What I Got Wrong About Comfortably Numb
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- Even I make mistakes sometimes.
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One of my favorite parts of my job is learning new things, but the problem is sometimes I make a video before I've learned all the things that could help me make it the best possible video, and when that happens I think the only fair thing to do is go back and make it again, so this week I'm back to my correction series, taking a look at some of my old analysis videos to see if maybe I can do them better now. If you saw those videos, this should help you better understand the songs, and if you didn't see those videos, I don't know, maybe go watch them? They're still pretty good, I think.
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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold for proofreading the script to make sure this all makes sense hopefully!
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The family of pedals to which flangers belong is called "modulation." It also includes chorus and phaser pedals.
Cobain used the Electro harmonix small clone chorus pedal on that record
You really should do Pink Floyd's "Dogs." It's mostly a four chord loop spread out for 18 minutes, with some of the most underrated Gilmour solos.
And “Pigs” while you’re there, with the misleading rhythm intro
How about shine on you crazy diamond? It's probably my favorite floyde song, and it's also kinda underrated.
@@boazcohen7992 Agreed, but the point is that _Dogs_ and _Pigs_ are both on _Animals_ whereas _Shine On You Crazy Diamond_ is on _Wish You Were Here._ It feels to me like that needs a different video.
@@ipudisciple I know, but yet I felt like I need to mention it.
Dogs might be my favorite rock song of all time.
We can all sleep well now that Comfortably Numb has been set straight.
Thanks
"I'm making it up while I go..."
Aren't we all!
One of the greatest things about writing in simple triads is the way they can host superimposed functionalities. The C -> G in the chorus has a bunch of interpretations to me. When we first hit it I go “okay we’ve modulated to C” but then we hit the G and it feels so grounded there that I go “okay never mind that was just a plagal move to G” but then it does the C-G-D thing and I go “ooooh now I get it we never left D this was just a plagal cascade like in the Beatles’ ‘Get Back’” but THEN when it ends the second time on “C-G-A” I go “wait, this is.. what, a *backdoor* plagal cadence?” and then retroactively the C-G sounds like it was in A dorian blues or something.
Which is all to say that functional harmony with triad-based guitar rock is kind of an underspecified problem
It's like the Sweet Home Alabama problem all over again!!!
@@THEmuteKi Its in G...... kinda lol
That pretty much hits the nail on the head. This type of ambiguous harmonic pendulum between two major chords that are a fitfth apart, that can be either V-I or IV-I, appears constantly in rock music. It's usually the melody that gives extra hints. That's why I'm a bit surprised that the vocal lines in this section are never mentioned. They pretty much place the progression D-A in D-major and C-G in C-major, as the relavant leading tones C# and B appear whereas G# and F# are absent. It's also interesting to note that the melody during the G-chord emphasizes D and never hits G. This roots the G-chord back to D-major and makes it a solid pivot from C-major to D-major. This is actually a fairly standard example of a modulation where a V becomes a IV. The slow pace of the music makes it extra smooth here - and generelly helps losing track of tonalities. The modulation from D to C is also driven melodically. The first time around, the melody ends on C# and instead of resolving up to D it resolves down to C. Other times it ends on E, which is already in C-major, but the C# is kind of implied by it's previous appearances. Having said all this, while this "classical" analysis seems rather straight forward, there is one thing that rock music tends to avoid: dominant seventh chords, the real driving force in classical music. This allows the melodic movement between C and D at the end of the C-chords to be perceived as IV-V in G-major so that the G-chord kind of also feels like a tonic. All in all it's a very clever play with the ambiguity of simple major triads.
@@streck0486 if you're interested in debating the point some more - music.stackexchange.com/questions/108851/what-would-be-a-good-soloing-improvising-strategy-over-comfortably-numb/108855#108855
@@leftaroundabout Thanks for pointing this out. I gave it a shot. ;-)
I am sooo happy that you started playing sound recordings and recreations along with your analysis ! I remember you saying timbre was important to you and you wanted to go further than midi playback someday, so congrats. Hope it won’t be too much of a hassle regarding the copyright bot and just know that it’s really appreciated !
I love that you do this! We're all growing and you allowing us to see you're growth is a wonderful lesson.
