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ii-V-I progression

Richard,
Is ii = (2 4 6) in second inversion ( 6 9 11 )?
Then ii(7) V7 I in C would go:
A (C) D F ->
G B D F ->
C E G C ?

Then what about the progression:
B (D) F G
C E G
that you so often see in beginner books?

As I've mentioned before,
one problem I have with analysis of "beginner" music is that
I never know whether the score represents "best practice"
or whether it was "simplified" (that is, distorted) just to make it "easier" for a beginner to play.

I would hope this analysis forum would shed light on that.

Of course, it may be necessary to simplify the arrangement for a beginner,
but the "simplification" should not violate basic rules.
I'd rather make the extra effort to learn to play according to the "rules"
than break the rules in order to learn to "play".

For example, if a "cadence" requires a 5-1 or 5-8 in the bass,
then it does a disservice to end an arrangement with 7-8 in the bass!

Part of "analysis" should include finding the broken rules
and either fixing them
or understanding the exceptions, if that represents the composer's intent.

ii is the 2nd degree chord. This should be somewhere near the beginning of this thread. As follows:

Key of C major
I CEG
ii DFA
iii EGB
IV FAC
V GBD (V7 = GBDF)
vi ACE
viio BDF

Your BFG is part of the V7 chord BDFG as you say. The ear recognizes the V7 even without all the notes being present. The reason that it is written this way in beginner music is because it is hard for a beginner (esp. a child) to play 4 notes at the same time in one hand. When music is composed, the composer must think of its playability on that instrument. When it's for beginners, he has to think about even more things.

I don't think there is such a chord as 6 9 11, is there? In C major we'd have 6 = A, 9 = D (= 2), 11 = F (=4), i.e. 2 4 6 = ii.

About broken rules and such:
In my mind, the purpose of this exercise is to gain an understanding of the structures in music - chords, progressions, meter, signature, form etc. We are using the pieces to extract these things and get a better understanding. I don't think the main purpose is analyzing music, see which rules are broken - but rather to get at those patterns. It is not my favorite way of going about this because personally I prefer real study, but maybe it can lead to that. For example, you don't keep a concept by reading about it. You should work with it for a while. In that way the "rules" also reveal patterns in more depth.

I'm not sure whether an inverted V7 to I is not a cadence. Maybe it's a weak cadence. The step up a 5th or down a 4th which happens if the root is in the bass each time creates a strong movement, which then makes the cadence very emphatic --- Ta Daaa --- The End.

I'm not writing a dictionary here and some of these definitions are loose. Don't fix them in your head forever based on this. Keystring has already answered before I finished compiling this so just take some overlapping for granted.

The metre is the measurement of the bar. The top number shows the number of beats between each strong accent and the lower number the relative time between each beat, the value of the beat in terms of time.

The rhythm is where the notes occur in relation to that beat. Not all the notes occur on a beat and not every beat has a note occurring on it. Tap out common time with your foot at a steady four in the bar and tap out the melody to "Pop Goes the Weasel" with a finger on your desk. Then tap out the melody to Pet Clark's "Downtown".

Your foot's tapping out the metre, your finger's tapping out the rhythm.

Beat and Pulse are what your foot's tapping out, the count can either be for your foot or for your finger.

Measure or Bar is the space between strong accents or barlines.

A strong accent is typically given to the first beat in a bar. In Common Time a medium accent is given to the third beat and a weak accent given to the second and fourth beats (stronger in rock where the back beat is emphasised). Other notes such as quavers occurring off the beat are unaccented.

Phrase is, to a certain extent, subjective. It could be a line in a song or a line could have several phrases. It's inexact. There is a way of knowing understanding where a phrase ends but I'm not prepared to offer a definition. It's largely instinctive. I don't know if you get it from listening to good musicians/singers or if it's a natural talent or something else.

A motif is a short recognisable figure such as the figure used in Beethoven's fifth symphony.

