Boys of Wexford (Irish trad.); (c) Soldier, Soldier (English trad.)) are typical of many traditional melodies from the British Isles, as are pentatonic melodic cadences of the type 8[1]-6-5 (ex. See Skye Boat Song (Scottish trad., quoted from memory) bar 3, first time), 6-1 (ex. See Skye Boat Song (Scottish trad., quoted from memory) bar 3, second time), and those containing repeated final tonics (ex. See Repeated final note cadence formulae. (a) John Barleycorn (English trad.); (b) The Banks of Newfoundland (English trad.); (c) The Kerry Recruit (Irish trad.); (d) The Bonny Labouring Boy (Irish trad.)a-c) or final fifths (ex. See Repeated final note cadence formulae. (a) John Barleycorn (English trad.); (b) The Banks of Newfoundland (English trad.); (c) The Kerry Recruit (Irish trad.); (d) The Bonny Labouring Boy (Irish trad.)d). Strings of appoggiature, on the other hand, highly unusual in popular melody from the English-speaking and Celtic sphere, are all the more common in popular melody of the European classical tradition (ex. See Carissimi: Aria ‘I Triumph!’ (Vittoria!)) and its pastiches (ex. See Abba: Fernando (1975)) or of Arabic origin (ex. See Egyptian trad. (quoted from memory)-See Mameluk, a.k.a. Aya-Zehn (Egyptian trad.)). Finally, the (5)-4-1 cadence is typical of traditional Russian melody (ex. See Russian 5-4-1 melodic cadences: (a) V. Soloviov-Sedoy: Podmoskovskoye Vechera; (b) Aturov: Partisan Song) while 8[1]- # 7-5 patterns are an idiosyncratic trait of certain types of traditional Scandinavian melody (ex. See Mikaelidagen (Swedish trad.)-See Vårvindar friska (Swedish trad.)).

Skye Boat Song (Scottish trad., quoted from memory)

(a) Rossa’s Farewell to Erin (Irish trad.); (b) The Boys of Wexford (Irish trad.); (c) Soldier, Soldier (English trad.)

Repeated final note cadence formulae. (a) John Barleycorn (English trad.); (b) The Banks of Newfoundland (English trad.); (c) The Kerry Recruit (Irish trad.); (d) The Bonny Labouring Boy (Irish trad.)

Carissimi: Aria ‘I Triumph!’ (Vittoria!)

Abba: Fernando (1975)

Egyptian trad. (quoted from memory)

Mameluk, a.k.a. Aya-Zehn (Egyptian trad.)

Russian 5-4-1 melodic cadences: (a) V. Soloviov-Sedoy: Podmoskovskoye Vechera; (b) Aturov: Partisan Song

Mikaelidagen (Swedish trad.)

Vårvindar friska (Swedish trad.)

Patterns of recurrence

Melody can also be categorised according to the manner in which constituent phrases or motifs are organised into a larger whole in patterns of variation and recurrence. Middleton (1983) suggests a sliding scale of musical syntaxes stretching from the monadic (circular, mythic, unchanging, etc.) to the infinite set (linear, narrative, teleological, ‘nothing to be heard twice’), a scale along which any type of musical statement, including melody, can be placed.
Monadic melody is typical for song whose narrative interest resides in other factors than those mentioned so far, such as in changing lyrics or varying metre (e.g. chanted psalms, prayers) or in harmonic progression (e.g. One Note Samba , ex. See A. C. Jobim: Samba de una nota só, Hucklebuck , ex. See Roy Milton: Hucklebuck (1949).). At the other end of the scale are phenomena such as the dodecaphonic tone row, constrained by avant-garde imperatives of non-repetition and absent from popular song. Instead, patterns of recurrence and difference vary from the relatively simple, single-layered (or ‘immediate’) to the multi-layered (or ‘delayed’). Common processual devices in European and North American popular melody are reiteration, recapitulation, sequence, inversion, anaphora, epistrophe and ‘ ready-steady-go ’. The ordering of melodic segments on a larger scale, for example into the eight-bar sections of a thirty-two-bar (AABA) jazz standard, is a question of song form rather than of melodic typology.
Reiteration —consecutive recurrence(s) of identical motif or phrase — is found in examples See Rolling Stones: Satisfaction and See Derek and the Dominoes: Layla (p.See Derek and the Dominoes: Layla, both melodic line and riff), as well as in examples See Song of the Volga boatmen (Russian trad.) (p.See Song of the Volga boatmen (Russian trad.), bars 1 and 2, bars 5-6 and 7-8), See jjjq q Hispanicisms in library music: (a) Cordigliera; (b) Duncan: Wine Festival; (c) Haider: Spanish Autumn b (bar 1, p. See jjjq q Hispanicisms in library music: (a) Cordigliera; (b) Duncan: Wine Festival; (c) Haider: Spanish Autumn), See Mameluk, a.k.a. Aya-Zehn (Egyptian trad.) (bars 1-2, p.See Mameluk, a.k.a. Aya-Zehn (Egyptian trad.)) and See Roy Milton: Hucklebuck (1949). (p.See Roy Milton: Hucklebuck (1949)., throughout).
Recapitulation —recurrence of motif or phrase after different intervening material— is illustrated at the musematic level by example See Song of the Volga boatmen (Russian trad.) in which the motif of bars 1 and 2 recurs in bar 4 after different material in bar 3 and again in the final bar of the song. Melodic recapitulation is more commonly thought of on a larger scale, for example in terms of recapitulating the A section of a song in AABA form, such as the first line of example See Beatles: Yesterday (1965) ( Yesterday , p.See Beatles: Yesterday (1965)) recurring after an intervening middle section. However, recapitulation on this time scale is more an issue of overall song form than of melodic profile.
Sequence —reiteration of rhythm and relative pitch profile at a different absolute pitch— can be found in Autumn Leaves (ex. See J. Kosma: Les feuilles mortes), El gallo negro (ex. See Ferlosio: El gallo negro.), Poitín (ex. See Poitín (Irish trad.) – semiquaver triplets, bars 1-2, 5-6), Vårvindar friska (ex. See Vårvindar friska (Swedish trad.), bars 1-2), and in Gershwin’s Foggy Day in London Town (ex. See Gershwin: A Foggy Day in London Town (1937) adapted from Middleton (1983:251).) where ‘B’ (bars 1-4) is repeated a fourth higher (bars 5-8) and ‘A1’ ( d-a $ , bar 3) acts as a sequential variation of ‘A’ ( c-e $ , bar 1).

Inversion (repeating rhythm profile but substituting up for down and vice versa in pitch profile) also occurs in example See Gershwin: A Foggy Day in London Town (1937) adapted from Middleton (1983:251). whose bars 9-12 are an upside-down variant of bars 1-4.

Anaphora —repeating the same element at the start of successive phrases— is inherent in terms of rhythmic and relative pitch profile in any sequential repetition (see above). It can also recur at the same absolute pitch, as in the d-c # -d q q q figure of ex. See Melodic anaphora — (a) Silvers: April Showers; (b) Akst: Am I Blue? as quoted by Middleton (1983: 250). or the e q ( e ) c-d figure of ex. See Melodic anaphora — (a) Silvers: April Showers; (b) Akst: Am I Blue? as quoted by Middleton (1983: 250).b. Even the single note f recurring at the start of each short motif in Axel F (ex. See Faltermeyer: Axel F (1984) – (a) original; (b) as legato tune) and rising in turn to different pitches ( a $ , b $ , c , d $ , f ) functions anaphorically.

Epistrophe —repeating the same or similar element at the end of successive phrases— is found at the words ‘far away’, ‘here to stay’ and ‘yesterday’ of bars 3, 5 and 7 in Yesterday (ex. See Beatles: Yesterday (1965)).

‘Ready-steady-go’ is a popular melodic device consisting of a motif, either simply reiterated or repeated by sequential transformation (usually once or twice) and followed by new rhythmic material or pitch pattern. For example, bars 1-2 and 3-4 of Akst’s Am I Blue? (ex. See Melodic anaphora — (a) Silvers: April Showers; (b) Akst: Am I Blue? as quoted by Middleton (1983: 250).b, p.See Melodic anaphora — (a) Silvers: April Showers; (b) Akst: Am I Blue? as quoted by Middleton (1983: 250).) are rhythmically identical (‘ready’ and ‘steady’) but instead of leading to yet another long held note, the same anaphoric figure in bar 5 introduces the tonally and rhythmically different material of bars 6 and 7 (‘go!’). The device can work at several levels, as shown in ex. See Rossini: William Tell Overture (1829) a.k.a. The Lone Ranger theme (1949). The function of such repetition is propulsive and similar to that of gaining momentum by circling on the spot before hurling a discus.

Roy Milton: Hucklebuck (1949).

Melodic anaphora — (a) Silvers: April Showers; (b) Akst: Am I Blue ?
as quoted by Middleton (1983: 250).

Rossini: William Tell Overture (1829) a.k.a. The Lone Ranger theme (1949)

Gershwin: A Foggy Day in London Town (1937) adapted from
Middleton (1983:251).

Connotative typologies

Families of melody definable according to the kind of structural parameters mentioned above are often grouped together in more connotative, perceptual or semiotic categories. Concepts such as the Arabic maqam , Iranian dashtgah and Indian raga all exemplify the formalisation of links observed in particular cultures between, on the one hand, certain categories of tonal, rhythmic and motivic structure and, on the other, certain regional locations or ethnic groups, or specific moods, attitudes, activities, types of behaviour, times of the day, etc.
Stefani and Marconi (1992: 111-229) expound several connotative categories of popular melody in Western culture. These include ‘dream’, ‘desire and tenderness’, ‘meditation’, ‘supermusic’ and ‘recitation’. For example, the authors characterise ‘dream’ structurally in such terms as slow movement, smooth articulation, arched or waved pitch profile spanning a large range, phrase length well in excess of normal breathing, continuous transformation of main motif(s), unexpected intervals, lack of hard scansion and accentuation, etc. More connotatively they note similarities with slow motion camera work, soft focus, suspended animation, large spaces, fluid gestures like unpredictable flight, beauty, the unreal, etc. This melodic category, including its connotations, is exemplified by Schumann’s Träumerei (ex. See R. Schumann: Träumerei (1838)), Deep Purple (‘When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls’, ex. See P. De Rose: Deep Purple), Stardust (ex. See Carmichael. Stardust (1929)), The Dream of Olwen (ex. See C. Williams: The Dream of Olwen (1947)) and In A Monastery Garden (ex. See Ketelby: In A Monastery Garden (1915)).

R. Schumann: Träumerei (1838)

Carmichael. Stardust (1929)

C. Williams: The Dream of Olwen (1947)

Ketelby: In A Monastery Garden (1915)

‘Supermusic’, on the other hand, exemplified by the main themes from Star Wars (ex. See (a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978); (c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963) (e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)a), Superman (See (a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978); (c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963) (e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)b), Dallas, Dynasty, Kojak (ex. See (a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978); (c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963) (e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)e), The FBI (See (a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978); (c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963) (e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)c), Counterspy, The Gun Fight at O.K. Corral, How The West Was Won (ex. See (a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978); (c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963) (e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)d), The Champions , etc., uses staccato articulation at brisk pace, favours rising leaps of the fourth, fifth and octave, etc. (see also Tagg, 2000: 191-200).
‘Recitation’ as an experiential rather than formal category of melody in popular song is usually articulated metrically rather than parlando rubato (recitative). It is characterised structurally by a reciting tone to which most of the phrase’s syllables are set, as well as by a cadence formula and, often, an initial lead-in motif. Recitation tunes are generally of a declamatory character. For example, the underlined syllables in ‘How many roads must a man walk down before they can call him a man?’ from Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind (1963) are all declaimed at the fifth ( a in D major). The principle of lead-in motif ( intonatio/initium ), reciting tone ( tuba or tenor ) and cadence formula ( terminatio /finalis) is illustrated in example See ‘Recitation’ melody — (a) Latin psalmody, tone 2 (plagal); (b) Brassens: Le gorille (1952); (c) The Who: Pinball Wizard (1969). ‘Once the voice is activated’ ( intonatio )… ‘it stays still in a manner of speaking, giving no further information about itself and drawing the listener’s attention to the “message”, i.e. to the words’ (Stefani & Marconi, 1992: 132).