Man, I don’t even LIKE “Total Eclipse”, but the 12 Tone magic has worked on me again, and I have to go listen to it.
Listen to the German version from the musical Tanz der Vampire. Make sure to watch a live recording to get the full effect of the performance and costumes. Song is almost exactly the same, just arranged for a bigger band.
I've never cared for that song either. I love discovering a seemingly lame,but actually awesome song from around the time period in which it was released. But THAT song has thick strands of authentic suckiness running from end to end, directly through its center.
@@CoopDVille-rx3hp It's quite maudlin, even (especially??) by the standards of 80s ballads. And it's really long by that standard unless you're listening to the single cut at just under 7 minutes. Something like Always by Atlantic Starr is sort of the high-water mark for 80s maudlin balladeering, but that song's longer album cut is still only like 4:47 (single was 3:59) or so which is just *barely* longer than Total Eclipse's single's 4:30. If you're listening to the album version the song's friggin' interminable.
@@THEmuteKi I'm just going to come clean and admit that I don't know SPECIFICALLY what "maudlin" means. I know I've heard or seen it used in the same context as you have. I guess that in my mind it seems to evoke a specific time period. Or something.
@@CoopDVille-rx3hp Other words I might use are 'schmaltzy' or 'sappy' but the song's (as implied during the video) somewhat archaic structural roots make it I think the ideal term of the synonym bunch
I love all your little drawings and how it's sometimes very obvious how they relate to what you're talking about and sometimes not as obvious. The Feynman diagram when talking about "interaction" was genious! :P
I know NOTHING about music but I am always fascinated by your videos. Keep up the good work
I am a High School music teacher and during remote learning I have been sharing your videos with my advanced players. They, and I, love your channel. I'd love to own one of your doodles one day for the my office!
Talking about why I hear the C and G chords as "IV - I" in Comfortably Numb:
David Gilmour plays the note F# over both chords on the "Light Solo", but he never plays an F over either chord. The F# implies a Lydian sound over the C chord (IV) and an Ionian sound over the G (I).
That's a VERY strong argument for the "IV - I" Interpretation in my opinion.
Of course it's not impossible for a soloist to imply a slightly different chord progression than, say, a vocalist, but I don't hear any harmonic shift between what's going on when Gilmour is singing versus when he is soloing over the same progression.
Other than that, the key of C is two accidentals away from the key of D (or Bm, for that matter), while the key of G is only one accidental away. It's a closer key in the circle of fifths and requires less preparation for the modulation. So, while the "I - V" interpretation "looks" symmetrical, in my humble opinion, it doesn't really describe what's happening in the song.
By the way, I really like your channel!
The F# is from D mixo, C-G is bVII-IV
The first half of the chorus is in A major, the second half is just a transposition down one step to G major. So yes, these are 4-1 patterns, not 1-5. The second chord in the loop always feels like home, resolved, and the tonal center. The chord at the end of the first half is just to transition between these two keys. One easy way to tell the key is actually A major is the application of the "extension trick" which is basically what we do in jazz: just extend the chord with 7, 9, 11, 13 to hear what scale the chord represents. You will quickly find that G# is the 7th here and not a G (which would make that A a dominant chord instead of a major chord).
@@santibanks I respect your opinion, but I disagree.
If you hear it that way, I'm not sure anything I say matters. But I'll explain why I hear it differently, just for the sake of healthy debate.
How do I hear it?
I hear D as the tonic of the first half. And G as the tonic in the second half. I explained how I hear the second half in my previous comment. Let me talk about the first half now. The clue also comes from the guitar solo over that progression.
David Gilmour plays the note G a few times over the D major chord. That's the perfect fourth of D. That means he's not soloing over D as a IV chord (which would have a #4... #11 if you will), but as a I chord (Ionian). There isn't a single G# in the solo, though. We do get notes pointing to D as tonic, but we don't get notes that point to A as the tonic. So that's why I hear D as the tonic of the first half.
Of course, all of this "confusion" also comes from the fact that we're trying to use Classical Functional Harmony to analyze pop music. How "resolved" something "feels" is a lot more fuzzy when we don't have strong cadences, and when we have these shorter chord loops. The harmonic discourse is a lot less directional (although still a bit directional) and much more ambiguous. Sometimes a Mixolydian chord can be treated as the "destination" in pop songs... like in Sweet Child O Mine, or Royals by Lorde. There's also the debate about "Sweet Home Alabama"...