The difference between a theme and a melody is not something I want to cover using words alone. They can both be used interchangeably to a large extent but not all themes are melodies and not all melodies are themes.

A Lick is a short, typically non-repetitive, sequence of notes (really loose definition), often based on a common pattern, that might be used, for example, at the start of one of Chuck Berry's hits or between sung lines BB King's music or Dire Strait's Sultans of Swing.

A Riff is a repeating sequence of notes that forms the basis of a song such as Day Tripper (The Beatles), The Last Time (The Rolling Stones) or Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin).
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There aren't distinct names for the layers you've listed other than the 3 beat measures (time signature).

Have we covered "rules" before in this thread? I haven't checked, I know I've used it somewhere recently. There are no "Rules". There are conventions and cliché's that raise expectation.

It's doing the unexpected that raises emotions and strong reactions to music. If every line in every song were four measures long and then someone threw in a three or five measure line we'd be thrown. Music thrives on the expectations set up by conventions and then doing the unexpected.

It's not a list of rules that can sometimes be broken it's a set of conventions that NEED to be broken. But they only work if they're followed most of the time - otherwise you can't build expectation.

No composers ever sat round a table and bashed out music theory. Everyone tried lots of things and what worked was repeated and that became convention. Theory in music is like theory in Chess - it's not a list of rules it's a summary of best practise so far.

There are grammatical rules in the notation to make the intention clearer and avoid misunderstanding but as to the music itself there can be no rules.
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It's a feature of musical notation that the first beat in a bar is a strong one. Music that begins with an iamb or an anapest will always begin with an anacrusis (are you familiar with the names of metrical feet?).
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6/4 and 6/8 time can be either two three's or three two's. The notes values are the key.

Picking the right rhythm for a song depends on knowing the rhythms available in your unit and reading the rhythm from the time signature and recurring note values. It's possible to find one that works most of the time but there are more rhythms written than will be in your rhythm unit. In these cases you need to use the musical/rhythmic equivalent of Lowest Common Denominator.
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I have never heard God Save the Queen described as a Galliard before. It does share a certain rhythmic element with the Galliard but these dance names were used in the suites also as an indication of tempo. The/My national anthem doesn't share it's tempo with a Galliard. It's God Save the Queen, not give her exercise!

This. Just as everything in 3/4 time is not a waltz, not everything that may, on paper, have the notation of a galliard is a dance.

It has to do partly with tempo, but also with the accents and phrasing. All of those things help make rhythm. There is a convention, as Richard says, that makes a tune actually danceable, of rhythm, accents, tempo, phrasing. I've never heard this tune follow those conventions. It may have, back in its original form - many popular tunes were "lifted" for hymns. But in these days it isn't a galliard, whatever its notated form.

I can name several dances which when notated are in 3/4 - waltzes, hambos, mazurkas, galliards - but they have distinct sounds when played, and those sounds aren't in the notation. Again, as Richard says, there are conventions that the dance musicians knows, and they "fit" with the dance. So listening, as others have said on this and other threads, makes a big difference in one's understanding of the "feeling" of a piece. Dancers who know how to hambo wouldn't waltz to a hambo. These days, any way, in its current "sounded" form, dancers wouldn't - couldn't - dance a galliard to this tune. These conventions of the actual sound of a piece of music, rather than the notation, is why musicians who play traditional music, or dance music, or swing, or blues, or any other genre, urge musicians who are new to that genre to listen, listen, listen. Because music is an aural tradtion.

So it can be helpful to see that this tune appears to have 6-beat phrases and that its notation is similar to the 6-beat phrases of a galliard, and that indeed it may have been originally a galliard, but in this case I think the words to the tune are a closer help to the phrasing/accents/rhythm as it known today.

And while I play dance music, I couldn' play a galliard at this point in time if my life depended on it But the seniors I play for sing along all the time.

Cathy

I wanted to ask about this yesterday but was in a bit of a rush...