(a) J. Williams: Star Wars (1977); (b) J. Williams: Superman (1978);
(c) B. Kaper: FBI (1965); (d) A. Newman: How The West Was Won (1963)
(e) W. Goldenberg: Kojak (1972)

‘Recitation’ melody — (a) Latin psalmody, tone 2 (plagal); (b) Brassens: Le gorille (1952); (c) The Who: Pinball Wizard (1969)

Melisma

Before pushing on to polyphony, it is worth mentioning one final concept which, though not entirely a tonal issue, can be useful when describing melodic lines: melisma. From Ancient Greek’s melizein (= to warble or play an instrument), melisma means a string of several consecutive notes sung to one syllable.45 Melismatic is usually contrasted with syllabic, the latter meaning that each note is sung to a different syllable. Melismatic and syllabic are used relatively to indicate the general character of a vocal line in terms of notes per syllable, some lines being more melismatic, others more syllabic. It is doubtful if a sequence of notes sung staccato to the same syllable, for instance ‘oh-oh-oh-oh-oh’ in Peggy Sue (Holly 1957) or Vamos a la playa (Righeira 1983), constitutes a melisma because each consecutive ‘oh’ is articulated as if it were a separate syllable (staccato = detached, cut up). A melisma, on the other hand, is executed legato, each constituent note joined seamlessly to the preceding and/or subsequent one (legato = joined). Since inhalation before the start of a new phrase constitutes a break in the melodic flow, no melisma can last longer than the duration of one vocal exhalation. Since several notes are sung to one syllable within the duration of one musical phrase, long note values are uncommon in melismas.

Melismatic singing differs more than syllabic singing from everyday speech in that it is uncommon to change pitch several times, within the duration of one spoken syllable. When such spoken pitch change does occur in English, for instance a quick descending octave portamento on the word ‘Why?’, it tends to signal heightened emotion. Together with the general tendency to regard melody as a form of heightened speech transcending the everyday use of words (p. See General characteristics of melody, ff.), it is perhaps natural that melismatic singing is often thought to constitute a particularly emotional type of vocal expression. Such connotations are further underlined by the fact some of the most common words to be sung melismatically in English-language popular song are exclamations (e.g. oh!, ah!, yeah!46) or potentially emotional syllables like love, feel, alright, pain, fly, goodbye and why?).

Melismas occur in most musical cultures, for instance in the muezzin’s call to prayer, in raj music, in the alap sections of Northern Indian dhrupad performances, in the Saami jojk, in the Russian bïlinï, Ukrainian duma, Romanian doina, etc.47 They also occur in most plainchant settings of Alleluia and Kyrie eleison, as well as at particularly emotional points in arias from the European opera and oratorio repertoire. While Lutheran chorales are largely syllabic, a significant minority of low-church hymns do feature melismatic passages (ex. See Jesus Christ is Ris’n Today (Methodist Hymn Book, 1933, no. 204)).

Jesus Christ is Ris’n Today (Methodist Hymn Book, 1933, no. 204)

Particularly influential on the development of melisma in Anglo-American popular song are various florid, highly ornamented, often pentatonic vocal traditions originating in the British Isles, i.e. the sort of vocal delivery found in Gaelic keening (caoine) and slow, solo ballad singing in the sean-nós style (ex. See Extract from Cuil Duibh-Re, as performed by Diarmuid O’Súillebháin (transcr. Tomás O’Canainn, repr. in Ling 1997: 92)).48

Extract from Cuil Duibh-Re, as performed by Diarmuid O’Súillebháin (transcr. Tomás O’Canainn, repr. in Ling 1997: 92)

These ‘old’ ways of singing appear to have been the antecedents of the florid vocal lines produced by the Old Baptist and similar ‘dissenting’ congregations of the USA’s middle south (ex. See Extract from Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah, Old Regular Baptist congregation; adapted from transcr. in Wicks (1989:73)).49

Extract from Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah, Old Regular Baptist congregation; adapted from transcr. in Wicks (1989:73)50

Such vocal techniques have strongly influenced the popular music of both white and black US Americans, the former through white gospel music into songs by Country artists like Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt and George Jones (Wicks 1989), the latter through black gospel singers into the mainstream of the international pop music market. The protracted, proclamatory ‘We - - - - - - - ll!’ at the start of Shout (Isley Brothers 1959; Lulu 1964) provides an early example of the gospel melisma in Anglo-American hit recordings. Similar melismas were not uncommon in Motown vocal lines (e.g. ‘Mr Po-o-o-o-stman’, Marvelettes 196151 and Beatles 1963), nor in Merseybeat influenced by gospel styles (ex. See Beatles: Not A Second Time (1963)-See Searchers: Goodbye, My Love (1965)).

Beatles: Not A Second Time (1963)

Searchers: Goodbye, My Love (1965)

Since the types of melisma mentioned here have, since World War II, been most widely disseminated through recordings made or influenced by African-American artists, it is often assumed that such melismatic techniques are of African origin. However, given that none of the forty music examples in the chapters dealing with vocal lines in African music (Nketia 1974: 147-174) contain syllables set to more than two separate notes, the popular assumption that melismatic ornamentation is inherently ‘black’ must be challenged in the same way that the identification of the banjo (an instrument of African origin) with ‘white’ music must also be regarded as historically inaccurate (Tagg 1989).
In the 1980s pentatonic melismas deriving from gospel traditions became very common in recordings by solo divas like Whitney Houston who, for instance, on the word ‘much’ in the phrase ‘I wish I didn’t like it so much’ from So Emotional (Houston 1987), launches into a florid pentatonic melisma consisting of at least six short separate notes each time the phrase occurs in the lead-up to the chorus. These virtuoso techniques had become such a mannerism of abandon by the 1980s that they were easily parodied, for example by film composer Nile Rodgers in the ‘Soul Glow’ shampoo jingle from the Eddy Murphy movie Coming to America (1988), or by Frank Zappa who, in You Are What You Is (1981), set prosaic concepts like ‘appropriate’ and ‘post office’ to ecstatically delivered pentatonic gospel melismas.

Polyphony

Three meanings

The tonal elements presented so far in this book have been discussed either as generally applicable concepts like tone, pitch and tuning, or in terms of monody, modes and melody. One of the definitions of melody was ‘the monodic musical foreground to which accompaniment and harmony are generally… understood as providing the background.’ Both harmony and accompaniment by definition imply that at least two notes are sounded at the same time, i.e. that the music is polyphonic.
Polyphony, from Greek poly (= ‘many’) and fonê (=‘sound’), can mean three things. [1] It is music in which at least two sounds of clearly differing pitch, timbre or mode of articulation occur at the same time. [2] It is music in which at least two sounds of clearly differing fundamental pitch occur simultaneously. [3] It is a particular type of contrapuntal tonal polyphony used by certain European composers between c.1400 and c.1650.52 The third usage of the term, popular with teachers of European art music history, is incongruous because the type of polyphony alluded to is just one among many. Polyphony in this very restricted sense is often used as the opposite of homophony which, according to definitions one and two, is also unmistakably polyphonic (p. See Homophony, ff.). Indeed, it is wise to abandon the third meaning of polyphony.
According to the first definition, any music featuring the simultaneous occurrence of sounds for which no fundamental pitch is discernible can be called polyphonic, especially when such sounds are produced by different instruments or voices articulating different rhythmic patterns. The notion of a polyphonic synthesiser rhymes well with this general definition since such instruments allow for the simultaneous occurrence of several different non-tonal as well as tonal sounds, whereas monophonic synthesisers cater only for one pitch and timbre at a time. This general definition of the term means that things like drumkit patterns, or solo vocal line plus hand clap/foot stamp (like Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz from 1971), or fife and drum music (e.g. Royal Welsh Fusiliers) can all be qualified as polyphony.
The second definition of polyphony is tonal and is of particular relevance to this book. Polyphony in this sense implies that unison playing or singing without accompaniment is monophonic but that voices singing in parallel intervals constitute polyphony. A single or unison melodic line accompanied by a drone is also, at least strictly speaking, polyphonic according to both definitions [1] and [2].
The degree to which music can be regarded as polyphonic is determined by the cultural habitat of that music’s producers and users. For example, the consecutively articulated notes of guitar or piano accompaniment to popular songs are usually both intended and perceived as harmony or as chords (and thereby polyphonic), not least because the strings of the accompanying instruments are left to sound simultaneously and/or because of reverberation created within the instrument itself or by electroacoustic means, as, for example, in the introduction to House of the Rising Sun (Animals, 1964) or Your Song (Elton John, 1970). On the other hand, the fast descending scalar pattern played on sitar at the end of a raga performance (e.g. Shankar 1970) may for similar reasons of reverberation sound like a chord to Western ears but it is by no means certain that such a cascade of notes is in its original context intended to be heard as a chord or cluster.
There are numerous types of tonal polyphony. This chapter deals only with the basics of drones, heterophony, homophony and counterpoint. Harmony, the favourite topic of conventional music theory in the West, will be discussed in Chapters See ‘Classical’ harmony-See Modal loops and bimodality.

Drone

As the simplest type of tonal polyphony, drones are basically ongoing notes that sound at the same pitch throughout part or whole of a piece of music. Drones occur in two basic forms, both of which are mainly used as accompaniment to a melodic line, vocal or instrumental, performed either in another register (usually higher) or by another instrument. In its first form a drone is a continuously sounding single note or combination of two notes, such as produced by most sorts of bagpipes.53 While the first type of drone is uninterrupted and continuous, the second has a rhythmic character in that note[s] of identical pitch are repeated at short intervals. Drones act as tonal reference point and background for the changing pitch of other strands in the music. They are a common feature in many forms of popular music throughout the world and are more usually instrumental than vocal.
Vocal drones can be found in, for example, the antiphonal rhythms of traditional hymn singing from Tahiti (himene) as well as in riffing vocal repetitions heard in some types of gospel singing in the USA (e.g. Swan Silvertones, 1952: 1:15-2:00). Instrumental drones can be produced by the same player on the same (set of) instrument(s) that perform the melody, or by a separate (set of) instrument(s): bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, launeddas (Sardinia) and Jew’s harp belong to the former category; didgeridoo (Australia), komuz (Kirghizstan) and tanpura (India) to the latter. Some string instruments, such as the vina (India) and other members of the lute family, are provided with one or more drone strings to be plucked at appropriate junctures for purposes of tonal reference and rhythmic impetus. Rhythmic drone effects are also produced by fiddlers who make frequent, often percussive, use of open strings (e.g. Robertson 1922; Ståbi et al. 1965), and by guitarists plucking the low strings, often when adjusted to open-chord tuning (e.g. Hooker 1960; Cooder 1974). Drone effects of a more continuous rhythmic character are often heard in the open-fifth guitar or banjo arpeggiations of artists steeped in European and North American folk traditions (e.g. Folk och Rackare 1976; Steeleye Span 1971; Watson 1971; see also p. 128, ff. ).
The connotative charge of drones varies according to cultural perspective and media context. In the heyday of Central European art music drones were often used to evoke pastoral or bucolic settings (e.g. Handel 1741; Beethoven 1808b; Alfvén 1904). More recently, drones have become increasingly common and can be heard in, for example, folk rock, ambient and ‘Celtic mood’ music (bygone rural days, broad stretches of time and space, etc.), as well as in such styles as house, techno and other types of ‘modern dance music’. In the latter case, the drone’s connotations, if any, have yet to be clearly established. However, the connotations of one latter-day drone are quite obvious: the ‘doomsday mega-drone’ underscoring ongoing threat scenarios in such popular TV productions as V (De Vorzon & Conlan, 1983) or Twin Peaks (Badalmenti, 1990).54
It seems that the drone has deeper connotations on the Indian subcontinent. For example, Coomaraswamy (1995: 77-80) describes the tanpura, the droned string instrument of much raga music which is heard before, during and after the melody, as ‘the timeless and whole which was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.’ The account continues:

‘The melody itself, on the other hand, is the shifting character of Nature which comes from the Source and returns to It’… ‘Harmony is an impossibility for us, for by changing the solid ground on which Nature’s processes rely we would be creating another melody, another universe and destroying the peace on which Nature rests’.

Heterophony

Heterophony derives from Ancient Greek héteros (‘other’) and fonê (‘sound’). It means polyphony resulting from simultaneous differences of pitch produced when two or more people sing or play roughly the same melodic line at the same time. Heterophony can denote everything from the unintentional polyphonic effect of slightly unsynchronised unison singing to the intentional discrepancies between vocal line and its instrumental embellishment which are characteristic of much music from Greece, Turkey and the Arab world (ex. See Heterophonic cadential formulae in Greek Tsamiko music).

