![]() ![]() This is where you start, and this is where you end. Well, normally, a standard chord progression looks like this:Ī TONIC chord goes to a PREDOMINANT chord, which goes to a DOMINANT chord, which goes back to the TONIC chord. In the key of Bb minor, Ebmin9 and Fmin9 translate into the predominant (iv9) and dominant (v9). We have to define what these chords are in the context of the piece-which is in Bb Minor. For example, I could tell you that the 2 chords above are E bmin9 and Fmin9, but that doesn’t really give us any insight into why these chords work together so well. Which means the chords themselves have to be pretty cool sounding, to be the basis of essentially the entire track!īefore we talk about chords-note that it rarely makes sense just to talk about chords by name alone. It’s these two chords, alternating every 2 measures, that make up the harmony of the entire track, excluding the recapitulation and bridge. When you combine the two lines, what you really get are these two chords: It’s a way to give the music a feeling of motion, even though harmonically, it’s moving quite slowly-at a pace of 1 chord per 2 measures:īut that’s not all there is! Let’s see what the bass is doing… Though harmony is often strictly used to refer to the way simultaneous pitches sound when played together, in practice, harmony is often achieved through arpeggio patterns like the one above-where the notes of the harmony are spaced out (though not very far apart temporally). ![]() It’s playing 2 specific note patterns, on repeat-each ascending arpeggios of 4 notes, for 4 measures: There are just 2 instruments here-a harp-like instrument that creates most of the harmonies, and a bass that supports the harmony, as well as providing some melodic and rhythmic interest.įirst, let’s look at what the harp is doing. The introduction for this track lays out the harmonic backdrop for this track. Now let’s look more closely at each section. So going back to our original structure:Ġ:00 – 0:25: Intro – 8 Bars - this sets up the harmonic backdrop for our melody to come inĠ:26 – 0:50: Theme 1 – 8 Bars - first iteration of our main melodyĠ:51 – 1:15: Theme 2 – 8 Bars - a “foil” to our main melody-often contrasting in both shape and tone.ġ:16 – 1:41: Theme 1 Recap – 8 Bars - main melody comes back, “transformed” and “heightened”ġ:42 – 2:13: Bridge – 8 Bars + 2 Bars - outro In this track, and most others, one can think about every other aspect of the song being constructed “around” the main melody. This is the hum-able “takeaway” from a song-in a pop song, this would be the chorus. The main character in this musical narrative (and this is true of most music) is the main melody. So while I have, in pretty boring terms above, laid out what the structure of this track is, let’s now look at it using more narrative-like terminology. There is a natural progression of musical content in well-written music that makes sense, that keeps the listener’s interest, and so when we think about musical structure, we want to consider how the structure of a song helps tell a story. It’s important when thinking about musical structure to remember that music, generally, has a narrative. ![]() We’ll look at a single cycle and look at the structure of the track within that cycle-so any time references I make will be between 0:00 and 2:13. A full cycle of the track (that is, how long it is before the musical material repeats) is 2:13-the track above plays 2 cycles. ![]()
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