Classical functional harmony is not quite the most precise model of analysis for pop music in my opinion, even though it can be really useful up to a certain point.
@@derekgonzales Thanks for your insights. I haven't heard or played the full track in a long time so I didn't take the guitar solo into account, just the vocal melody presented here. So given that the chorus chords all sound like major qualities (turning A into dominant gives a different vibe) I base my conclusion that it's A major and a transposition to G major.
My question though: does Gilmore actually play the G over the A chord? Or does he avoid it there (my suspicion is that he avoids it…)
And I agree that classical analysis might not always be suitable for pop music. The most compelling argument for that to me is that a lot of pop/rock music is not written very conscious but often stems from jamming and improvisation where interesting things occur. We often try to fit these things in our rigid theoretical boundaries because that's the tool we have.
1:56
Your analysis is just fantastic, that is really what I think,
Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?
That's got to be on purpose, I can really see a link.
That set off my “Wish You Were Here” alarms. When he mentioned Pink as a person, it was done so straight, that I got kinda worried that he actually thought one of them was Pink
@@vraisairs9201 The Wall album and subsequent film revolve around the character of Pink (played in the film by Bob Geldof) The song is told from his perspective of being medicated just before playing a concert
Pink is blues legend Pink Anderson and Floyd is soul legend Eddie Floyd. They have a guest appearance in the Blues Brothers 2000 movie.
I don't know that I'm growing as a theorist, because I'm more a performer than anything else and not even professionally, but your videos do make me think and I do find it fascinating to see how the different parts of a piece of work come together to enhance the mood, build and support the theme, and generally build a work that is very artful. And it's especially gratifying when you do this for the treasured music of my childhood, where I was REALLY not a theorist but I knew what I liked. Sometimes you help me understand why exactly I liked it. Thanks.
I hear the second part of the chorus modulating to G as well, and I do have an explanation: the string arpeggios hit the G a lot, and the melody they play overall sounds more at home in G. I hear "do la so fa (x4)... do so fa mi (x4)" instead of "so mi re do (x4)... so re do ti (x4)" [both, of course, being G, E, (D), C -> G, D, (C), B] probably because the voice leading on the bottom of the arpeggio would be moving a half step to the mediant, instead of from the tonic to the leading tone. It also feels more natural for the last five chords of the chorus (starting from the held lyric "I") to be II-iii-IV-I-V in G rather than VI-vii-I-V-II in C.
I loved this! I think it would be really cool to see you revisit your video on augmented chords with your new approaches and to have an in depth look into the voice leading capabilities of the chord ala your video (videos?) on the diminished chord, keep on rocking, peace
I really like seeing how your skills have developed
12:02 "But hey, that's just" a theory, a MUSIC THEORY. Keep on rocking.
Thanks for a cool update video, I really loved the new analysis you brought for In Bloom and the specific fixes on Comfortably Numb . Where do you get your stems?
I just love your videos
I like to think of the switch in chords in Comfortably Numb's chorus as being modal interchange. We are in D major at the beginning then D Mixolydian in the second part of the progression. This is how I think David composed the solo at least. He thinks in D the whole time and alters the C#/C. Modal interchange and altered "bluesy" notes is definitely a Gilmour thing... Even if he was never formally trained on the lingo
I definitely hear that C chord as a flatted VII, still in the key of D
@@PaulMcMinotaur Agreed
@@PaulMcMinotaur that's what Mixolydian would be... If a major mode has a bVII7 chord in its scale, that is Mixolydian...
I hear the first chord of In Bloom as the tonic, but maybe that's because I've heard it so often that I know exactly what comes next
"Something in the flanger family"
Very close. It's Chorus, which can be set to sound like a flanger and vice versa. Both are time based effects at heart, just like echo, but HOW it effects time is the distinction. If you're interested in learning about guitar effects for situations like this, i'd suggest JHS Pedals' UA-cam Channel. Josh is a very good presenter and an absolute guitar gear history nerd.
I’ve been able to get flangers to sound like chorus, but have never been able to have the chorus sound like a flanger.