Heterophonic cadential formulae in Greek Tsamiko music55

The clarinet part in example See Heterophonic cadential formulae in Greek Tsamiko music creates momentary dyads in relation to the melody. Those dyads result from the ornamentation of the vocal line it so clearly follows ( f-e-e-d-c-d ) and produce tonal differences that are heterophonic rather than contrapuntal or harmonic.
Heterophony is also at the heart of most forms of Indonesian gamelan music in which several layers of heterophony can combine to produce a chordal effect (Hood, 1980). Another type of heterophony can occur in the final chorus of trad jazz performances when instrumentalists improvise their individual variants of the same tune at the same time. Another example of multi-strand heterophony can be heard in traditional ‘home worship’ singing from the Scottish Hebrides where each florid pentatonic improvisation on the same hymn tune is thought to present each individual’s ‘relation to God on a personal basis’.56

Hebridean home worship - Martyrdom ( Musique des Îles Hébrides , 1968, transcr. Knudsen in 1970)

The five vocal strands of example See Hebridean home worship - Martyrdom (Musique des Îles Hébrides, 1968, transcr. Knudsen in 1970) seem to base their melismatic ornamentations on the first four melody notes of a popular pentatonic and homophonic low-church hymn tune (Martyrdom, ex. See Martyrdom (Congregational Praise, no. 390, b. 1-8)). The relevant four notes in example See Hebridean home worship - Martyrdom (Musique des Îles Hébrides, 1968, transcr. Knudsen in 1970) are d-g-e-d , i.e. 5  1  6  5, the same scale degrees as the initial e $ -a $ -f-e $ (‘As pants the heart’) in the soprano voice of example See Martyrdom (Congregational Praise, no. 390, b. 1-8).

Homophony

Martyrdom (Congregational Praise, no. 390, b. 1-8)57

From the Greek homófonos (= sounding in unison or at the same time), homophony is the type of polyphony in which different strands of the music (instruments, voices, parts, tracks) move in the same rhythm at the same time. Homophony is in other words the polyphonic antithesis of counterpoint. Even if example See Martyrdom (Congregational Praise, no. 390, b. 1-8) contains a few passing notes occurring in some parts and not others,58 it is still basically homophonic because all syllables both start and finish at exactly the same time in all four voices. Example See Old 100th (French Psalter, 1551, b. 1-6), however, is 100% homophonic.

Old 100th (French Psalter, 1551, b. 1-6)

One of the most common homophonic traits in pop music has been singing or playing in parallel thirds or sixths (ex. See Searchers: Goodbye, My Love (1965)) but, as the voice profiles in bars 2-3 of example See Old 100th (French Psalter, 1551, b. 1-6) show (at ‘earth do dwell’), contrary motion is in one sense just as homophonic as parallel motion.

In conventional historical musicology, homophony is sometimes opposed to what is confusingly called just ‘polyphony’, as if homophony were not a type of polyphony and is if polyphony only meant a particular kind of contrapuntal polyphony practised by European composers of the late Renaissance (see p. See Three meanings). This culturally restrictive use of the term is problematic because no viable label remains to denote the sort of polyphony in which one voice or instrumental part leads melodically while others provide chordal accompaniment. Moreover, chordal accompaniment in many types of popular music is characterised by riffs (bass, guitar, backing vocals, etc.) and thereby, as we shall see, to a significant extent contrapuntal. It would certainly be misleading to call such music ‘homophonic’.

Music can be considered homophonic (or contrapuntal) only in relative terms. For example, although example See Cwm Rhondda (refrain) (John Hughes, 1873-1932), taken from one of the most popular hymn tunes in nonconformist Christianity, like examples See Martyrdom (Congregational Praise, no. 390, b. 1-8) and See Old 100th (French Psalter, 1551, b. 1-6), fulfils the criteria of homophony, it is less homophonic than example See Old 100th (French Psalter, 1551, b. 1-6) because: [1] each voice in example See Cwm Rhondda (refrain) (John Hughes, 1873-1932) has a clearly melodic character, proceeding often in contrary motion to the tune (soprano); [2] the alto, tenor and bass parts in bars 1 and 2 include passing notes below longer notes in the tune; [3] the excerpt ends with a small contrapuntal intervention on the E 7 chord in the alto and bass parts.

Cwm Rhondda (refrain) (John Hughes, 1873-1932)

Example See Abba: Fernando (1975): fade-out exhibits both homophonic and contrapuntal traits: while lead singer and backing vocalists sing homophonically, their combined, parallel melodic gesture is counterpointed by bass line, drumkit and by flauto dolce ostinato doubled by strings. This mixture of homophonic and contrapuntal elements provides the basic texture for most music in pop, rock and related styles of music.

Abba: Fernando (1975): fade-out

Counterpoint

Counterpoint (adj. contrapuntal), from Latin contrapunctus (originally punctus contra punctum = ‘note against note’) means two things. [1] It is a type of polyphony whose instrumental or vocal lines clearly differ in melodic and/or rhythmic profile. [2] It also means, by analogy, the intentional contradiction in music of concurrent verbal or visual events, especially in the audiovisual media.59 It is the first meaning that concerns us here.
Counterpoint is often understood as the horizontal aspect of polyphony, harmony as its vertical aspect. The problem with this popular distinction is that since chords, the building blocks of harmony, are usually sounded in sequence and since each constituent note of each chord can often be heard as horizontally related to a note in the next one (‘voice leading’), harmony frequently gives rise to internal melodies, some of which may ‘clearly differ in melodic and/or profile’, i.e. they will exhibit contrapuntal traits. Conversely, the simultaneous sounding of lines with differing melodic profile entails by definition consideration of the music’s vertical aspect — its harmony. Therefore, since melodic profile is as much a matter of distinct rhythm as of pitch, it is more accurate to consider homophony (music whose parts move at the same time in the same rhythm) as a the polyphonic antithesis to counterpoint. Even so, polyphonic music can be considered contrapuntal or homophonic only by degree, never in absolute terms. For example, the final chorus in most trad jazz band performances of almost any number (many instrumentalists improvising different rhythmic and tonal lines around the same tune and its chords, e.g. King Oliver, 1923), though partly heterophonic (p.See Heterophony See Heterophony, ff.), is more contrapuntal than the preceding solos (one melodic line, a bass line and chordal rhythm). Such final choruses are decidedly more contrapuntal than conventional hymn singing (voices moving to different notes in the same rhythm), much more so than doubling a vocal line at the third or sixth (following the same pitch profile in the same rhythm). In short, the more differences there are between concurrent parts in terms of melodic rhythm and pitch profile, the more contrapuntal the music.
Imitative counterpoint of the type taught to composition students in Western universities is uncommon in popular music, even though a few well-known canons (Frère Jacques, Three Blind Mice, London’s Burning, Row Row Row Your Boat, for example) must be among the most frequently sung songs in the world. Indeed, despite the fact that canonic singing is also widespread in some parts of Africa,60 the most common forms of counterpoint in popular music are: [1] the simultaneous occurrence of different melodies in the overlap between call and response (ex. See Overlapping call and response in Please Mr. Postman (Marvelettes, 1961)); [2] the contrapuntal interplay between (a) melodic line, (b) accompanying or lead instrument, (c) bass line (ex. See Melodic line, lead and bass line in Satisfaction (Rolling Stones, 1965)).

Overlapping call and response in Please Mr. Postman (Marvelettes, 1961)

Melodic line, lead and bass line in Satisfaction (Rolling Stones, 1965)

Although the lead guitar and bass lines in Satisfaction may superficially look like heterophony in parallel fifths, their timbre and rhythmic patterning are quite different — q q. e h iq q. (guitar) vs. q. q. iiq q. q. iiq (bass). Moreover, both parts contrast with the two-note recitation-tone profile of the vocal line and with its rhythmic pattern q iq q iq eq q. . It’s all a matter of degree. The more differences there are in polyphony between parts or voices in terms of rhythm, melodic profile, start and end points, etc., the more it will be contrapuntal. The fewer the differences on those counts, the more homophonic it will become until we arrive at tunes in parallel thirds, parallel fifths (organum)61 and parallel octaves (unison).

‘Classical’ harmony

Intro

There are two interrelated reasons for devoting two long chapters to the rudiments of harmony. One is that more words have probably been written about the topic, more hours devoted to its teaching and learning, than to any other aspect of tonality. A sizeable arsenal of terms has been developed over the last 200 years in efforts to put the chordal practices of European art music (c.1730-c.1910) into an internally coherent system allowing students to understand its workings and to emulate (hopefully also sometimes to break) its rules in their own music making. The sheer volume of that body of knowledge is daunting. It demands careful judgement when deciding what to include and exclude from this simple overview of what I think needs to be known about the workings of harmony in various types of popular music.62
The second reason is that harmony is one of the most established subjects in seats of musical learning; that is in institutions rarely renowned for serious interest in the tonal elements of everyday life for the popular majority. Such conservatism may have a few advantages but it certainly makes the explanation of music whose chords just don’t follow the norms of the European art music (the repertoire on which the conventional teaching of harmony is almost exclusively based) into an extremely difficult task. That’s why this chapter is devoted mostly to ‘classical harmony’, including ‘classical harmony in popular music’, and Chapter See ‘Non-classical’ harmony to ‘non-classical harmony’.

History and definitions

Harmony seems, at least in Western musical circles, to be understood in three ways. [1] In general it denotes certain aspects of tonal polyphony, in particular those relating to the simultaneous sounding of several tones to produce chords and chord sequences. [2] Harmony refers to the chordal and accompanimental rather than melodic or strictly contrapuntal aspects of music, as in statements like ‘the harmonies under that tune are very simple’ or ‘this melody is difficult to harmonise’. [3] It also denotes the theoretical systematisation of [1] and [2], e.g. ‘we all studied harmony and counterpoint at university’.
Since chord was mentioned three times in the definitions just given, it needs at least a temporary definition at this point because chords as such are not examined in any detail until Chapter See Chords. By chord is simply meant the simultaneous sounding of two or more different tones, each with a different note name, by any polyphonic instrument or by any combination of instrument(s) and/or voice(s).
From the Greek armonÛa , meaning a joining, marriage or arrangement, harmonía, in both Greek and Latin, came to mean agreement, concord and, in music, whatever sounded good together. At seats of musical learning in medieval Europe harmony initially meant the simultaneous sounding of two notes only (dyads), in much the same way as a backing vocalist singing in parallel thirds with the main tune is said to be ‘singing harmonies’. European theorists of the Renaissance extended the notion of harmony to the simultaneous sounding of three notes, thus accommodating the ‘common triad’, with its third as well as fifth.63 Since then the teaching of harmony has largely concentrated on the chordal practices of music in the Central European tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, i.e. with European art music and with styles of popular music relating to that tradition.64
More recently the notion of harmony has been popularly applied to any music which sounds in any way chordal to the modern Western ear, for example, the vocal polyphony of certain African and Eastern European traditions, or the polyphonic instrumental practices of some Central and South-East Asian music cultures, even though chords and Western harmony may be neither intended nor heard by members of the musical community in question. Moreover, whereas popular English-language parlance may use the word harmony to describe things like a melody plus drone, or two voices singing in parallel homophony, conventional musicology would tend to reserve the word for chordal practices relating to the Central European classical tradition. However, since popular music encompasses a wider range of tonal polyphonic practices than those conventionally covered by Western music scholars, it is not inappropriate to qualify any type of tonal polyphony as harmony. This wider meaning of the term makes it possible to speak of a variety of harmonic practices and thus to treat harmonic idiom as one important set of traits distinguishing one style of music from another.
The two most commonly used types of harmony in Western popular music are classical (see below) and modal (p. See Tertial modal harmony, ff.). Modal harmony can be subdivided into the general subcategories tertial and quartal.65 Since most writing on harmony deals with only one or two of these categories or subcategories (e.g. typically classical harmony, chorale harmony and jazz harmony), cardinal problems arise, as we shall see, when terms conventionally used with reference to one category of harmony, usually the classical, are applied to a much wider range of polyphonic tonal practices. Two conceptual areas are in particular need of clarification: [1] classical harmony, [2] triads and tertial harmony.

