Chapter 8 The Modal Connection Flashcards
The Mixolydian Mode
‘Hey Jude’. listen to this 4-bar progression as it repeats relentlessly. It’s three chords alright - but it’s not to be confused with the Three -Chord
Trick. Why not? After all, a quick look at the progression on paper confirms that these are the I, IV and V chords in the key of Bb. And yet, when we tap into the flavour of the song we do not hear a conventional R ‘n’B cycle as we do, say, in ‘Twist And Shout’. Instead The Beatles depart from the familiar strains of rock ‘n’ roll with this sequence - delivered no less than 18 times.
Th e Double Plagal
Here’s another highly versatile trademark sound of rock, most associated with mid - and late - period Beatles songs.
‘You Never Give
Me Your Money’ sees it showcased as a Mixolydian Turnaround, in a similar circular, ‘Hey Jude’ fashion
It may not appear immediately obvious but here again The Beatles manage to contrive a sublimely appropriate musical backdrop for their lyrics. In order to appreciate it fully we need to move several stages beyond the simple notions of ‘coming home ‘ (e.g., in Perfect cadences), or moving from ‘dark’ to ‘light’ (in major/ minor shifts).
And that’s not the end of the Double Plagal cadence. Think of the lazy yearning of the chorus of ‘ Dig A Pony’ , or Lennon’s similarly
ill- disguised frustration as he begs ‘Dear Prudence’ to join him.
The Beatles’ bVII-VI-I
‘Double Plagal ‘ excursions.
But Lennon wasn’t finished with the subtle semantics in ‘She Said She Said’. For the brilliance of the song is the way that the bridge breaks free from the harmonic straightjacket of the verse , with a shift in both time signature and tonality that combine expertly to draw attention to the more upbeat lyrical theme of when I was a boy”.
The Beatles instinctively understood the semantic potential of the ploy: ‘Turning the subdominant into the tonic can be used to signify a retreat into the inner seIf .
Meanwhile, the Double Plagal has lived on powerfully down the years in a diverse range of pop and rock settings. Here is a candidate from each of the last five decades of rock; take your pick from endless Mixolydian Turnarounds to hard -hitting, one -off statements :
60S: The Rolling Stones’ ‘Midnight Rambler ‘ (main structure)
I bVII
Did you hear about the midnight
IV
rambler
I bVII IV
everybody got to go
Meanwhile, the Double Plagal has lived on powerfully down the years in a diverse range of pop and rock settings. Here is a candidate from each of the last five decades of rock; take your pick from endless Mixolydian Turnarounds to hard -hitting, one -off statements :
70S: Peter Frampton’s ‘Do You Feel Like We Do’ (title refrain)
Meanwhile, the Double Plagal has lived on powerfully down the years in a diverse range of pop and rock settings. Here is a candidate from each of the last five decades of rock; take your pick from endless Mixolydian Turnarounds to hard -hitting, one -off statements :
80S: Guns ‘n’ Roses’ ‘Paradise City’
bVII IV I
Oh, won’t you please take me home
Meanwhile, the Double Plagal has lived on powerfully down the years in a diverse range of pop and rock settings. Here is a candidate from each of the last five decades of rock; take your pick from endless Mixolydian Turnarounds to hard -hitting, one -off statements :
oos : Oasis’ ‘Little James ‘ (coda )
G F C G (2x)
(same chords)
Na na na na na…
Other great Double Plagals include : The Kinks’ ‘20th Century Man
Other great Double Plagals include : ‘I Want You To Want Me’ intro
A G D A
Other great Double Plagals include :
Bachman -Turner Overdrive’s ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet’ (verse)
Other great Double Plagals include :
The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and ‘Magic Bus ‘
Other great Double Plagals include :
In keeping with the semantics of the move, a fine example is Wire’s proto - punk 1977 anthem , ‘IZXU’, which again cycles relentlessly around bVII-VI-I , complementing the theme of claustrophobic sexual paranoia.
For all its rock heritage, the Double Plagal cadence can add a powerful touch to even the most ostensibly mellow ballads. Take Robbie Williams’ nineties phenomenon, ‘Angels’, where the song appears to take a U- turn to de liver bVII-VI-I on the crucial
punchline .