I wonder if you could explain this, Richard. Does this hinge on an individual’s definition of dissonance based on personal tolerances or is there a commonly accepted notion of dissonance in Mozart?

Either way, I’d most appreciate a pointer, perhaps a youtube video together with the timing/s for some particularly dissonant moment/s – many thanks.

Ah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, dire tonic. Let me try and cover this from my perspective...

Try the third and fourth bars of his Jupiter symphony (#41, K. 551). You should be able to get the score from IMSLP.

I know it's marked Allegro vivace but play over them slowly and pay particular attention to the first and third beats. Savour the sweet dissonance of the seventh between melody D and the C below it and then the even tighter clash as C and E are played below it, effectively three adjacent notes sounding together.

In it's day this would have been very emotional but to an ear dulled by twentieth century harmonies it may even seem consonant - I don't think it is but I'll get to that...

And while we're catching up I meant to respond on a couple of points yesterday but I also had more pressing matters to attend to.

I was wondering, are these the same snotty nosed summer students well established professionals who prepare 'piano arrangements' with complete disregard for the composers intentions? Is this why radio developed the fade out?

Just kidding

The occasional scotch bonnet is not what I'd call 'large amounts' so you may have misunderstood my analogy. No harm done.

I wasn't discussing tolerance, relative or otherwise, so you may have completely missed my point there but I'll get to that in a moment...

I never actually gave it top billing, just importance. The 7-8 resolution is strong enough to introduce all those sharpened seventh accidentals when playing in a minor key. Nearly every great song or symphony concludes with a descent to tonic, from the dominant or mediant, or a rise to it from the leading note. Don't you find that? And that at the end of a journey isn't it comforting to know you've arrived?

He who has ears, let him hear. (Matthew 11:15)
(No offence intended, I know full well you have a well developed ear, just play on words here in response to your use of palate against mine of palette and my analogy not being "sound" - ha!)

Ah! Each note of a four note chord has one base frequency. You may have six simultaneous intervals but still only four base frequencies. If you struck all 88 keys of a piano the maximum number of base frequencies you could have, eliminating duplicates and excepting physical imperfections and stretch tuning etc., is twelve. The highest twelve notes, as all other frequencies would be eliminated as duplicates, no?

Ah, there's the rub! Here is where we appear to differ.

Consonance and dissonance - as I've been taught and given to understand - are nothing to do with aesthetics, they are physical and mathematical properties that are measured numerically. Perfect fifths, major and minor thirds are considered concords. Everything else is, to a greater or lesser degree, a discord. Aesthetics are to do with our tastes and tolerance to them and they, as far as I'm concerned, are as individual as our tastes in sex.

I hope that's cleared up any misunderstanding and sorry if I've caused confusion.

I found a resource to help formulate this. Wikki article on consonance and dissonance

The terms consonance and dissonance are used in two different general ways, one of them a rather technical definition such as the one given by Richard, and the other a loose idea of pleasantness and harshness. That's a first problem in this kind of discussion. And then (from Wikki)

"Dissonance has been understood and heard differently in different musical traditions, cultures, styles, and time periods."

And then across cultures we have (Wikki):

"For instance, two notes played simultaneously but with slightly different frequencies produce a beating "wah-wah-wah" sound that is very audible. Musical styles such as traditional European classical music consider this effect to be objectionable ("out of tune") and go to great lengths to eliminate it. Other musical styles such as Indonesian gamelan consider this sound to be an attractive part of the musical timbre and go to equally great lengths to create instruments that have this slight "roughness" as a feature of their sound (Vassilakis, 2005)."

So while the physics of combined notes is unchanging, humanity's evaluation of these effects does change, and I guess that this is actually aesthetics.

What we are taught as we wend our way through harmony theory is a simplification that stays narrowly within a particular area and time period. I did not study the length of time that you did, Richard. I level 1 harmony book with a preamble to the teacher in smaller print, stating that they have simplified things in order to make way for the limited experience of students, and that the teacher is free to teach the real thing. How many students read these preambles, and how often are they there.