Classical harmony

Classical harmony is so called because it denotes the most common practices of tonal polyphony found in the globally influential body of Central European art music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such harmony is also commonly referred to as ‘triadic’ (see below), ‘diatonic’, ‘functional’, ‘tonal’, etc., but these qualifiers are all misleading since they can each be applied to harmonic practices diverging significantly from those of the European art music canon, its immediate precursors and successors. For example, all modal harmony using three-note chords is by definition triadic. It is also diatonic if, as is often the case, its tonal material can be derived from any heptatonic scale containing two semitone intervals. Moreover, virtually all harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal and absolutely none is without function. In short, although many popular music styles throughout the world may follow the basic harmonic principles of the European art music tradition, ‘classical harmony’ is probably the least inadequate way of referring to those principles.

Triads and tertial harmony

Due to the importance of harmonic narrative in European art music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, harmonic theory has been overwhelmingly dominated by terms suited to the description of that particular type of polyphonic practice.66 Similarly, terms applicable to any type of tonal polyphony (e.g. ‘triad’) have become so identified with phenomena peculiar to classical harmony and to its direct successors as to require redefinition when other harmonic idioms are discussed. Moreover, terms from pre-classical music theory have had to be resurrected and redefined to denote modern modal practices, and a few new concepts have been added to the arsenal to denote phenomena for which harmonic theory previously had no name. One such term is quartal harmony (p. See Quartal harmony, ff.), so called because from the viewpoint of European art music theory its most distinctive trait appears to be chords built on the stacking of fourths rather than of thirds. In fact the stacking of thirds seems to have needed no qualification as long as it was considered the norm from which all other practices were seen to diverge; but such a view is untenable when discussing the variety of harmonic idioms outside the European art music tradition and a general structural descriptor for harmony based on thirds becomes essential. Therefore, if harmony based on stacked fourths is called quartal, harmony characterised by the stacking of thirds will be called tertial (see ex. See Triads and tetrads in tertial and quartal harmony, p. See Triads and tetrads in tertial and quartal harmony).

Triads and tetrads in tertial and quartal harmony

The historical legacy of European classical music theory is so strong in so many institutions of musical learning that such a common phenomenon as the triad, which occurs in several harmonic idioms, is so named as if no triads existed in modal or quartal harmony. If dyad means any combination of two differently named tones, then triad means any chord containing three such notes, tetrad four, pentad five, and so on. However, as the expression common triad indicates, triads built on the superimposition of two adjoining thirds are so common in classical harmony that triadic has, in conventional Western music theory, come to qualify not chords containing three different notes (i.e. triads) but chords built on the stacking of thirds. That is illogical, confusing and misleading. Therefore, when considering music in several harmonic idioms, including those associated with European art music of the classical period, it is necessary to use triad and triadic in their original sense only. Harmony based on stacked thirds will consequently be called tertial, not triadic, and ‘triad’ will mean any chord, tertial or not, containing three different notes .
The tonal polyphony of European art music is often regarded as having developed into a form which by around 1700 crystallised into an established set of practices which were codified after the event to become part of the ‘theory’ taught in seats of musical learning. Its establishment is associated with the transition from contrapuntal to more homophonic types of tonal polyphony in Central Europe, and with the adoption of the melody-accompaniment dualism as a basic compositional device. It is a set of practices in which harmony is generally associated with instrumental or vocal accompaniment to a foreground melody, as is evident in expressions like ‘background harmony’, ‘backing vocals’, ‘underlying chords’, etc. Practically all European art music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries uses harmonic practices which also form the basis of tonal polyphony in such common types of popular music as operetta, parlour song, music hall, waltzes, marches, hymns, community songs, national anthems, romantic ballads, Schlager, evergreens, jazz standards, swing, bebop, etc. This broad tradition of tertial harmony also pervades some styles of Country music and film music. Since this type of harmony, which, for reasons given on page See Classical harmony See Classical harmony, we’ll call classical, has exerted a strong global influence on everyday music making over the past two hundred years we’ll obviously need to explain its rudiments.

Syntax, narrative, and linear ‘function’

Classical harmony is generally thought to encompass the sequential (horizontal, linear) as well as simultaneous (vertical) aspects of chords. It is in other words not solely a matter of instantaneous sonority or of short, repeated chord sequences. On the contrary, one of its most salient features is the implication of tonal direction of notes within chords (ex. See (a) (b)), such horizontal linearity being instrumental in elemental processes of musical narrative (opening, continuation, change, return, closure, etc.) in the European classical repertoire. The importance of these syntactic functions in the European art music tradition led influential musicologists to qualify its harmony as ‘functional’ ( Funktionsharmonik ). Although this nomenclature is misleading in that it erroneously assumes all other harmonic practices to be without function, its insistence on syntactic function underlines important differences of expression and narrative organisation between European classical harmony and other types of tonal polyphony.

Voice leading, the ionian mode, modulation and directionality

In conventional European music theory a harmonic dissonance is basically any chord that isn’t a common triad containing a root note, a major or minor third and a perfect fifth. In classical harmony dissonances are usually prepared as suspensions (notes held over from a previous chord) and resolved on to consonances (e.g. C sus4 → C or → Cm; see example See (a) (b)b), while closure is assumed to be effectuated by the perfect cadence V → I (e.g. G 7 → C in C). In these basic chord progressions the concept of voice leading is paramount in that the perfect fourth in relation to the keynote (e.g. the f of G 7 in relation to C) usually descends to the third ( e in relation to C) and the major seventh (e.g. the b 8 of the G or G 7 chord in relation to C) usually ascends to the keynote (ex. See (a) (b)). These voice leading rules are not arbitrary: they derive from the fact that the most popular array of notes within an octave during the rise and hegemony of the bourgeoisie in Europe was the ionian mode, a.k.a the standard major scale (e.g. c to c on the white notes of the piano).

The ionian is the only heptatonic diatonic mode to feature at the same time: [1] major triads on all perfect intervals of the scale (tonic, fourth and fifth, e.g. C, F and G in C major, see Table See Examples of anticlockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language popular song (Types: real, virtual, both [real and virtual]), p. See Examples of anticlockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language popular song (Types: real, virtual, both [real and virtual])); [2] a dominant seventh chord, containing a tritone, on the fifth degree (e.g. G 7 , containing f 8 and b 8 , in C); [3] semitone intervals, one ascending and one descending, which adjoin two of the tonic triad’s three constituent notes, i.e. leading note to tonic ( # 7 → 8, or b 8 → c in C) and subdominant to mediant (4 → 3, or f → e in C). In simple terms, the ionian mode’s fourth is felt to be pulled down to the major third a semitone below, while its major seventh or leading note is so called because it is heard as leading up to the keynote one semitone above. This simple principle of voice leading endows the ionian mode with its unique qualities of tonal directionality.

Ionian mode: leading notes and directionality

Although this ionian-mode directionality is that of the V → I cadence anticlockwise round the circle of fifths (e.g. G 7 →C, see p. See Circle of fifths or key clock, ff.), the ionian mode’s semitones can also pull in the opposite direction because the third degree can rise as leading note to the fourth (e.g. e → f in C, ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalitya) while degree 1 (or 8) can descend to degree 7 (e.g. c → b 8 , ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityb), which also happens to be major third in a simple triad on V (G).67 In the first instance (3→4), harmonic direction goes anticlockwise (flatwards) in that degree 3 ( e ) of the tonic (C) acts as leading note to a triad on IV(7 → 8 or e → f in F; ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityc). In the final instance the tonic becomes a fourth descending to degree 3 of the chord on V (4 → 3 or c → b 8 in G, ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityd). See For explanation of roman numerals as chord shorthand, see p. 139, ff. Clockwise direction round the circle of fifths (e.g. from C to G; see p. See Circle of fifths or key clock, ff.) is usually enhanced by raising the tonic’s fourth by one semitone (e.g. from f to f # in the D 7 chord of ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityd), such alteration making for a clearer direction towards the dominant by introducing a second, rising semitone ( f # → g ) to complement the falling semitone already mentioned ( c → b 8 , ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityb, c). Raising the fourth by a semitone (e.g. f to f # in C) moves the tonic of the ionian mode to the dominant, from I to V (e.g. C → G), and constitutes a change of key or modulation, especially if a pivot chord is included in the progression (ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityd). Conversely, lowering the leading note by half a tone (e.g. from b 8 to b $ as in the C 7 chord of ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalityc) will introduce a descending semitone ( b $ → a 8 ) to underline the subdominantal direction of the semitone rising to the keynote of the new ionian mode (e.g. e 8 → f , ex. See Ionian mode: leading notes and directionalitya, c). The introduction of accidentals providing ascending or descending leading notes for V-I cadences in other keys than the main tonic is an essential characteristic of classical ionian-mode harmony because such harmonic chromaticism is a precondition for the type of modulation without which the basic narrative of most European art music would be unthinkable.
The notion of narrative linked to the modulatory potential of the ionian mode is important because it helps explain the overriding interest in ‘horizontal’ tonal development that scholars of the European art music tradition have tended to show in the kind of extensional dynamic that characterises much of the relevant repertoire composed in the period between roughly 1730 and 1900.68 It is an interest that concentrates on the extended development of ideas over time in a piece of music (hence ‘extensional’) at the expense of the more ‘vertical’ or intensional dynamic of simultaneously sounding strands of music whose interest lies more in intricacies of timbre, articulation, voicing, as well as in registral, acoustic and metric or rhythmic placement in ‘present time’.69

The circle of fifths

The sort of harmonic directionality just described relies heavily on tonal relationships between a given keynote’s common triad (a.k.a the tonic triad) —‘ I ’ (‘one’) for short— and common triads constructed on degrees 4 and 5 —‘ IV ’ and ‘ V ’— of that same keynote’s major scale. In the key of C, for example, I means a C major triad while IV and V mean the major triads F and G respectively. As shown in Figure See Circle of fifths or key clock (p. See Circle of fifths or key clock), the keys of F ( IV ) and G major ( V ) are each one step away from the central key of C major ( I ): F is one step away anticlockwise —‘flatwards’— and G one step clockwise —‘sharpwards’. The note g is located one fifth above or one fourth below c and the note f one fourth above or one fifth below c . In terms of classical harmony, the note g (degree 5 in C) is also called the dominant and the tertial tetrad on that note, G 7 (contains g b d f ), is often referred to as the key of C’s dominant seventh (V 7 ). Similarly, f (degree 4 in C major) is the same key’s subdominant note and a triad based on that note — F (contains f a c )— is, still in terms of classical harmony, a subdominant triad ( IV ) in the key of C. The same relationships and terms apply for any of the twelve keys: E $ is V or dominant and D $ is IV or subdominant in A $ ( I ); B is V or dominant and A is subdominant in the key of E, and so on.70
Figure See Circle of fifths or key clock also shows that a minor key is linked to each major key —C major to A minor, E major to C # minor, etc. The basic nature of this link relates to key signature.71 For example, neither C major nor A minor contain any sharps or flats in their shared key signature, while E major and C # minor both take four sharps, A $ major and F minor four flats, and so on. The operative adjective in this pairing of one minor with one major key is relative, a word which in this context has a very specific meaning: if a piece in C major contains a section in A minor, that A minor section is said to be in the relative minor (relative to C, that is), and if a piece in F minor modulates to A $ major it is said to modulate to the relative major. Relative minor keys are placed three ‘hours’ earlier (flatwards, anticlockwise) on the key clock than the major key based on the same tonic (e.g. A major is at three o’clock but A minor at twelve) while relative major keys are situated three ‘hours’ later (sharpwards, clockwise) than their minor-key variant (e.g. F minor is at eight o’clock and F major at eleven).

Circle of fifths or key clock

The circle of fifths is a central concept of tonality in Western music theory since the advent of equal tone tuning. Its main functions are: [1] to visualise the system of keys and key signatures used in much music of the Western world; [2] to facilitate understanding of harmonic progressions found in such music. The circle of fifths is a tonal concept applied to harmony rather than to melody, not least because intervallic leaps of a fourth or fifth are more common in bass lines than in tunes. It is of particular use in the study of popular music in most jazz idioms as well as in other styles influenced by European traditions of tertial harmony. But why are fifths so central to questions of harmony and tonality?
It has been known since ancient times that an interval of twelve superimposed fifths is, with a minimal margin of error (the Pythagorean comma or 0.24% of one semitone per octave), equal to an interval of eight octaves, i.e. that the frequencies of pitches one fifth apart are separated by a factor of 12:8 or 3:2 (×1.5) when ascending and of 2:3 (×0.67) when descending. The concept also assumes that the interval of a fourth (4:3 or ×1.33 up and 3:4 or ×0.75 down) is complementary to that of the fifth within an octave, so that ascending a fourth and then descending an octave (e.g. c 3  f 3  f 2 ) will land on the same pitch as just descending a fifth (e.g. g 3  f 2 ). Similarly, ascending a fifth and then descending an octave (e.g. c 3  g 3  g 2 ) will end up on the same pitch as just descending a fourth (e.g. c 3  g 2 ). Hence, a series of alternately falling fifths and rising fourths, running anticlockwise round the complete circle of fifths visits every note in the twelve-tone chromatic scale within the range of a single octave (ex. See Circles c-c of (1) falling 5ths/rising 4ths; (2) rising 5ths/falling 4ths, line 1). The same applies to a series of alternately rising fifths and falling fourths running clockwise except that you have to cover an eleventh before returning to c (ex. See Circles c-c of (1) falling 5ths/rising 4ths; (2) rising 5ths/falling 4ths, line 2).