Nice video,!12tone! I watched all of it.
Did you... did you do a Critical Role doodle during the In Bloom analysis as you were talking about the "one critical factor" being the rhythm? I love it.
what i feel with the Imperial March rhythm thing is sort of like the "Stand By Me progression" you mention near the start of the video, although of course based within the rhythm rather than the harmony
The whole four-bar phrase that that one bar belongs to has
-the first bar with the new phrase, accompanied by the normal rhythm
-the second bar with another new phrase, accompanied by the normal rhythm
-the third bar with the same phrase as bar 2, lowered in pitch, accompanied by the two "half-rhythms"
-the fourth bar with the reinstatement of the main theme, accompanied again by the normal rhythm
so to me it feels like the two full chord bars, then the bar with two half-length chords, accelerating into the last bar which returns to the tonic for a full bar, of the stand by me progression, except the rhythm is used instead of the harmony to really drive into that fourth bar that also returns to the main theme for a really satisfying resolution
I really appreciate the reminders of the point of music theory in this one
The effect that Cobain used on his guitar on In Bloom sounds more like a chorus to me than a flanger, but honestly it could be either, since they're really the same basic effect with slightly different delay times. Cobain was known to use the Electro Harmonix Small Clone and the Electro Harmonix Polychorus, which also has a flanger mode. So it's almost certainly one of those two pedals he used.
A possible "very good explanation for it" is that it's the same progression of the previous bars, transposed a whole step down, thus a I - V.
I already mentioned this in a comment on antother comment. I think the key to understanding the I-V vs IV-I issue with C and G in "Comfortably Numb" lies in the vocal line. It pretty much centers around C, the other notes being B and mostly D. There we have the leading tone in C-major and G is nowhere in sight. So all signs point to C as the tonic. However, the use of B is rather subtle and you mainly notice C and D, the latter being the dominant tone during the G-chord - double entendre intended. Just before the chord changes to G, the vocals hit C and D (ignoring a brief detour over B). And since we're looking at a plain G-major triad - as opposed to a dominant seventh chord, say - this may be perceived as the root motion of a standard IV-V-I cadence in G-major. It's a very clever play with the ambiguity of plain major triads combined with a fairly standard modulation using G as a pivot chord between D-major and C-major. In addition, the slow pace of the harmonic changes makes it easy to lose track of tonalities.
You are correct that the chorus is less motivic if you read the C - G as a IV - I in G. However, that is the way I think I hear it, despite how hard I try to hear it as a I - V in C. While I think that conceptually, I think your analysis of the chorus is a very well-oiled analysis, I think I have a solid justification for why so many of us hear it as IV - I: G is a more closely-related key to D and B minor than C.
If we say that the chorus has moved to the relative major, D, than the next modulation, if unprepared, is more likely to aurally "find its root" in the closely-related key.
For this reason, I wouldn't even divide the chorus's progression up into two halves. It is helpful to note that the root movement does consistently go down by a perfect fourth, but I don't hear it as a I-V in D followed by a I-V in C.
I would analyze it as a I-V in D major, with the A moving to a chromatic mediant of C in a case of modal interchange, moving once again down by a fourth to G, which can complete the cycle of downward fourths in a plagal G-D motion.
TL;DR - analyzing chords when there is a modulation involved is always tricky - especially when the modulation is abrupt.
Thanks for having the balls to stand up and exercise your right to fair use as a music educator.
Please, for everyone's sake, have the balls to stay standing when they come for you, (because they will).
Gilmour used an EHX Electric Mistress and a Yamaha Rotary Speaker for modulation on the Wall album.
The Rotary is more pronounced in the first solo. The second, "cathartic" (I prefer that to "dark", having played it many times) outro solo is less modulated. He used those effects with great skill and subtlety.
Live, he would use both Flanger & Chorus as well as the ever-present Rotary.
Gilmourish (website and UA-cam) has everything one could ever want regarding info on Gilmour's gear & tone over the years.
Cobain's rig was pretty simple. For modulation he used an EHX Small Clone chorus.
So, the guitar pedal on the verse in In Bloom is a Chorus. Same family as the flanger, in that its a phazing effect, but different in function.