Beyond the Double Plagal: ‘Triples’ and ‘Quads’ But, just as with shots of tequila and bogeys in golf, so Plagal cadences exist not merely as ‘singles’ and ‘doubles’, but also as ‘triples’
and ‘quadruples’. Using the Cycle Of Fourths , just count back the requisite number of stops, extending the progression so that each
successive chord is reached by means of a descent of a fourth.
A ‘Triple Fourth ‘ or ‘Tri -Plagal’ (Everett’s term) cadence can be heard in ‘Here Comes The Sun’ - in the hypnotic bridge it is disguised with a V7 chord tagged-on for good measure (creating another fourth in the process!), while, in the coda, the sequence makes for a definitive wrap - up : True to form, the repeated mantra ‘sun , sun, sun’ doesn’t rise much above the ‘na , na, na’ that we saw in the ‘Hey Jude’ coda.
Beyond the Double Plagal: ‘Triples’ and ‘Quads’
As every bar - band guitarist will know (and as every musicologist including Tagg, Middleton and Everett also points out), Jimi Hendrix’s cover of ‘Hey Joe’ is the definitive ‘multi -Plagal’ rock song, with its single structure that cycles exclusively around this Quadri -Plagal harmony.
The sound of the ‘Quad’ was back in the charts in the nineties, in Kula Shaker’s rendition of Joe South’s ‘Hush’ (made famous by Deep Purple) with the ‘na, na , na’ chant once again maintaining the great tradition of ‘lazy lyrics over
chained Plagals’.
While ‘Quads’ are rare in rock, variations on ‘Triples’ can be found in songs of all eras. Indeed , Noel Gallagher has a soft spot for it- a Triple Fourth root movement (if not the full Plagal voice leading) unfolds on its way to a minor tonic in his mega- anthem
‘Wondenwall’,
Was it pure coincidence that in nominating his favourite all- time singles for a MOJO poll, Noel selected The Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumpin ‘ Jack Flash’ and The Small Faces’ ‘Tin Soldier’, two songs that just happen also to feature Triple and Double Fourth root moves, respectively?
As far back as Beatles For Sale the modal-folk-rock strains of ‘I’m A Loser’ were suggesting a hybrid development of the group’s sound. While the b7th melody note may only be fleeting here , the strong 3rd and 4th are powerfully in attendance - as is, of course,
the bVII character chord.
If the bVII is switched to appear after the V, the bVII- I cadence should now be best thought of as a Mixolydian, rather than an Aeolian-derived, cadence. This harmony now becomes paramount as we appreciate the sound of a whole string of Beatles songs which have become regarded as some of the finest from their catalogue. Among them , ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’, another Lennon contribution to the ‘songwriter’s manual’, demonstrates a truly textbook application of the Mixolydian mode. Here the melody hangs heavily on the bVII while the harmony features both the bVII and the mode’s intrinsically weak dominant - the v minor chord , with Lennon again taking advantage of the fact that the two chords (G and Em) are relative major and minor.
The first strain of ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ epitomises the character of Mixolydian and so provides a useful opportunity for comparison with the Ionian mode. The following table highlights how the darker, folky, sound of the Mixolydian is down to those
contrasting sevenths.
Soon The Beatles were building on this concept of harmonic stasis by reining in the inner and bass harmonies, a feature starting on Rubber Soul. In Lennon’s verse to ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ both the full Mixolydian scale and the bVII chord make starring appearances - as do other modal ‘bells and whistles’ in the form of both the droning sitar part and Paul’s bass which, while not technically acting as permanent pedal, is nevertheless conceived as emphasizing the sound of the tonic.
The Beatles developed the principle of the bass pedal even further on George’s ‘ If I Needed Someone’, a song that first paraded an interesting modal ‘slash’ chord that would soon become a fundamental feature of the harmony of several mid-period Beatles songs .
This bVII/I chord creates an effect that The Beatles would repeat on ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ on Revolver, and later ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’
Notice how ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’ eventually arrives in the key of C major, but only after the intro and opening bars of the verse have created a pseudo G Mixolydian flavour by virtue of the slash chord, over which the C notes initially sound as melodic 4ths.