Circles c-c of (1) falling 5ths/rising 4ths; (2) rising 5ths/falling 4ths

Although clockwise movement round the circle of fifths traces an arc of rising fifths or falling fourths, Figure See Circle of fifths or key clock is never called a ‘circle of fourths’, probably because classical harmony’s overriding sense of direction towards closure depends entirely on anticlockwise movement that virtually always culminates in a V-I perfect cadence. This statement may seem evident in practice to jazz and classical musicians but that familiarity can cause problems when the V-I anticlockwise pull of classical harmony becomes so ingrained and overtaught, so established and unquestioned, that the ability to hear or perform modal harmony correctly can be seriously impaired. I’ll try to address that issue in the next chapter but it is worth raising briefly here since the centrality of V-I cadences in classical harmony relates directly to the circle of fifths.72

Cadential mini-excursion

There are four main cadence types in classical harmony, two of which take one step flatwards, the other two one step sharpwards round the circle of fifths. Having repeatedly underlined the centrality of the flatwards V-I perfect cadence in classical harmony, I feel it needs no further introduction. That leaves the other three types to discuss. The two cadences which proceed clockwise are called the half cadence or imperfect cadence and the plagal cadence. The second anticlockwise type is usually called an interrupted cadence.
The half cadence is so called because it marks the harmonic change from I to V in extremely common harmonic schemes like I V V I (e.g. C G G C in C or A E E A in A over, say, four, eight or sixteen bars) in which V is obviously the halfway house (ex. See Half/imperfect cadence halfway: E viva España (Vrethammar, 1973: chorus).).

Half/imperfect cadence halfway: E viva España (Vrethammar, 1973: chorus).

A typical half cadence, like the one in bars 3-4 of example See Half/imperfect cadence halfway: E viva España (Vrethammar, 1973: chorus)., which proceeds clockwise from I to V is a cadence because it harmonically marks a resting point on a different chord to the tonic; and it is half because it marks that change halfway through a longer harmonic scheme or process, such as the eight-bar period of ex. See Half/imperfect cadence halfway: E viva España (Vrethammar, 1973: chorus).. It is an imperfect cadence because it has no finality. By marking the end of a phrase or smaller part of a larger unit, at least half of which is still to come, it has the opposite effect of the perfect cadence V-I . Put simply, half or imperfect cadences ( I-V ) serve rather to open up harmonic processes and perfect cadences ( V-I ) to close them.73
Plagal cadences also run clockwise, but not from I to V : they take instead the single sharpwards step from IV to I . Since they end on the tonic, plagal cadences are associated with harmonic closure, as demonstrated by their use as the ‘Amen’ chord formula par excellence (e.g. D → A in A). That said, it seems significant that medieval music theorists chose the Latin word for ‘oblique’ (plagius, from Greek pl‹gioû meaning sideways, slanting, askance, misleading) to distinguish certain modes, not chords, from their ‘authentic’ variants and it’s interesting to note how the same adjective connoting falsity came to qualify the chordal ‘Amen ending’ from IV to I (e.g. D → A). Plagal cadences may in other words be endings but European music theory clearly does not consider them true, authentic, direct, complete, full, final or perfect. Those adjectives are of course reserved for the perfect cadence leading from V to I (e.g. E (7) → A).74
Interrupted cadences do exactly what their name suggests: they interrupt a ‘normal’ V-I cadence by substituting I with a closely related chord, most frequently the common triad on degree 6 of the relevant key, V → vi , for example E 7 → F # m in A, where F # m is relative minor; or, less commonly, V → $ VI (e.g. E 7 → F in A minor, where F is subdominant relative major). Proceeding from V to vi (or VI ) is of course an excellent way of interrupting the inevitable because vi leads anticlockwise round the circle of fifths to ii , which leads to V and, with the final/full/perfect cadence, back to I (in A: E to F # m, then F # m → Bm [or D] → E (7) → A). It is worth noting that the interrupted cadence is also referred to as ‘deceptive’ (trompeuse), ‘avoided’ (évitée), a ‘false conclusion’ (Trugschluss) and a ‘trick’ (inganno).
If anything demonstrates the supposed ‘normality’ of V-I closure in institutionally conventional notions of harmony it must surely be the distinction between qualifiers like, on the one hand, half, incomplete, plagal/oblique, interrupted, deceptive and false and, on the other, perfect/full ( V-I ). Yes, I’m making a plea here for harmonic cultural relativity; and to state my case as clearly as possible in this mini-excursion, I’ve included example See Uninterrupted final cadence on vi: Um Um Um Um Um (Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, 1964: final chorus and ending). as evidence that there need be nothing remotely interrupted, oblique, deceptive, false, unauthentic, incomplete, or imperfect about a final cadence landing on vi (F # minor), the relative minor triad of the song’s clear tonal centre ( I is unmistakably A major). There’s even a ritenuto to underline finality: eq . h instead of the usual eq e_h .75 To be blunt: classical cadence categories and assumptions about harmonic direction may be fine for the musical-cultural practices on which such conceptualisation is based but it would be absurd to assume that those categories and concepts apply to all types of music circulating on an daily basis in the modern media.

Uninterrupted final cadence on vi : Um Um Um Um Um (Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, 1964: final chorus and ending).

After that stern warning about harmonic cultural absolutism I think it’s safe to return to ‘business as usual’ with the circle of fifths. It’s also necessary because, as I’ve already mentioned, there’s also plenty of classical harmony in the music we hear on a daily basis.

The key clock

In the circle-of-fifths diagram on page See Circle of fifths or key clock keys and their signatures are arranged as the twelve hours of an analogue clock with C major and its relative A minor (no sharps and no flats) at twelve o’clock, and F # /G $ major, with their relative D # /E $ minor and with their six sharps or flats, appropriately at six. Moving clockwise, the number of sharps in each key signature increases (one for G major at one o’clock, two for D major at two, etc.) or the number of flats decreases (five for D $ major at seven o’clock, four for A $ major at eight, etc.). Since movement clockwise is by ascending fifths and since an increase in sharps or a decrease in flats implies upward movement, this tonal direction sharpwards towards the (from I to V, e.g. C to G) can be referred to as rising, while anticlockwise tonal movement flatwards towards the subdominant (from V to I or from I to IV, e.g. from G to C or from C to F) can be referred to as falling.

Circle-of-fifths progressions

Anticlockwise/flatwards

Examples of anticlockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language popular song (Types: real, virtual, both [real and virtual])

Song	Type	Anti-clockwise (falling) chord progression
Sweet Georgia Brown (Pinkard 1925)	real	(B7) E7 \| E7 \| A7 \|A7 \| D7 \| D7 \| G (III)- VI-II-V-I in G
The Charleston (Mack, 1923)	real	[B $ ] \| D7 \| G7 \| G7 \| C7 \| F7 \| B$ G7 \| C7 F7 III-VI-II-V-I in B$
Has Anybody Seen My Gal (Henderson, 1925)	real	F \| A7 \| D7 \| D7 \| G7 \| C7 \| F D7 \| G7 C7 III-VI-II-V-I in F
All The Things You Are (Kern, 1939)	virtual	Fm7 B$m7 \| E$7 A$Δ7 \| D$Δ7 • vi-ii-V-I-IV in A$ Cm7 Fm7 \| B$7 E$Δ7 \| A$Δ7 • vi-ii-V-I-IV in E$
Blue Moon (Rodgers, 1934)	virtual	N E$ Cm7 \| Fm7 B$7 O E$ \| (I)- vi-ii-V-I in E$
Jeepers Creepers (Warren, 1938)	both	(a) Gm9 C9 FΔ9 (b) Dm7 Gm7 C9 F6 \| Gm9 C9 \| (c) Am7-5 D9 Gm7 C9 F6 (a) ii V I (b) vi ii V I \| ii V \| (c) iii VI ii V I , all in F
Moonlight Serenade (Miller, 1939)	both	Bm7-5 E-9 \| Am7 D-9 \| Gm7 C-9 \|\| F +iv-VII-iii-VI-ii-V-I in F
Autumn Leaves (Kosma, 1946)	virtual	Gm7 C7 \| FΔ7 BΔ7 \| E7-5 A7 \| Dm iv-VII-III-VI-ii-V-i in D min.
Windmills of Your Mind (Legrand 1968)	virtual	E7 Am D7 GΔ7 CΔ7 F # m7 $ 5 B7 Em I-iv-VII-III-VI-ii-V-I in E min.
Bluesette (Thielemans, 1964)	virtual	[B$] \| Am7 D7 \| Gm7 C7 \| F7 B$7 \| E$ v ii-iii-vi-ii-V-I-IV in B$
Yesterday (Beatles, 1965a)	both	[F] \| Em7 A7 \| Dm \| B$(Gm7) C7 \| F vii-III-VI-IV(ii)-V-I in F

Table See Examples of anticlockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language popular song (Types: real, virtual, both [real and virtual]) shows that a certain predilection for real circles of fifths in US popular song from the 1910s and 1920s was superseded by preference for virtual variants in standards and evergreens of the thirties and forties. The virtual or key-specific circle-of-fifths is moreover a distinctive trait of the baroque style (Corelli, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, etc.) and is also quite common in European popular song showing classical influences.

Flatwise circle-of-fifths progressions are, as shown in Table See Examples of anticlockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language popular song (Types: real, virtual, both [real and virtual]) and example See Seventh chords in key-specific (virtual) sequence anti-clockwise round the circle of fifths: (i) C major; (ii) D$ major; (iii) G# minor., frequently constructed as a chain of seventh chords (sometimes also ninths, elevenths or thirteenths). Example See Seventh chords in key-specific (virtual) sequence anti-clockwise round the circle of fifths: (i) C major; (ii) D$ major; (iii) G# minor. (which assumes the presence of each chord’s root in the bass part) illustrates one way of playing such chains as key-specific circles in [1] C major, [2] D $ major, [3] G # minor. To effectuate any complete key-specific circle-of-fifths one step in the bass line will be a diminished fifth (between vii and IV in the major key, between ii and V in the harmonic minor, e.g. from F Δ 7 to Bm 7$5 in C major or in A minor), each of the remaining seven steps either falling by a perfect fifth or rising by a perfect fourth.77

Seventh chords in key-specific (virtual) sequence anti-clockwise round the circle of fifths: (i) C major; (ii) D $ major; (iii) G # minor.

Playing circle-of-fifth progressions such as these demands a minimum of physical effort because: [1] stringed bass instruments are tuned in fourths, facilitating leaps of the fourth, fifth and octave; [2] fifths, fourths and octaves are easy to pitch on brass instruments playing a bass line; [3] the constituent notes of any two contiguous seventh chords in a circle-of-fifths progression are, with the exception of the root, either immediately adjacent or the same (see ex. See Seventh chords in key-specific (virtual) sequence anti-clockwise round the circle of fifths: (i) C major; (ii) D$ major; (iii) G# minor.), this making chord changes easier in terms of hand and finger positioning for keyboard players and guitarists.