The Imperial March and Comfortably Numb were the first videos of yours that I watched. I don't remember in which order. I think I saw The Imperial March first.
Thanks for the cool videos!! Thoughts on Nirvana song: I strongly hear the intro in Bb for sure- try playing the intro loop and stopping on the Ab like it's the end of the song- feel okay? Not to me- I want to take it to the Bb to end on the home sound. Also the key of Ab is not likely to have prominent "D's" in it - the 5th of the G power chord. The Key of Bb though has G's, D's F's C's and in Rock, many times Abmajor - or power chord (flat 7 chord) which also has an Eb as the 5th. Add all those up and you get a Bb mixolydian scale (very common in rock to be in Mixolydian mode as the home key). Thoughts on the Verse: If I pretend to be my 14-year old guitar playing self (not much classical theory at all) I was just thinking about shapes moving around on a guitar neck. Some movements sound predictable - some less predictable and MORE COOL:) There are a lot of great riffs and progressions that were uncovered simply by "planing" the chord shapes (major, minor, or power chords) around: just experiment, see how it sounds, keep what you like. Your very astute comment about distortion or other guitar effects being better on major chords also would play into it in a big way- yes! The chromatic mediant relationships are very strong: Bb to Gb has a D to Db in it; Gb to Eb has a Gb to G in it.... slow it down and score it for strings and you have stereotypical movie music. The B and A triads are simply a half step away from the root (Bb)- the B triad "could be" thought of as suggesting the Phrygian mode (Neapolitan in root pos.) But I really think they were just planing major chords - sounded cool and Cobain was so great at singing over such progressions, it just worked really well. And he was also a genius at matching lyrics with the "mood " of the music.... the art in this is pretty much flawless IMHO, but explaining it with traditional music theory is only slightly helpful. But it's fun to try (for those of us who like a lot of kinds of music from Rock to jazz to classical, Indian, classical.... )
Have you ever done or considered doing a video on a Randy Newman song? I think you’d have a great time with his arrangements. Sail Away or In Germany Before the War, for example
The chorus could be a sequence, I-V-bVII-IV, like in "here it goes again." IMO it's the overall key of the chorus being D that makes the C-G feel like G is the "tonic"
I ended up on the In Bloom Lyrics page on Genius after this video, only to see your original video linked in the song summary.
Another solution to C-G: it stays in D, and the chords are bVII ja IV. I can hear all three possible versions. The one note that would settle us between keys C and G is f or f#, and since there is neither one, we don’t know for sure. You can try adding them to the scale, and I actually like both versions. But if I had to make the call, I’d say it’s bVII-IV in D.
I could contend that the F# in Numb is a chord and not just a passing tone as so many of the harmonies pass through that chord at the same time.
And also because the use of the minor I-2-3 chords (or 3-2-1 or 1-2-3-2) through out the whole album is such a strong musical theme. But it doesn't change things really. Much enjoyed both looks at the song.
I hear the chorus honestly more as a b7 4 1 instead because b7 is a common substitution for 4 and is just a way of extending the cadence of 4 to 1
Maybe 🤔
I'd love you to analyze a group from a noise-heavy genre, like Death Grips or Black Dresses or something. Thats a very new genre, compared to a lot of what I see people talk about, and it's one that often defies traditional structures.
I hear the C-G as IV-I for sure, and I think it's cause I also hear D-A as IV-I. So it's the same thing but with a key change between them. I know D would be more obvious as a tonic given that we've been in Bm, but I don't think it's crazy to see it as a pivot chord to the new key of A. I think the bassline is part of what solidifies it. It goes down from D to A, rather than up (same thing from G to C), and that low bass note just helps it feel like home to me.
The chorus chords of Comfy Numb are reminiscent (likely unintentionally) to the verse of Gilmour's earlier "Fat Old Sun", but with repeated pairs, and transposed. And just think - people can write, record, produce, and perform songs like this without ever once asking themselves if the tonic is changing!
I think the reason some people hear that C as a IV is because the previous chord is an A and there’s an A-B-C walkup. That A-C chromatic mediant movement reminds me of IV - bVI, which is a relatively common movement in minor songs and lends itself well to modulating to the relative major using that bVI as the IV of the new key. This might sound like a very random explanation, but I admit I CAN hear a subdominant color in that change, and this is the only explanation I found for it.