Revolver made quantum leaps in this respect though, before that, the ‘Paperback Writer’ t Rain’ single of June 1966 represents an important watershed. For all their similarities (both feature extended tonic action, in verse and chorus , respectively) the two tracks
can be seen as being evolutionary landmarks for two quite different branches of Beatles songwriting. For while both songs are in G major and nominally deliver elements of droning modality, this author sees, on the one hand, ‘Paperback Writer’, with its hard
driving rock riff, as part of a blues heritage building on the guitar meanderings of ‘Day Tripper’ and paving the way for the hard rock
riffs of ‘Yer Blues’, ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey’
the chorus of ‘Rain’ takes the attention firmly away from the lead guitar and onto the bass , specifically forcing us to
focus on a highlighted pedal that contrasts starkly with the busy lines of the verses. This evocative 12 - bar section certainly helps us appreciate profoundly the emergence of what is affectionately know as The Beatles’
‘Indian period’ where pedals, bVII chords and Mixolydian melodies dominate.
In the case of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, The Beatles created an entire structure in which the two triads, I and bVII, fight it out as ‘slash’ chords over a single tonic pedal, as we first saw in
‘ If I Needed Someone ‘.
Revolver’s heavy-weight closer demonstrates that pedal drones do not have to imply a total absence of harmonic ingenuity. They provide the opportunity for not just moving lines of single notes in the upper harmonies but also double -stops and triads that driftover the hypnotic drone. the random tape loops of ‘ Tomorrow Never Knows’, which instill the idea of death as a transition , complementing the lyrics that see the end as a beginning. So too the static pedal symbolises a sacred , unwavering plane of higher consciousness to which we should
strive; a state that (whether drug-induced or naturally attained) transcends rationalisation, or any other type of structured thought.
Finally, one famous Mixolydian moment from ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ illustrates this point most exotically. Tune in and drop out as the swordmandel makes its grand entrance at l.19 and again at 2.04.
To appreciate the Lydian flavour, let’s first spell out the pitches in a classic Ionian ‘pop’ melody, as exemplified by McCartney’s ‘I Will’ before comparing it with the most convincing Beatles excursion into the highly acquired taste of Lydian: ‘Blue Jay Way’.
Both melodies are highly representative examples as they each contain all the members of their respective modes. The # 11th is the main character tone of the Lydian mode although the prevalence of the 7th is also distinctive. Notice how the latter is used more freely in ‘Blue Jay Way’ than in ‘I Will’, though not necessarily tending upwards to the tonic as a leading note. This itself conjures a
modal flavour and is partly responsible for the ‘floating’ feel as that ‘independent’ 7th refuses to be drawn to base.
Owners of Magical Mystery Tour are encouraged to review the closing moments of the previous track on the album , ‘Flying’. The
Beatles are famous for leaving little musical clues in various corners of their catalogue, and musos will appreciate the Lydian
signpost that the Fabs create, ever- so -briefly, in the closing, freetime coda.
it is useful first to derive the chords of the harmonised Lydian scale in the usual way, and highlight the mode’s ‘character’ chords.
Even more than the verse itself (see Chapter 7), the bridge tune has a floating quality to it, a feature familiar to most Lydian structures. The fact that the C#m chord immediately moves back to D major is also an interesting ploy that makes us feel that we haven’t drifted convincingly to another key. The G# notes in the melody over the D major chord now hang with an air of Lydian
modality as they represent pure # 11ths; over a tonic major. Nevertheless, the shifting sands beneath the dreamy ‘Julia’ (the song is a tribute to John’s late mother) can be interpreted in various ways, with Lydian merely one option suggested for the purposes of this particular exercise. As the F#m chord unfolds, a modulation to the relative minor is another way of looking at this bridge (with the opening C#m now seen retrospectively as the ‘iv’ of this temporary key centre).
Whether or not you agree with the Lydian flavour suggested h ere , the mode is rare in pop music. Everett cites The Left Banke’s
‘Pretty Ballerina’ (from December 1966) as perhaps the only pre-‘Blue Jay Way’ Lydian example in pop.
While the Ionian, Mixolydian and Lydian can be usefully bundled together as ‘major modes’ due to their major 3rd interval, so the remaining modes , Dorian, Phrygian and Locrian, feature a 3 that creates an underlying minor mood in which distinct character tones work their magic. In this sense, the remainder of this chapter is intended as a colourful extension to Chapter 6
Here the Cm7 -to-F7 vamp can be thought of as in the key of C minor but , more specifically, in C Dorian. This ‘labelling’ is again important, as the b6th
in the C Aeolian scale would be an inappropriate choice of note for a soloist to use over the F major.