Clockwise/sharpwards: a provisional note

Clockwise (‘rising’) circle-of-fifths progressions may be less common than their anticlockwise counterparts but they do occur quite often in pop and rock styles using certain types of modal harmony, a matter explored more thoroughly in Chapter See Chord loops 1. For example, the mixolydian chord loop N $ VII-IV-I O runs clockwise (e.g. N B $ F C O ), as do all progressions listed in Table See Examples of clockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in English-language rock music.78

Examples of clockwise circle-of-fifth progressions in
English-language rock music

Artist: Song (detail)	Progression
Kinks: Dead End Street (1966; verse)	C G Dm Am — III VII iv i in A minor
Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar (1971; plagal extension of aeolian cadence)	(D $ )-A $ E $ -B $ F-C (ex. See Rolling Stones:See Brown Sugar (1971). Clockwise circle-of-fifths progression through plagal ornamentation of aeolian cadence.) ( $ II-) $ VI $ III- $ VII IV-I in C
Rolling Stones: Jumping Jack Flash (1969a; at ‘It’s alright. In fact it’s a gas.’)	D A E B — $ III $ VII IV I in B
Jimi Hendrix: Hey Joe (1967a; throughout)	C G D A E — $ VI $ III $ VII IV I in E
Irene Cara: Flashdance (1983; verse start)	B $ F Cm Gm — $ III $ VII iv i in G minor

Rolling Stones:

Brown Sugar (1971). Clockwise circle-of-fifths progression through plagal ornamentation of aeolian cadence.

We will return later to these sharpwards circle-of-fifths progressions from rock music. See Clockwise progressions are discussed in detail on pp. 210-212, 221-226. At this point, though, we need to finish our basic account of classical harmony and of it uses in everyday music.

Temporary dissolution of classical harmony

Historians of European art music tend to agree that the harmonic idiom of influential composers in the latter part of the nineteenth century became increasingly chromatic. Wagner’s constant modulations in the prelude to Tristan and Isolde (1859) and their link with notions of the ‘incessant projection of… longing without satisfaction and without end’ are often cited as an early example of that trend (Newman, 1949). The same discourse about narrative in European art music continues with the idea that, starting around 1910, exponents of twelve-tone composition like Schönberg no longer considered central tonal reference points (‘home keys’) as a valid principle for writing new tonal music. This meta-narrative about dodecaphonic music contributed to a widening of the gap between popular and art styles of music. Jazz harmony also underwent a process of chromaticisation in the 1940s with bebop’s increasing use of chords containing two tritones, the rising augmented fourth ( # 4) or falling flat fifth ( $ 5) providing yet another leading note to tertial harmony’s ascending major seventh and descending fourth.79

There were, however, other European art music reactions to late Romantic chromaticism, tendencies that offered more listener-friendly solutions to the problem, for example musical impressionism (e.g. Debussy, see ex. See Debussy: ‘Sarabande’ (Pour le piano (1901)): start of 5-bar quartal passage, p. See Debussy: ‘Sarabande’ (Pour le piano (1901)): start of 5-bar quartal passage), neo-classicism (e.g. Hindemith), and influences from folk music (e.g. Bartók). Debussy often used chords as sonorities in themselves without the constituent notes of each chord requiring voice leading into those of the next one,80 while music influenced by neo-classicism and interest in folk music outside Central Europe show clear traits of modality, often using quartal harmony (p. See Quartal harmony, ff.) which abandons the leading-note fixation of classical tertial harmony in favour of chords based on the fourth and fifth. Similar developments are found in jazz with the change from bebop into modal jazz forms.81 Even though twelve-tone techniques were very occasionally used for mystery or horror scenarios in film, it was the non-dodecaphonic art music tonality that was later appropriated by some forms of postwar popular music.

Classical harmony in popular music

Main characteristics

Mendelssohn: Oh! For the Wings of a Dove .

Tertial harmony of the type used in operetta, parlour song, marches, national anthems, musicals, in traditional church hymns (chorales), etc. largely follows the voice-leading practices of European art music: flat sevenths descend, sharp sevenths rise, voices may move in parallel thirds or sixths but never in parallel octaves or fifths. Dominantal modulation (changing key one step clockwise round the circle of fifths), V-I cadences and inversions of tertial triads and seventh chords are other common features in these types of popular music.
Examples See Mendelssohn: Oh! For the Wings of a Dove. and See James L Molloy: Love’s Old Sweet Song (1882), taken from two highly popular parlour songs, start by establishing the home key (tonic, I) by means of an ionian shuttle (I ↔V, bars 1-2 E $ ↔B $ in ex. See Mendelssohn: Oh! For the Wings of a Dove.; bars 1-4 F↔C in ex. See James L Molloy: Love’s Old Sweet Song (1882)), whence they both modulate to the dominant, ex. See Mendelssohn: Oh! For the Wings of a Dove. directly, using an F 7 in second inversion (bar 4), ex. See James L Molloy: Love’s Old Sweet Song (1882) via an initial V-I in D minor (bars 5-6), which then acts as pivot for the double dominant (G 7 ) and a V-I cadence in C (bars 7-8). Note also the frequency of dominant seventh chords containing the ionian mode’s two leading notes a tritone apart and how the major third in those chords ascends as leading note to the next chord’s tonic, while the flat seventh descends to the next chord’s third (see the small leading-note arrows in ex. See Mendelssohn: Oh! For the Wings of a Dove.). These traits, including sometimes use of tertial chords in their inversions, form the harmonic core of a global idiom of popular music which flourished during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Those traits can be found, in varying proportions, in such popular tunes as Adeste Fideles, La cucaracha, The Blue Danube, Le déserteur, Giâi phóng mièn nam , Jingle Bells, the German national anthem, L’hirondelle du faubourg , the Internationale , Liberty Bell, Light Cavalry , the Marseillaise, Milord, Onward Christian Soldiers , Rubinstein’s Melody in F, Cielito Lindo, Sous le ciel de Paris, Sancta Lucia, The Star-Spangled Banner, Waltzing Matilda (chorus), We Shall Overcome, When The Saints, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Workers of the World Awaken!82

James L Molloy: Love’s Old Sweet Song (1882)

Traits like [1] ionian-mode voice leading via the dominant seventh chord’s minor seventh and major third, [2] dominantal modulation, [3] falling V-I directionality, [4] the frequent occurrence of inversions have in fact become so indicative of European art music that they can be inserted as genre synecdoches83 in a context of non-classical harmony (e.g. pop and rock) to connote, seriously or humorously, high art rather than low-brow entertainment, deep feelings and the transcendent rather than the superficial and ephemeral (ex. See Altered supertonic seventh chord in fourth inversion: (a) Mozart: Ave verum corpus, K618 (1791); (b) Procol Harum: Homburg (1967b); (c) Abba: Waterloo (1974b)).

Subdominant second inversion as second chord: a ‘classical’ move — outline keyboard arpeggiation structure. (a) J S Bach: Prelude in C major from Wohltemperiertes Klavier , I (1722); (b) Elton John: Your Song (1970, transposed to C)84

Inversions through descending bass in major key: (a) J S Bach: Air from Orchestral Suite in D Major (1731, transposed to C); (b) Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale (1967); (c) bass line common to both (a) and (b)

Altered supertonic seventh chord in fourth inversion: (a) Mozart: Ave verum corpus , K618 (1791); (b) Procol Harum: Homburg (1967b);
(c) Abba: Waterloo (1974b)

Together with dance styles like bossa nova, jazz has relied heavily on a sense of harmonic direction similar to that of the European classical tradition. Long and sometimes quite complex chord sequences, an increasing amount of chromaticism, and the use of modulation are all key factors in many types of jazz. The popularity of the thirty-two bar standard as basis for improvisation bears witness to the essential role of harmonic narrative in jazz. Put simply, no standard jazz performance will work if musicians do not know or cannot follow the chord changes.

Possible renditions in C of VI-II-V-I sequence in main tertial idioms
of jazz harmony

Jazz harmony can be divided into four main historical idioms: [1] trad. jazz; [2] the swing era; [3] bebop; [4] non-tertial jazz. With the exception of [4], all jazz harmony follows the underlying principles as European art music: flat sevenths tend to fall, sharp sevenths rise, accidentals (alterations) are used for chromatic effect or for modulation, and there is pretty strict adherence to falling, subdominantal (V-I) progressions anticlockwise round the circle of fifths. Trad jazz harmony tends to use real circle-of-fifths progressions, adding sixths or sevenths to basic triads. Swing era harmony tends to favour virtual circle-of-fifths progressions with sixths, sevenths and ninths added to basic triads. Bebop harmony can be regarded as a radical expansion of swing harmony: it features considerable chromatic alteration, typically through tritone substitution which includes the flat fifth as an extra leading note, and by its use of chords of the eleventh and thirteenth. Basic differences between these jazz harmony idioms are illustrated in simplified form in example See Possible renditions in C of VI-II-V-I sequence in main tertial idioms of jazz harmony which shows varying treatment of the N VI-II-V-I O vamp sequence.85

Brief summary

The main characteristics of classical harmony, as found in hymns, national anthems and many types of popular song, as well as in most forms of jazz, can be summarised as follows:

chords are constructed by stacking superimposed thirds (tertial chord structure);

default mode is ionian, the only mode in which a tertial tetrad on any degree of the relevant heptatonic scale contains two leading notes in relation to the tonic triad ( I ); in the ionian mode that tetrad falls on scale degree 5 ( V 7 ) and is called a dominant seventh;

voice-leading (how individual notes in one chord link to individual notes in the following one) is important: flat sevenths descend, sharp sevenths rise, voices may move in parallel thirds or sixths but never in parallel octaves or fifths;

inversions of tertial triads and tetrads are quite common, as are conjunct bass lines;

initial outward harmonic movement (harmonic departure) tends to go sharpwards (clockwise) but the majority of chord changes proceed flatwards (anticlockwise) round the circle of fifths, ending with a V-I cadence ([[[[ vii → ] iii → ] vi → ] ii or IV → ] V → I );

only the V-I cadence is considered full, complete or perfect; classical harmony’s three other cadence types are called [1] ‘half’ or ‘imperfect’, [2] ‘plagal’ (= ‘oblique’) and [3] ‘interrupted’/‘false’/‘deceptive’.

As already stated, there’s still plenty of this type of harmony in what citizens of the Western world hear on a daily basis. But that everyday music contains, as I’ve also suggested, plenty of harmony that works differently. Those differences are the subject of the next chapter.

‘Non-classical’ harmony

Intro

This chapter presents a brief overview of some basic principles in two types of harmony circulating in the modern media: [1] tertial-modal and [2] quartal (p. See Quartal harmony). When trying to unravel how these types of harmony work it is in general counterproductive, if not downright misleading, to think in terms of interrupted and imperfect cadences, of dominants and subdominants, of grand harmonic narrative, flatwards directionality and the unstoppable current of classical tonality sweeping us all to our inevitable date with the final V-I ‘perfect’ cadence. In fact, even the ‘normally’ easy task of identifying an unequivocal keynote can be a futile exercise when dealing with music that seems to have none, usually because it contains, or alludes to, more than one conceivable tonic. The long and short of this paragraph is that it’s pointless trying to force the conceptual grid of conventional harmony lessons wholesale on to music that conventional harmony experts have between them spent countless lifetimes avoiding or trivialising.
Some of the issues just raised are examined more closely in Chapters See Chord shuttles, See Chord loops 1 and See Modal loops and bimodality, while Chapter See One-chord changes (‘One-chord changes’) confronts assumptions about harmonic impoverishment in pop by arguing that single chords almost always consist of at least two. However, before addressing those issues, it’s wise to be equipped with some basic concepts that may be of use when actually facing all the popular music that doesn’t conform to the rules of classical harmony.

Tertial modal harmony

By modal harmony is generally meant the use of chords that follow the tonal vocabulary of any of the seven church modes (p. See Diatonic ‘church’ modes, ff.). I’ll not be discussing locrian harmony because its tonic triad is diminished rather than, as in all the other cases, either major or minor, a fact that makes it harmonically unusable in any music including drones or held notes at the fifth, or in music where power fifths are the order or the day (heavy metal styles).86 Six modes remain: ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian and aeolian (see Table See Major triad positions in church modes). Of these six the ionian is sometimes regarded as non-modal because it has the same tonal vocabulary as the ‘good old’ European heptatonic major scale, the result being that only the dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian and aeolian modes are considered ‘truly modal’. I don’t agree with this special status granted to the ionian for several reasons. The fact that it has been, as we already saw (p. See Voice leading, the ionian mode, modulation and directionality, ff.), a particularly interesting, influential and familiar tonal vocabulary, in both Europe and globally, doesn’t mean that it isn’t just one mode among the others any more than I can kid myself, as a white European male, that the demographic ‘white European males’ isn’t just another demographic group among all the others, no matter how interesting I may want to think I am or how familiar I am with myself! But there are other, less ideological reasons for treating the ionian as just one mode among the others.

