icepixie: ([Movies] Fred Ginger Danced Till)
[personal profile] icepixie
Music theorists, I have a question for you. I recently heard Dar Williams's "And a God Descended" for the first time, and I found that there was something really, really musically satisfying about the first line of the chorus, or rather the first two lines, since the melody and arrangement repeats itself. (Here's a clip of the relevant part, with a bit of the preceding verse for context.) It's not necessarily that I think it's pretty, though I do, but rather that it feels very, very right that these notes/chords follow each other in this order. Is there some objective reason why I find it so satisfying, such a particularly strong resolution of the chords involved, or something like that? Or is it pure idiosyncrasy?

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Date: 2010-10-18 02:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] asinpterodactyl.livejournal.com
My music theory textbook had a fantastic chart inside the front cover which showed how each of the different chords likes to progress. I just attempted to reproduce the chart from memory, and while I'm sure I got a few lines wrong, the general form is accurate.

Image

The arrows show which chords you can go to. So, for example, if you're currently on ii, you can go to V, or vii, but you can't go to iii, or straight to I, because it wouldn't sound good.

The general form that most music follows is something like this:
1. Start at I (the tonic)
2. Jump to any other chord
3. Now try to work your way back to I by following the arrows.

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