Long before ‘Los Paranoias’ (September 1968), the i-IV-i Dorian alternation would feature in George’s ‘Don ‘t Bother Me’, on With The Beatles.
None of these songs clearly features an intrinsically Dorian-esque melody - they lack the brave natural 6ths that identify the
character of the mode in the top line.
The IV chord in a minor setting is enough to evoke the sound of Dorian: look back to the parallel minor middle eight in ‘Norwegian Wood’, and the relative minor bridge of ‘There’s A Place’. See also the Bm-E -B m-E bridge vamp in ‘Run For Your Life’;
None of these songs clearly features an intrinsically Dorian-esque melody - they lack the brave natural 6ths that identify the
character of the mode in the top line.
The IV chord in a minor setting is enough to evoke the sound of Dorian: look back to
the relative minor bridge of ‘There’s A Place’
None of these songs clearly features an intrinsically Dorian-esque melody - they lack the brave natural 6ths that identify the character of the mode in the top line.
The IV chord in a minor setting is enough to evoke the sound of Dorian: look back to
the Bm-E -Bm-E bridge vamp in ‘Run For Your Life’;
None of these songs clearly features an intrinsically Dorian-esque melody - they lack the brave natural 6ths that identify the character of the mode in the top line.
The IV chord in a minor setting is enough to evoke the sound of Dorian: look back to
two Harrisongs, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps ‘ and ‘Savoy Truffle’, also feature minor sections that go for the confident IV chord in a minor setting.
None of these songs clearly features an intrinsically Dorian-esque melody - they lack the brave natural 6ths that identify the
character of the mode in the top line.
To get the true Dorian-esque sound you need the brave natural 6ths in the melody. To sample the sound , let’s return to ‘A Taste Of Honey’, right back on Please Please Me. While we earlier identified an Aeolian cadence in the song’s harmonic structure , the melody displays a textbook Dorian character, with The Beatles’ version faithfully showcasing the natural 6th degree (D# in the key of F# minor), in addition to the sound of the IV chord.
‘A Taste Of Honey’ arguably represents the most emphatic Dorian example in the catalogue
‘Fixng A Hole’ finds a McCartney melody outlining F Dorian, flirting with the D natural in his top line as well as in the Bb9 chord. The complicating F major and C ‘aug’ chords in that song are revisited in the following chapter, where they will bear out the theme of The Beatles’ liberal approach to tonality and modality.
Some of their finest songs hinge on the drifting flavours that are evoked
when modes shift from bar to bar - a feature mastered equally by John, Paul and George. Here is an example from each:
First up is Paul’s ‘Eleanor Rigby’, sometimes referred to as being ‘in Dorian’. But beware of hard and fast labels - the following extract shows that the E minor melody features both natural and flattened 6ths;. The natural 6th (C#) in the verse certainly conjures a Dorian flavour. But so the flattened 6th note (C natural) - not to mention the bVI chord (C major is the only other chord in the song) is equally indicative of E Aeolian, or E natural minor.
The song duly reminds us that modes are not to be confused with key centres. It is more helpful to regard the song in E minor - as a ‘generic’ minor tonality - with the ~ b3 of Em (G natural) defining the overall mood. But within this minor tonality, suggestions of Dorian and Aeolian are emphasized at different points. There are, of course, no rules with regard to melody construction and all
these scales are merely guidelines from which excursions to new character tones , implying new modes , can be made
There are, of course, no rules with regard to melody construction and all
these scales are merely guidelines from which excursions to new character tones , implying new modes , can be made - as Lennon demonstrates in the first section of ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’
We are clearly in a minor key here. This time A minor, with F# notes in the melody suggestive of A Dorian. However, by bar 5, those F natural notes present in the D minor chord now belong to the more mellow Aeolian.
For a Harrison ‘mixed-mode’ foray switching between the same two character tones , check out ‘I Me Mine ‘.