Ionian mode and barré

Although sequences of common triads in the ionian mode form the essence of tonal polyphony in many postwar popular music styles, such harmonic practice —for example, as found in Latin American urban styles like cúmbia or son , in urban African musics like high life and kwela, as well as in most pop, rock and soul music— cannot be qualified as classical for two quite prosaic reasons. Firstly, such music rarely conforms to European art music conventions of voice leading because many barré chord progressions involve a sequence of parallel fifths and octaves (forbidden in classical harmony), for example between the triads on IV and V of the ionian La Bamba loop ( N I-IV-V O ). Similarly, bottleneck guitar techniques rely entirely on chords strung together in parallel motion. Secondly, it is clear that such chord loops, consisting rarely of more than four different chords, function in a radically different way to progressions in the idiom of classical harmony, not least because tertial loops of this type contain little or no chromaticism, nor do they not modulate, nor contribute in themselves to the construction of musical narrative. Although such loops may change from one (section of a) song to another, their main function is to provide a fitting tonal dimension to underlying patterns of rhythm, metre and periodicity. Their function is not to provide long-term harmonic direction but to generate a more immediate or continuous sense of ongoing tonal movement and to act as tonally appropriate accompanimental motor. They are, so to speak, the tonal aspect of groove.

Modal major triads

Characteristic differences in tertial modal harmony derive to a large extent from the unique tonal relationship between the keynote and the major triads of each mode. Table See Major triad positions in church modes shows that each mode contains three major triads (C, F, G on the white notes of the piano). It also shows that the minor modes (dorian, phrygian, aeolian) all have a major triad on the flat third degree ( $ III ), that the phrygian is alone with a major triad on the flat supertonic ( $ II ), that a major triad on the unaltered supertonic ( II ) is unique to the lydian mode, that the mixolydian is the only major mode with a major triad on the flat seventh ( $ VII ), that the dorian is the only minor mode with a major triad on the fourth ( IV ), etc.

Major triad positions in church modes

	I	$ II	II	$ III	IV	V	$ VI	$ VII
ionian	a				a	a
dorian				a	a			a
phrygian		a		a			a
lydian	a		a			a
mixolydian	a				a			a
aeolian				a			a	a

The basic principles of tertial modal harmony can be simply grasped using only the white notes of a piano keyboard instrument. Playing the major triads of F, G and C, as well as the relevant tonic triad (if it is not already based on f, g or c ), while at the same time holding down the keynote of the relevant mode in the bass ( c for ionian, d for dorian, e for phrygian and so on) will produce familiar but distinctive patterns of modal harmony. This procedure can then be transposed to any of the octave’s black or white notes.

It should be noted that one of the most common alterations in tertial modal harmony is to raise the third of tonic triads in minor modes (dorian, phrygian, aeolian). Such alteration can be understood in terms of a tierce de Picardie used consistently throughout a piece of music as substitute for the tonic minor triad, not just as alteration of the final chord. This major triad substitution practice was commonly used in the modal harmony of Elizabethan popular song and dance (ex. See Farnaby: Loth to Depart (c.1610): aeolian harmonies with major tonic triad (I iv $III iv [$VI $VII]), See Weelkes: Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints (c.1610); see also Farnaby’s Dreame , Dowland’s King of Denmark’s Galliard , etc.).

Farnaby: Loth to Depart (c.1610): aeolian harmonies with major tonic triad (I iv $ III iv [ $ VI $ VII ])87

Darling Corey (Watson 1963): major tonic triad for minor mode tune

Major third substitution in the tonic triad is widespread in much blues and in some Country music where minor or blues thirds are sung or played to the accompaniment of major triads (ex. See Darling Corey (Watson 1963): major tonic triad for minor mode tune), or when barré techniques are used to progress between I $ III and IV , as in the well-known dorian-mode riff of Green Onions (ex. See Expansion of I to I $III IV (G B$ C) in Green Onions (Booker T and the MGs 1962, transposed from F), p. See Expansion of I to I $III IV (G B$ C) in Green Onions (Booker T and the MGs 1962, transposed from F)) or Smoke On The Water . Dorian harmonies are in other words suited to the accompaniment of minor pentatonic melody (1 $ 3 4 5 $ 7) because, with alteration of the tonic, major triads occur on four of five pitches ( I $ III IV $ VII ). With the fifth degree triad also altered in the same way, major triads exist on all five steps in the minor pentatonic mode ( I $ III IV V $ VII ) but the harmonic mode remains dorian because, as we’ve already noted, it is the only mode featuring the major triads $ III and IV (ex. See Dorian blues triads: minor anhemitonic pentatonic scale in D with major triads on each scale degree).

The fifth degree triad of minor modes was often altered to major in European polyphonic music during the ascendancy of the ionian mode, typically to introduce V → I cadences containing dominant sevenths and their double leading notes. Example See Weelkes: Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints (c.1610) (bars 1-2) shows a dorian ( I IV $ III ) and a mixolydian progression ( I IV $ VII , bars 4-5), each followed by the standard V 7 - I cadence of classical harmony.

Weelkes: Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints (c.1610)

As noted above, alteration of v to V (changing the triad on scale degree 5 from minor to major) also occurs in blues-related styles, especially when barré, slide or bottleneck techniques are used on guitar. In these cases such alteration relates to tuning and playing practices, not to any predilection for the ionian mode or for perfect cadences, as is evident from the absence of V-I changes (B→E) in example See Slide guitar chords (opening tuning E) for Vigilante Man (Guthrie), adapted from Cooder (1971) whose guitar strings are tuned to an open E major chord (E B E G # B E). Note how major triads follow the melodic contour in parallel motion at the octave or twelfth (fifth).

Slide guitar chords (opening tuning E) for Vigilante Man (Guthrie), adapted from Cooder (1971)

The logic of this modal practice is, as already suggested, simple. Example See Dorian blues triads: minor anhemitonic pentatonic scale in D with major triads on each scale degree shows that placing a major triad on each degree of an anhemitonic minor pentatonic scale produces the chords I $ III IV V $ VII , i.e. E G A B D in E, or D F G A C in D, or C E $ F G B $ in C, and so on. These observations are pertinent not only to blues with open-chord tuning or bottleneck accompaniment on guitar but also to blues-influenced rock music whose power fifths, using ample saturation, produce strong partials, including the major third.88

Dorian blues triads: minor anhemitonic pentatonic scale in D with major triads on each scale degree

There are two distinct types of tertial dorian harmony, both featuring major triads on $ III and IV : [1] the blues-based type just mentioned and [2] the ‘folk’ type whose triads on scale degrees 1 and 5 are more rarely subjected to alteration. The second type is illustrated in example See Poor Murdered Woman (Eng. trad., arr. Hutchings; Albion Country Band, 1971): dorian tune with dorian tertial chords with its chords of Dm ( i ), F ( $ III ), G ( IV ) and C ( $ VII ).

Poor Murdered Woman (Eng. trad., arr. Hutchings; Albion Country Band, 1971): dorian tune with dorian tertial chords

Table See Examples of major triads in tertial modal harmony shows the major triads, including, where applicable, the altered tonic (in square brackets), of each mode. Table See Examples of major triads in tertial modal harmony also presents each mode’s major triads as they would occur ‘in C’ and ‘in E’, along with references to examples of popular music in which each relevant modal tertial harmony can be heard.

Examples of major triads in tertial modal harmony89

mode	relative positions	on white notes	with E as tonic	examples
ionian	I IV V	C F G	E A B	• La bamba (Valens, 1958) [C-F-G]; • Twist and Shout [D-G-A in D] • Guantanamera [F-B $ -C in F] (Sandpipers, 1966); • Pata Pata [F-B $ -F-C] (Makeba, 1967).
dorian (type 1)	[I] $ III IV $ VII	[D] F G C	[E] G A D	• Green Onions (Booker T, 1962) [F-A $ -B $ ] • The Girl Sang The Blues (Everly Brothers, 1963) [E-G-A] • Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple, 1972) [E-G-A in E] ; ex. See Weelkes: Hark, All Ye Lovely Saints (c.1610)-See Slide guitar chords (opening tuning E) for Vigilante Man (Guthrie), adapted from Cooder (1971);
dorian (type 2)	i $ III IV $ VII	Dm F G C	Em G A D	• Greensleeves (Eng. trad; first line); • Poor Murdered Woman (ex. See Poor Murdered Woman (Eng. trad., arr. Hutchings; Albion Country Band, 1971): dorian tune with dorian tertial chords); • Scarborough Fair (Simon & Garfunkel, 1968) [Em-D-Em-G-A-Em]
lydian	I II V	F G C	E F # B	• Eden (Hooverphonic) [C-D-Em-G] • Terminal Frost (Pink Floyd) [D ↔ E /d ]
phryg-ian	[I] $ II $ III $ VII	[E] F C G	[E] F C G	• Che Guevara (Puebla, 1965) [ex. See Phrygian harmony (b): Carlos Puebla: Comandante Che Guevara]; • E viva España (Vrethammar, 1973: verses), • Malagueña (Sabicas) [Am-G-F-E] [ex. See Phrygian harmony (a): popular malagueña figure] • Τρεις η ωρα νυχτα (Alexiou, 1976) [ex. See Phrygian harmony (c): Kouyioumtzis: Τρεις η ωρα νυχτα (Alexiou, 1976)]
mixo-lydian	I IV $ VII	G C F	E A D	• Sweet Home Alabama (ex. See Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama (1974): two lead guitar licks., p. See Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama (1974): two lead guitar licks.); • Hey Jude [G-F-C-G]; • The Magnificent Seven (ex. See Mixolydian shuttles: (a) Tiomkin: Duel in the Sun (1947); (b) Mancini: Cade’s County (1971)b, p. See Mixolydian shuttles: (a) Tiomkin: Duel in the Sun (1947); (b) Mancini: Cade’s County (1971)) See also pp. See Before finally putting to rest the misconceptions of conventional harmony in this chapter, there’s the issue of identifying a single tonic (’keynote’, ‘I’, ‘one’) in chord loops. I may have had difficulty sorting out issues of relative importance for IV and V but the tonic has yet to cause any major problems in this chapter.-See .
aeolian	[I] $ III $ VI $ VII	[A] C F G	[E] G C D	• All Along the Watchtower [Am-G-F-G] • Flashdance [G-F-E $ -F in G]. • Cadences in Lady Madonna [F-G-A]; PS I Love You [B $ -C-D]; SOS [D $ -E $ -F] Brown Sugar [A $ -B $ -C].

The tertial harmony of each mode is often related to the frequency with which it is assumed by members of one music culture to be used in types of music made by others. Hence, dorian harmony is often associated with certain blues-based styles (ex. See Slide guitar chords (opening tuning E) for Vigilante Man (Guthrie), adapted from Cooder (1971)) and with rural popular music from various regions (ex. See Poor Murdered Woman (Eng. trad., arr. Hutchings; Albion Country Band, 1971): dorian tune with dorian tertial chords), while phrygian chord changes are often regarded, at least by non-Hispanics, as distinctive of Hispanic popular music styles (ex. See Phrygian harmony (a): popular malagueña figure, See Phrygian harmony (b): Carlos Puebla: Comandante Che Guevara). Tertial phrygian harmony is also used extensively in popular music from Greece (ex. See Phrygian harmony (c): Kouyioumtzis: Τρεις η ωρα νυχτα (Alexiou, 1976)), Turkey, the Balkans and the Near East, often in accompaniment to melody in the Hijjaz mode (e.g. Misirlou ). It’s easy for untrained ears to confuse the intrinsically phrygian cadence $ II or $ vii → I with the aeolian-harmonic minor half cadence $ VI or iv → V to the extent that even dedicated students of flamenco can apparently feel obliged to finish a malagueña ostinato similar to that suggested in example See Phrygian harmony (a): popular malagueña figure on a chord of A minor instead of E major. To set the record straight, Sabicas uses a phrygian tonic to end his malagueña performances, as does Carlos Puebla to end his ode to Che Guevara (ex. See Phrygian harmony (b): Carlos Puebla: Comandante Che Guevara), and as do Haris Alexiou’s musicians with the phrygian songs on her 1976 album (ex. See Phrygian harmony (c): Kouyioumtzis: Τρεις η ωρα νυχτα (Alexiou, 1976)). In concrete terms, N Am G F E O in Hit The Road Jack (Charles, 1961) is in A minor ( N i- $ VII- $ VI-V O ) but the malagueña N Am G F E O is in E phrygian ( N iv- $ III- $ II-I O ). 90