TL;DR a minor-third-up chromatic mediant from a major chord is a movement most often found on IV-bVI, which is a pair of subdominants
The "Happy Solo" in Comfortably Numb is one of my favorite things ever.
Can you please do Shine on you Crazy Diamond? Much has been said about how beautifully it tributes Syd, may he rest in peace, but I want to know more about the harmony and the possible intentions and effects there, and that's sort off your specialty.
Not only do I hear the C as the 4th of G, I hear the D as the 4th of the A chord; the words “receding” and “waves” as being the resolution points. But, oddly, when the guitar solo is played over the same sequence I hear it the other way round!
I've always heard the chorus as a VI-I just because the plagal cadence fits the more spiritual theme of the chorus
7:35 I'm sure others said this already, but it's a chorus pedal w/ a slight amount of built-in delay.
The most important aspect of learning is that it is continuous. If you reach a point where you think you've got it all figured out, then you've only managed to stunt the learning process. At least, that is what I have learned so far.
what an interesting video congratulations for you.
So about major chords in minor progression and Cobain, there might be an explanation and...it would have nothing to do with theory. Cobain mostly fingered chords with 1st on tonic then 3rd finger barred on 5th and octave tonic (2 frets away from yonic). Results is that it often covers the next higher string, which gives either a major chord or a sus4. For instance Smells like teen spirit is Fsus4, BflatM, G#sus4, C#M.
There's a lyric to work on: Prechorus: "I've been hanging on. Maybe longer than I should. I know I should move on. It would be for my own good..... " chorus: "but I can't let go of you, girl, You make sense of my world, and no matter how I try, or how much I cry, I can't let go of you girl." that might be a winning song idea :)
On the subject of the C to G argument: I think I always heard it going from IV-I instead of I-V a step down just because in rock music a) the ubiquity of plagal cadences cannot be overstated and b) the melody going from the root of the IV chord going upwards to the 5th of the I chord instead of down to the 3rd is also quite common, just look at "Last Nite" by The Strokes. The whole main riff of the song is built around that sort of sus4-esque relationship. Also, that setup with the G/B is just barely audible and it's not on a strong beat, and I think people are much more likely to call it a passing chord than to actually hold onto it. And of course, the enemy music theorists everywhere: it just sounds right to me! If Roger Waters saw this video, he'd certainly say something along the lines of "Wow, I did all of that!"
I could be a flanger, or it could be chorus. Some people are able to make flangers sound like chorus, like Andy Summers of the Police, so it can be hard to say for sure.
I know I'm a little late to the party here, but I don't think the "In Bloom" intro lands on either of the syncopated chords. Listening to that intro, the first and last thing I hear is the kit part. I know you're a harmony guy, but the way Grohl lands that fill on the downbeat over and over is a clear direction to those downbeat chords. They even cut out that "tonic" fourth chord to feature the fill the last time around.
Actually I heard the 2nd part of the chorus as the flat VII and the IV of D. I see the entire song as sort of an interchange between B minor and then to its relative major, D, but in mixolydian. What makes that interesting for me is that you can sort of infer that a flat ii would fit in the verse section, but it's not used. There's an implication that it could belong, though. But that's just the way I see it.
I'd love to see something like Domesticated Animals by Queens of the Stone Age come up in a poll sometime
“moving on to real analysis” [screams in math]
Funny enough, for the in bloom intro, I heard G5 as the root because I experience the F and A♭ as a sort of Encirclement of G. It's especially prominent if I try sing along to the intro riff and hang on the A♭, my ear thinks that it should resolve a half step down to G. Analytically, it's a mess and I'll have to come back later to this to actually make sense of what my ear is hear, but I thought I'd still share
Every musician ever who has written sheet music: 0:59
Can you please do more Pink Floyd songs? It's so crazy that their songs are so amazing, and they just blew up so quickly and had so many great albums back to back
In the bridge towards the chorus Kurt is playing through a chorus pedal
03:46 "Solos": look at the drawing.
Also: maybe he should have drawn two of them, but a plural of "Solo" is hard to swallow...