The physical and mathematical certainly go hand in hand, since the ratios translate into vibrations with their effects. But here we also run into some of the attributes of this sound - the partials (see Wikki) are an aspect. This is also why you and Dire Tonic come up with a different number of tones, because I'm sure D T is including the partials. Meanwhile if you really come down to it, music on the piano can't be consonant anyway because it is perpetually somewhat out of tune due to equal temperament.

The most fascinating aspect of partials is the "fifth note" that barbershop quartets aspire to. If they achieve perfect tuning in a "barbershop seventh" which is like a "seven chord" (C7 etc.) then the partials recombine for a fifth note which is audible - as if there is a fifth singer. That is because every note is composed of that note plus its partials. And that is also why D T has more notes in his equation.

Thanks for the Mozart reference. You say..


- Quite!


I look forward to that.


- this is a propos an earlier discussion on the travesty that is the piano arrangement of a pop song. You’ll find it’s usually the composer sporting the snotty nose and the idea he had ‘intentions’ would seem, even to him, laughably lofty. The advent of the ‘fade out’ is interesting in itself. That in conjunction with the ‘key change’ (semitone up, think Bobby Darin, ‘Mack the knife’) to my mind hints clearly at the need for movement, for travel (call it tension if you must) rather than resolution and ending (call it release if you must). There’s more to be said on this.

But to come back to the specific point above about substitutions; it’s the performer not the arranger who's plopping in his ma7 in lieu of the major and he does it to soothe his own and his audience’s sensibilities. On that subject you said...


…just to be clear on “softer than”, I guess you’re saying that the tonic 7 is more unresolved (more tension, to use your terminology) than the tonic ma7. Is that about right?


I don’t think so. You were saying that just as chillies can jade the palate so can too much dissonance numb the ear to the dissonance of Mozart? I know what you’re getting at but the implication is that one is ‘missing something’. I don’t accept that but I haven’t yet thought it through.


Yes. The literary equivalent would be “…and they all lived happily ever after”.


Yes and no. I’m ambivalent about endings and I certainly don’t rejoice in sameness in art. Of course we can decorate our dominant-tonic and make it our own but this segment of the discussion arose out of your determination to define/characterise/shape music from an element of it and to suggest that this element was pre-eminent. It isn’t, it is merely commonplace.

Regarding movement: You have tension and release. I travel and arrive and just as in the adage “it’s better to travel than to arrive” I’m infinitely more fascinated by the myriad possibilities, the twists and turns of harmonic change that can occur during the journey than the hackneyed resolution we must settle for at every musical conclusion. I think it’s reasonable to talk about ‘tension’ in chords but as a description of the emotion music engenders in me, it’s a misnomer. Tension is absolutely not what I experience. I can say more about that at another time.



I don't think that's a useful description nor is it a conclusion which leads anywhere. The octaves are vital and distinct in our appreciation of sound. I (you too) can go to the piano and, using two hands, play perhaps 40 or 50 different inversions of the chord of Cmajor. Many of these will have an entirely different quality by virtue of using the full 7+ octave range.

It’s pure folly to try and understand all this in terms of the coherence of vibration when what so often enriches sound is incoherence. Think of the sound of a single violin. It’s beautiful when played well. But now think of the glorious, rich texture which fills out a concert hall when all orchestral violins are playing the same note, a unison fortissimo sustain with a passionate vibrato. What’s going on?; fine errors of tuning between performers, inconsistent rates and depths of vibrato all hopelessly out of phase, complex overtones jumping here there and everywhere off the belly of a craftsman’s secret trickery, the auditorium throwing it all hither, thither and back again in a battle of reflections resonances and echoes. So mathematically unfathomable even the beats have beats. Why does this mess of sonic interference thrill us so? And this is just one note!