Phrygian harmony (a): popular malagueña figure

Phrygian harmony (b): Carlos Puebla: Comandante Che Guevara91

Phrygian harmony (c): Kouyioumtzis: Τρεις η ωρα νυχτα (Alexiou, 1976)

Just as phrygian tertial harmony has to feature $ II or $ vii to be worthy of the name, lydian tertial harmony, to qualify as lydian, has to include, apart from a major chord on the tonic, at least either a major triad on the major supertonic ( II ) or a minor triad on the major seventh ( vii ). There is no complete triad on the sharp fourth intrinsic to the lydian mode, just as there is none on the fifth in the phrygian, none on the seventh in the ionian, etc. Example See Lydian tertial harmony in E: Vilborg på kveste (Folk och rackare, 1979), a folk rock recording in lydian E of a traditional Norwegian tune, contains plenty of # 4s ( a # ) in both melody and harmony —E F # B is I-II-V

Lydian tertial harmony in E: Vilborg på kveste (Folk och rackare, 1979) 92

Lydian melodies also occur in the Balkans and numerous ‘sharp fours’ can for example be found in Bartók’s arrangements of Romanian melodies for the piano. However, lydian melody is infinitely rarer in English-language popular musics and lydian harmony is almost totally absent. True, there may be a fair number of departures from I to II but these often proceed to IV , a definite no-no for lydian harmony.93 In fact, apart from the Scandinavian folk rock recording just cited, I only discovered two tracks, one alternative electronica and the other prog rock, containing unequivocal lydian harmonies: Belgian band Hooverphonic’s Eden (1999) with its C D Em G ( I II iii V) and Pink Floyd version two’s Terminal Frost (1987) with its D ↔ E /d shuttle. Even the C ↔ D in the verses of R.E.M.’s Man On The Moon (1992) leads into a chorus so resoundingly in G that after hearing it just once the shuttle sounds much more like a IV ↔ V in G than a I ↔ II in C.94
Mixolydian harmony is probably as common in English-language popular music as lydian is rare. The mixolydian is the only mode with major triads on I , $ VII and IV . It is often linked with British and Irish or Anglo-American folk music (ex. See The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds (Irish trad: start): tertial harmonisation of mixolydian tune requires I, IV and $VII (D, G and C)-See Rounding The Horn (Eng. trad: end): tertial harmonisation of mixolydian tune requires I, IV and $VII (D, G and C)See Russians like Mussorgsky and Borodin (ex. 104) are followed much later by composers of the Spanish school (ex. 105, bar 2), but tertial modal harmony was for some time the most common approach to the problem of harmonising music outside with the Central European classical idiom (e.g. Dvořák, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Vaughan Williams). However, the attitude of classically trained European musicians to music outside the canon did change during the nineteenth century. Whereas the Czech-German symphonist Carl Stamitz had in 1798 deemed Irish tunes incapable of bearing any harmony (Hamm 1979: 50), Herbert Hughes, in his preface to Irish Country Songs (vol. 1, London, 1909: iv), expressed the need for a radical and unacademic approach when dealing with such material, championing the work of ‘M. Claude Debussy’ who, he claimed, had set the trend ‘to break the bonds of this old slave-driver’ [classical tonality, etc.] ‘and return to the freedom of primitive scales’. Indeed, Hughes’s accompaniment to the mixolydian ballad She Moved Through the Fair (more recently popularised by Simple Minds as Belfast Child) resolves its chains of open fifths and tertial triads into a final quartal chord (ex. 105b p. 127).), with some forms of rock and Country, with rural popular song from Brazil’s northeastern states, as well as in music for Western adventures (ex. See Mixolydian shuttles: (a) Tiomkin: Duel in the Sun (1947); (b) Mancini: Cade’s County (1971)). One particular trait of mixolydian harmony, the ‘cowboy half cadence’, from $ VII to an altered major triad on V , is familiar enough to have become an object of both pastiche (ex. See Cowboy half cadences: (a) The Shadows: Dakota (1963)) and parody (ex. See Cowboy half cadences: (b) Brooks/Morris: Blazing Saddles (1974)). We return in more detail to mixolydian harmony in Chapter See Chord loops 1 (pp. See Before finally putting to rest the misconceptions of conventional harmony in this chapter, there’s the issue of identifying a single tonic (’keynote’, ‘I’, ‘one’) in chord loops. I may have had difficulty sorting out issues of relative importance for IV and V but the tonic has yet to cause any major problems in this chapter.-See ).

The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds (Irish trad: start): tertial harmonisation of mixolydian tune requires I, IV and $ VII (D, G and C)

Rounding The Horn (Eng. trad: end): tertial harmonisation of mixolydian tune requires I, IV and $ VII (D, G and C)

Mixolydian shuttles: (a) Tiomkin: Duel in the Sun (1947); (b) Mancini: Cade’s County (1971)

Cowboy half cadences: (a) The Shadows: Dakota (1963)

Cowboy half cadences: (b) Brooks/Morris: Blazing Saddles (1974)

Aeolian harmony seems to have acquired two main functions in pop and rock music: [1] connoting the ominous, fateful or implacable (Björnberg 1995); [2] substituting standard IV → I or V → I cadences with the more colourful and dramatic $ VI → $ VII → I aeolian cadence, easily performed as barré chords on guitar. We’ll revisit aeolian harmony in greater detail on pages See Although only one example each was found of I↔VI (Bowie) and i↔vi (Doors), i↔$VI shuttles were quite numerous. Toing and froing between a tonic minor and a major triad on the flat submediant (i↔$VI) —the aeolian shuttle—, has already been mentioned in terms of its ominous, fateful or implacable connotations (p. 125). Sometimes this basic harmonic and connotative sphere includes a $VII between the tonic minor (i) and $VI poles of the shuttle, like the N|Dm |B$ | C | C |O in Dire Straits’ Sultans Of Swing (1978). On paper that certainly looks more like a four-bar loop than a shuttle, but since the $VII in any loop of the Ni-$VII-$VI-$VIIO type is situated one whole-tone below the minor tonic and one whole-tone above the $VI pole, and since it is consistently followed in alternation by the poles on either side, it has, if the loop is fully repeated at least once, the character of a passing chord in a shuttle between the two chords at opposite ends of the loop. If we consider Ni-$VI-$VIIO, Ni-$VII-$VIO and so on as extended variants of i↔$VI, then we can add a fair number of tunes to the aeolian shuttle list, for example: [1] Derek & The Dominoes: Layla (1970); [2] Neil Young: Southern Man (1970); [3] Jeffrey Cain: Whispering Thunder (1972); [4] Pink Floyd: Money (1973); [5] David Bowie: 1984 (1974); [6] Nationalteatern: Barn av vår tid (1978); [7] Dire Straits: Sultans Of Swing (1978); [8] Flash and the Pan: California (1979); [9] Phil Collins: In The Air Tonight (1981); [10] Kim Carnes: Voyeur (1982); [11] Frequency X: Hearing Things (1989); [12] Neil Young: Rocking In The Free World (1989).-See Once again we’re dealing with states, conditions and tonal grooves, not with the syntactic norms of transition in European art music theory. Any sense of overall tonal process, ‘narrative’ or ‘form’ in this Police song, and in countless others, derives not from modulation, nor from overriding tonal schemes, nor ‘deep structure’ à la Schenker or Riemann, but from the juxtaposition of distinct harmonic constellations and from the organisation of those different tonal states in terms of repetition, change, reprise and relative duration, as well as from the order in which the distinct elements are presented. This is of course a question of musical ‘form’ and, structurally, of the intramusical context of shuttles. However, it is clear that if we don’t know how the shuttles themselves work, we won’t be able to understand how they, or the chord loops discussed in the next chapter, contribute to the overall character and identity of a recording or performance. in Chapter See Chord shuttles.

Quartal harmony

Structural definition

Quartal harmony is so called because it is based on the fourth and on its octave complement, the fifth. Unlike its tertial counterpart, quartal harmony it is not based on thirds, nor on the ionian mode, nor do its basic chords contain tritones whose constituent notes demand voice leading by semitone steps. The basic structural elements of quartal harmony are set out in example See Basis of quartal harmony in C.

The first line (a) of example See Basis of quartal harmony in C shows: (1) c at the centre of a pile of fourths ( d g c f b $ ); (2) the pentatonic scale resulting from that pile of fourths (1-2-4-5- $ 7 or c d f g b $ ); (3) c at the centre of a pile of fifths containing exactly the same tonal material as (a1) and (a2). Whether the notes be piled in fourths or fifths, they still constitute a run of five consecutive positions round the circle of fifths. Lines (b) and (c) in example See Basis of quartal harmony in C show (b2, c2) the resultant pentatonic scales when c is shifted flatwards to position 2 (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in C-b1) or, sharpwards, to position 4 (c1) in the pile of fourths, and to position 4 or 2 respectively in the equivalent pile of fifths (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in C-b3, c3). It is worth noting that: [1] the quartal notes of C in central position (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in Ca) are the same as those of the G minor or B $ major anhemitonic pentatonic modes; [2] that those of C in sharpward position (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in Cb) tally with the pentatonic scales of D minor and F major; [ iii ] that those of C in flatward position (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in Cc) coincide with C minor and E $ major pentatonic scales. Simple triads and tetrads resulting from C in central quartal position (ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in Ca) are presented in example See Basic quartal triads and tetrads in C (central position) and are transposable to any of equal tone tuning’s eleven other pitches.

Basic quartal triads and tetrads in C (central position)

Each note of the pile of fourths (or fifths, or of the relevant pentatonic scale) can be used as bass for chords consisting of the same tonal vocabulary. Moreover, all of the chords tabulated can be sounded with any pitch from the relevant pentatonic material as bass note. This procedure occasionally produces tertial chords (e.g. the Gm and B $ sonorities in ex. See Basic quartal triads and tetrads in C (central position)) which, in a consistently quartal idiom, are usually supplied with a bass note foreign to the tertial chord in question. For example, with c in the bass, Gm (7) and B $ (6) produce variants of C 11 , a chord which even in a tertial context contains a fourth and is sounded without third (chords 22, 24 and 25 in Table See Lead sheet chord shorthand chart for C (1)) . Most of the chords in ex. See Basic quartal triads and tetrads in C (central position) are, however, unequivocally quartal.

In jazz and pop circles quartal chords are sometimes referred to as suspensions. However, although the second C chord in ex. See Basic quartal triads and tetrads in C (central position) might, for example, be labelled C sus4 , it is apparent from examples See Borodin: (a) Song of the Dark Forest (1868); (b) The Sleeping Princess (1867), cited by Mellers (1962)-See Freddie Hubbard: Red Clay (1970), cited in Ingelf (1974) that quartal chords are consonances in their own right, not suspensions requiring resolution as in example See (a) (b)b (p. See (a) (b)). Similarly, the ‘C 6/9 ’ indicated in the sheet music version of Sting’s Seven Days (ex. See (a) Sting: Seven Days (1993); (b) Manfred Mann: I’m Your Kingpin (1964)a, p. See (a) Sting: Seven Days (1993); (b) Manfred Mann: I’m Your Kingpin (1964)) is neither a C 6 chord, nor a C 9 , nor a C 9add6 , nor C 6/9 , but a 1-2-5-6 quartal chord (C in sharpward position, as shown in ex. See Basis of quartal harmony in C-b2) that constitutes the main keynote sonority of the whole song.

History and usage

Open fourths and fifths, as well as quartal chords, start to appear in modern urban Western music in the folk-influenced work of composers living on the fringes of Europe.

Borodin: (a) Song of the Dark Forest (1868);
(b) The Sleeping Princess (1867), cited by Mellers (1962)

Russians like Mussorgsky and Borodin (ex. See Borodin: (a) Song of the Dark Forest (1868); (b) The Sleeping Princess (1867), cited by Mellers (1962)) are followed much later by composers of the Spanish school (ex. See (a) De Falla: Farruca from El sombrero de tres picos (1919); (b) Irish Trad., arr. Hughes: She Moved Through The Fair (final chords in accompaniment), bar 2),

Irish Country Songs

She Moved Through the Fair

Belfast Child

See (a) De Falla: Farruca from El sombrero de tres picos (1919); (b) Irish Trad., arr. Hughes: She Moved Through The Fair (final chords in accompaniment)

See (a) De Falla: Farruca from El sombrero de t

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