Could you do some analysis on the music from the How to Train Your Dragon movies? Specifically the opening themes and the track known as "Test Drive" from the first movie. It's a masterful score, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
But hey
thats just THEORY
A MUSIC THEORY
One more vote for "Comfortable Numb's chorus modulates to G and that C is a IV". I'm not sure *why* (my guess is it's something about the sentence structure, weird as that may be), but I have some pseudo-evidence (totally not evidence): What happens if you skip that modulation? I think we're all agreed the chorus starts in D, so what happens if it stays in D? To my ears, it should then go D A G D (I V IV I), and it... makes sense (melody for "you are only coming through in waves" becomes G->F#->G->A). The version where it's "I->V in C" means it should be D A D A (I V I V) which sounds... more wrong?
This isn't terribly eloquent, but it might be interesting to give it a whirl and see if you can hear why, as you point out, many of us are hearing it as IV->I in G.
hey 12 tone I just wanted to tell you that it would make my year if you do understanding Highlander (The One) by Lost horizon and especially that magical end part with his vocals
Suggestion: maybe you could analyze "Samba em Preludio"?
It sounds interesting
The melody lands on D on the C-G part. It's bVII-IV
Comfortably Numb: I tend to hear the C to G as IV-I in G. My test is: what other scale tones does my ear want to hear over it? If I want to hear F#'s, then it would be in G, if I want to hear F naturals, then it's in C- when I tried that, my ear REALLY wants to hear F#'s - NOT F naturals... this also puts the modulation (to one sharp) more closely related to two sharps (Bmin/Dmaj) - just my two cents. Another test would be: If it's I-V, how good does it sound to make it I to V7(add Fnatural to the Gchord)? If that sounds really oddly out of place (not just based on style) then the key of G makes more sense- Or similarly, try making the G a GMaj7 by adding the F#.... To me that actually sounds very "inside".... Try those things and see what you think? Different people's perceptions can be different for sure!
I didn't really interpret the chorus to have modulated. I just thought of it as a non-diatonic chord and that it was still in D. I thought of it as a I V I V bVII IV bVII IV
(referring to Comfortably Numb)
i think there's an even simpler explanation for the all major chords in a minor key thing of in bloom -- it's rock & roll. rock music and the blues before it has a long history of using all major chords in minor keys. look at practically any AC/DC song for instance.
"My 'ears of experience"
Where do you go for song stems?
Can you analyze the song Epic by Faith No More?
First of all, why do you call a loop of i, VII, VI, iv in a minor key a "Stand By Me loop?" Stand By Me uses the doo-wop changes. Is there a reference I'm not getting? Is there another Stand By Me besides the old Ben E King song?
Also, regarding the "key change" to C or G in the chorus, I don't hear either chord as resolved. I hear it not as a key change at all, but a move to the bVII and IV, still in D major, because of the way it resolves. bVII-IV is a very common move in rock harmony from the late sixties (think Hey Jude) onward, and repeating it twice in a row makes it this sort of floating unresolved figure. It moves back to D (I), resolving weakly by placing the resolution on the start of the next phrase (not cadencing strongly). This whole figure is repeated. Then, after the second C-G-C-G move, it moves to A (the dominant,) before resolving in the strong plagal cadence that had been teased before. (V-bVII-IV-I on the words "I have become comfortably numb").
It sort of relaxes into resolution by moving from the dominant (which uses the leading tone) to the bVII (which uses the lowered, mixolydian 7th), while also delaying the strong resolution by the way they play with the phrasing. I hope this makes sense, I don't know how to convey how a harmonic progression "feels" to me without plunking chords on a piano at you.
C to G would be I to V. G as a V chord sets up the return to the D chord which is a V of V.
the pedal sounds like a chorus pedal to me
EHX small clone
@@colinedmunds2238 Oh yeah..Cobain used one of those. Absolutely correct.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on the beginning loop to "In Bloom"... in "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran, the harmonic rhythm is exactly the same, moving D - F#min - G - A. Admittedly, those chords fit more nicely into a single key and the cadence certainly helps, but it's definitely still in D major even though the F#min cuts the D chord short. I think the tonic position in the Nirvana loop really wins out for me, and Tagg's functions make more sense to me too if it's in Bb: the G5 sets up the F5 by step, and the Ab5 sets up the Bb5 by step, so I'm drawn to hearing Bb and F as the most important chords in the loop despite the rhythm pulling away from them. Also, they're on the downbeats, and the chords fit Bb mixolydian as I-VIm-Vm-bVII, so I'm pretty happy to analyze it this way and omit the need for a key change later.