As I say, it’s hard enough to reconcile what we like/dislike with frequency ratios when looking only at intervals because the numbers simply cannot account for our differences in personal taste, tolerance and conditioning. When we try to extend this to chords we have no mathematics to relate to - Pythagoras stopped short and nobody else has bothered. If we look beyond the piano to multi-timbral harmony we find far more flexible boundaries, more scope to break the 'rules' without assaulting the ears. Then there's timbre itself, the very sound of an instrument alone can excite or disappoint us. And in any case, to discuss chordal dissonance without context, without the next chord, is a nonsense. It’s one hand clapping.

Honestly, I have zero time for mathematical analyses of musical aesthetics. The only reliable observations we can make are stupefyingly banal. If it must be tackled, try it empirically. In the meantime, keystring’s synopsis above is well worth reading.

Dire tonic,

You clearly have a greater knowledge, understanding and experience of music after a lifetime in the industry. Keystring has much less and is still under tutelage but I have learnt more from keystring's explanations than from any your ramblings and smoke blowing. You know a lot but sit back like a cantankerous old man criticising everyone who doesn't know or understand as much you do but you don't seem to offer more guidance except to say that there's more to it.

If you want to bring some substance to the table I'm well prepared to enjoy it.

We all benefit from sharing knowledge. You must be aware of differing definitions of consonance and dissonance unless you've lived your life in the industry with your head up your backside. Can you not try and explain what more there is to it rather than spit on the genuinely benevolent intention of explaining what many are taught as essential basics.

I have in front of me a first book on Harmony. It states that "Dissonance is an interval which sounds incomplete in itself and need some other special interval to follow after it". It gives three examples, G and F, a seventh, A and D#, a diminished fifth and Bb and C#, a major second.

Years after reading this book I was taught by an experienced musician using harmonics on a guitar to explain the physical properties of harmonics and intervals. He explained the 'beats' between the notes and how small integral relations created consonance where larger intervals created dissonance. It made sense to me and it explained what I was hearing.

Now you come on here and tell me there's more to it but you don't enlighten us with that extra knowledge. You sit back on your lofty perch and berate our lack of experience and understanding.

While keystring kneels among us and offers us pearls and gems.

I post here with the best of intentions, I have never tried to confuse or deceive and have never continued unpleasant conversations. You may kick sand in my face, dire tonic, it clings not on an anonymous forum and I flinch not from it. Based on my pm's your dire tribes do not reflect badly on me so go ahead and knock yourself out.

You don't need a doctorate in mathematics to teach basic counting to people new to the subject. But when flaws in the basics are revealed in a forum such as this there's no need for animosity and verbal flatulence. Just make a correction based on your greater knowledge and experience and let us all move on.

Just a suggestion.

The "cantankerous old man" could teach you about a million things you don't know. He has already taught me a ton.

He has more knowledge in his pinky than you have in your whole pretentious body.

END

I must apologise to the participants and followers of this thread for my uncharacteristic outburst. I hope I haven't soured your taste for the subject matter.

I was giving what little I had to share and was frustrated that my inexpertise was being insulted rather than broadened. I should have taken time to reflect but did not and events have overtaken me. I cannot undo what has been done and so must suffer the consequences.

If I've misled anyone I assure you I was not aware of it. I have imparted nothing that isn't supported by printed matter, mostly university text books. I know that doesn't necessarily make it correct but it is the best I can do.

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Gary, you know from our pm's that I wasn't pretentious and that it is only from your encouragement that I was able to continue without full confidence in my knowledge or ability.

Alas, he was not as generous to me as he was to you.

No harm done. Musings on dissonance and the (ahem) ‘definitive nature of music’ are bound to be contentious. I added nothing constructive because there’s nothing I can add and I’ve long been of the opinion that these things are rooted in culture. I think I understand why some received ideas don’t work for me and I did my best to lay those arguments out. You have a proclamatory style and I react to it. That is how we are.