The sound of the strong D dominant chord in the key of A minor sets the Dorian backdrop in the opening bars , only for the melody to plunge to F natural - now the Aeolian- esque b3rd of the D minor (at 0.23). In terms of lyrical matching, it’s no coincidence that
the darker Aeolian mode is evoked on the very word ‘frightened’. Once again we have a Beatles juxtaposition of modes within a key as the songwriters draw selectively on the chromatic scale at will.
Back on Rubber Soul, ‘Wait’ represents a humble example with which to make the point.
No piece of music sums up the entire tritone phenomenon in rock better than Tony lommi’s deliberate three - note riff on the title track of Black Sabbath eponymous debut.
The Beatles very occasionally used chords on the b5
though rarely in a prolonged sense , or in ways that evoked the flavour of the
Locrian mode.
’ It ‘s definitely evil. They used to hang you for stuff like this. [Black] Sabbath was a major influence earlier on my life, and those sounds were the most evil things I heard in their songs.
The Phrygian sound is most associated with Spanish and Latin songs, with the instant , ‘mode -defining vamp’ of i -bII , and its variations (particularly Em -F , or Am-Bb on a nylon-string guitar). Amazingly, The Beatles’ catalogue also contains the sound of the b2 note in its traditional setting of a flamenco-flavoured Phrygian melody. Step forward the controversial Spanish guitar solo that opens ‘The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill’.
Again we can think of the song as being in the key of A minor - but implying the Phrygian mode briefly during this extract.
The Bb now only has to drop by a smooth , single semitone to retrieve the tonic of A minor for the brief refrain section that follows. The fact that the chord occurs on the phrase ‘so far away’ (further highlighted by a change in texture on the McCartney live versions) is just the icing on the cake. For while a semitone from the root is physically not too distant, it seems a long way from home musically, hanging precariously in oblivion and awaiting that fulfilling resolution. ‘Quite good’? Sir Paul, you are too modest.
In ‘Cry Baby Cry’, however , the F chord acts as both bVII in the opening tonality of G and a retrospective bII in the new key of Em. The whole maneuver is made even more effortless by the way that the F chord (first heard in bar 2) is subsequently delivered for action (two bars later) as a tonality establishing mechanism. For having moved conventionally from Em to A7, the listener is subconsciously preparing for movement to a D root. But with his instinctive understanding of’ I for vi’ substitutions , John gives us
something better - the relative major of the D minor that could have been built on that chord. Bingo! He has his bII -i minor lead us to the court of ‘The King Of Marigold’. Once again we can’t leave this song without a tonal ambiguity caveat. Some writers see this entire unfolding Em as just a ‘vi chord’ in the key of G, complete with a descending linear embellishment not unlike the A minor chord in Harrison’s ‘Something’ (after all, even the melody is similar to ‘I don’t want to leave her now’)
But this author believes the classic Phrygian approach makes this fundamentally different, with the targeted minor chord not appearing within a section (as in ‘Something’). Rather it now starts a verse for which Lennon has specifically earmarked a melancholy minor atmosphere for his images of a seance ‘in the dark with voices out of nowhere’. MelIers, too , feels the power as he describes how ‘the flattened (phrygian ) second grows increasingly threatening’. Once again, ambiguity rules throughout with the song’s rogue Bb note (the b7th of the C7) spoiling the cosy notion
of either G Mixolydian (Bb being the b3rd of G) or, indeed, pure E Aeolian (where the same note is the b5th ) . Far from being a subtle nuance, the C7 -G change emerges as the most striking thing in the whole song.
Analysing Cry Baby Cry (or attempting to) helps us to appreciate a rather more famous Lennon sequence but one surely conceived in a harmonically similar way: the verse in the mighty ‘A Day In The life ‘.For, with that C7 chord, was Lennon perhaps setting up a bVII -V-i move - only to tease the listener by thwarting the expected ‘down a semitone drop’ (to B7 , the V7 of Em) and heading back to his G major base? Turn now to the closer on Sgt. Pepper; in the key of G again, and check out the similarities:
achieves precisely the opposite reaction to that predicted from its Picardy third.
Played on its own, the F-B7 change does indeed suggest to the ear that an E (major or minor) tonic will follow, courtesy of a
beautifully symmetrical piece of semitone voice-leading - albeit one tinged with the suitable disquiet of the tritone jump captured in the following table :
