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Behind The Score: Episode 11 (Zeppelin and Barber) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-20 03:22:41
Imported:
2023-06

Content

We start this episode by answering a few of your questions from the Music Theory section of the Discord...specifically addressing the 'elusive' second chord to Stairway to Heaven. We also discuss modes and scales before diving into an analysis of the beautiful art song Sure On This Shining Night by Samuel Barber. Enjoy!

Files

Mailbag & Sure on This Shining Night - Behind the Score - Episode 11

This is "Mailbag & Sure on This Shining Night - Behind the Score - Episode 11" by Doug Helvering on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the...

Comments

Arrow2theACL

Doug: I can explain this pretty quickly. He's got a 15 minute video on it. It's not that hard. *****15 minutes later**** Doug: So that would be my answer on that one. - I kid, I kid ok it was 11 minutes. :)

Dale S Josephs

Interesting analysis to my question about the "Stairway" chord. I found the video interesting in pointing out that depending on how you analyze the chord motion, you can name the four-note cluster in any of 3 or 4 different ways, as Davids, Beato, and Neely all demonstrate. I like your thought about treating the C as a non-chord tone.

Peter Tutak

This is where I get tripped up. Identifying the C as a non-chord tone seems like an arbitrary decision in order to make better sense of the other tones. I hear you say that "the C is held over", yet it's eliminated from consideration even though it's directly on the 4th beat of the measure. I can't wrap my brain around that. So, Doug, on a test, if I had identified it as you did initially as C+M7, because I kept the C in the analysis, would you have marked it 'wrong', or given me partial credit because it's a matter of interpretation ? ;) And thanks for the Barber talk; a lovely piece, and an illuminating lecture on its construction, the details of which I never noticed, despite hearing it a few times in the past.

doughelvering
>>76082776

To your question, I would not have marked it wrong. Because, at the end of the day, the chord's label is a bit subjective. To me, the E as root is the better choice because it better justifies the G# (as leading tone and third of the dominant instead of the augmented 5th of a C chord). And, if the following chord is C, I wouldn't make C the roots of both chords.

Peter Tutak
>>76082776

"And, if the following chord is C, I wouldn't make C the roots of both chords..." - THAT is what I'm missing here in my reasoning. OK, got it. Thanks for the explanation !

Gregory Robert Goddu

I just wanted to comment that we're really discussing the second chord from the intro to "Taurus" by Spirit. RIP Randy California.

Andy McKinney

Wow. That Barber piece is fantastic.

Andy McKinney

And I agree with Doug's analysis of Stairway. Play the chords on the guitar as he has named them. It sounds right.

Jeff Norman
>>76280844

Yeah, to me people get hung up on "naming" chords...when where the resulting chords came from is more interesting. On the guitar, this pattern falls naturally under the fingers (as the zillions of amateur guitarists annoying people at guitar stores attests...), and that's one answer that might be better than a harmony-based answer...but the other is simply: you've got a descending line on the bottom paired with an ascending line on top, and middle tones that are static (A and C). So when the descending line drops half a step, and the ascending line rises a whole step...but the static tones are...static, the result is that momentary "unnameable" chord. It's just what happens when you put those line ideas together, in other words. The arpeggiation softens the potential discord: I wonder whether Page wouldn't have changed the voicing if he'd been strumming instead...