I don’t recognise myself as “criticising everyone” – I hope that’s not true. I admit to being generally lazy in the forum but usually all bases are covered by members aplenty willing to offer an answer. Where something lies in my area of expertise (very narrow!) I’ll usually try and throw a little light.

I felt I was able to offer something substantive albeit brief on the use of the ma7 as an ending chord and a perspective on an alternative to the idea of movement as tension/release. Maybe this latter is a bit of a sacred cow? You mentioned the release on resolving to the tonic at the end of Twist and Shout. The final chord in that song is D9. The blues has a lot to answer for!

I am relieved, dire tonic, that you find no harm done.

I re-read your post and see that I had mis-read your tone and will be more cautious in future.

I also see the folly of my ma7/flat 7 point. I was thinking of the non diatonic seventh on the tonic or subdominant.

Had we been corresponding by traditional mail rather than with the relative immediacy of the forum this would probably not have happened.

Thanks keystring for your helpful response about the chords and accidentals. I understand it now, at least through reading it. I think it will take awhile for all of this to become more ‘intuitive’ for me. So until then I’ll just keep referring to the helpful notes everyone is putting up in these threads!

And thanks keystring, dire tonic and Richard for the discussion about dissonance. I’m not sure I understood a lot of it. But I like the explanations of both the science of it, and how culture influences our expectations of how music should sound. I found the notes about the barbershop quartet interesting and went to listen to a few on Youtube after reading to hear how the voices combine to achieve a fifth voice.

As for dissonance, I think this is what I hear in ocean etude with some of the notes. In this piece I think of them as “growly” or "rumbly" note combinations. When I first started practicing the piece, I thought I must be hitting the wrong notes in these parts. But soon, with a little more tempo and in the context of the surrounding notes, those sounds made sense to my ear.

Re Lili Marlene 2e

Just in case anyone is still following the analysis of this particular piece,
I have another observation / question.

In one of these analysis fora the notion of "cadence" was introduced,
that is, V7-I or ii(7)-V7-I.

The ii(7)-V7-I pattern occurs repeatedly in Lili Marlene 2e.
Are all of these cadences?

In particular, consider M12-13:

The harmony is Dm7-G7-C then C7 and on to the final cadence.

Now on the surface, the Dm7-G7-C looks like a final cadence:
G7 in root position to C in root position;
melody ending on the tonic.

But to my ears. the C at the start of M13 doesn't sound at all like a stopping point. We want to hear the "resolution?" to the G over C7!--but that's a dissonance, right?

Certainly M11-12 are still solidly in the key of C.
What is pushing the music forward past this seeming cadence
into another dissonance?

Cadence doesn't actually mean two particular chords (V-I etc.). It means the end of a section or a piece, and this is indicated by such chords, and also through other elements of music such as rhythm. Very often the music will slow down, and before I could truly read music my eye would hunt for fat white notes instinctively. Music often uses a series of V-I and similar at the beginning in order to establish the tonic so that the ear gets set to that. I think that in jazz and non-classical "seven chords" are used more frequently (????)

In blues it's very common, ever-present. A lot of blues in the major key consists of nothing but 7ths on 1,4 and 5 then typically finishing on the tonic7. It creeps in everywhere, as you say, into jazz and pop music - e.g. Twist and Shout which we've seen finishes on the tonic9.

For the real thing listen to BB King in a major key or check out this rather sterile but very clear example. Almost everyone will have heard the standard blues endings at 2.22 showing also how context, and probably conditioning, affect our expectations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6TvaVqcKk

[obscenity deleted]

Thank you. Well, this tells us something right away. Namely, in one type of music you may have the "seven chord" (major triad, minor 7, as in C7) being a device for tension-resolution in the cadence sense. The whole music and expectations from custom set you up for that, because of the way the rough chord moves into a smooth one. But in other music that roughness is just a pleasant common texture. The textbook explanation that we are given, gives us a simplistic explanation that makes theory easy to understand -- and I'd use it that way --- but I'd also know that there's a large world.