TREBLE CLEF, you naughty boy. You draw music very legibly.
how did you get the isolated vocal tracks for Comfortably Numb?!
3:02 It makes it sound lydian, which is often used in abrupt key changes, if not always. I think the guitar soloing also plays an F# on the C chord, to confirm this
ua-cam.com/video/x-xTttimcNk/v-deo.html (1:08) is the version I'm listening to, and I don't hear any F#.
Also interesting is at the end of the chorus, the chords go: A C2 G D. I hear that as V - IVadd2 - [I - IVadd2] - I. For some reason, my brain breaks up the G to reconcile the change. Maybe? Or something's wrong with me.
@@cmarley314 I'm sure it does, when on the C it starts with a G (5th), and the second note is an F#
@@cmarley314 the exact timecode is 2:22
@@monsieurbrochant7528
The chorus? The melody goes between C and B, ending on D.
I do agree with the Lydian observation. I could never hear an F natural transition between C and G.
@@cmarley314 I never said F natural, I said F#, which is the exact note played by the guitar over the C chord at 2.22
If you analyze a section in a key the songwriter didn't think of because that's what you hear, it'll be an accurate interpretation of your experience, but the chords won't necessarily have logical purposes that fit the theme of the lyrics. It's fine to enjoy something the author didn't intend to convey, but it's generally not going to be a coherent message. Like scenic vistas are beautiful and inspiring, but the parts don't serve communicative purposes.
I still don't understand why you analyzed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in a transposed key instead of its actual key.
How do you separate the song's tracks so well?
ua-cam.com/video/scMOPvVbPdg/v-deo.html
The G lead into the second part of the chorus could be interpreted as the root of the new key, which creates the IV-I effect.
9:26 sounds like Hello by Evanescence
Music confuses me because I can't pinpoint what the word for the feeling is, but I do feel the feeling often
This leads to a scenario in which I can't really enjoy the music sometimes because I'm dwelling on this
I don't know why I said it or what relevance it has, it's just that hearing of functions and whatnot always makes me think that ;-;
I'm nowhere near as good at music theory as you, so I can't reason it that well, but the reason I think it modulates to G instead of C, is purely just because it feels like you're going home to the G. When they play the G I just feel at home, and the C feels more like the question, with the G as the answer.
8:46 - by God how did you write that drum part down
Okay, so you justified an analysis of the chorus because you regard the vocal singing the C as the tonic.... in a song where you just pointed out that the vocal hangs out on the dominant for the verses. Seems to preserve one symmetry you need to break another.
I last saw one of your videos like years ago😂 with the bird and the walking cup with long legs(?) and I thought a woman was talking? Or maybe I'm thinking of a different channel? Anyways, i had this same feeling of "how can you talk so fast?" and how can you sinc all these video with your drawings ?? 😂😂😂
@Minjae Lee yes! That's her! Thank you do much!
10:29 Metapod is confused!
1:02 How is (Bm, A, G, Em) a “Stand by Me” loop? Stand by Me is a (I, vi, IV, V) loop, which is this case would be something like (D, Bm, G, A) except that would be in D major and Comfortably Numb is clearly in B minor. I would describe (Bm, A, G, Em) as like a “Hit the Road, Jack” loop, which would be (Bm, A, G, F#), but the final dominant chord is changed. Have I misunderstood something?
It's about the duration of the chords.
Stand by me: A, A, F#m, F#m, D, E, A, A
You see the first two chords are held for twice as long as the next two. And that's the same in the loop here, the Bm and A are twice as long as the G or Em.
Hey Google, any chance we can control the video and comment writing independently on mobile? It's a nightmare trying to write a comment referring to the video's content in detail!
@@almightyhydra Ah, that makes more sense. Thank you.
I saw an analysis of a pink Elephant
9:24 is it me or is the tuning a semitone out? I hear the first chord as Bbm
Yeah the notation is all a half step sharp, that’s definitely B flat instead of B
It might be the recording