A home key is only really established when the dominant comes into play.

This is the most basic form of harmony, known as diatonic tonal harmony - not much used (if ever?) anymore by classical composers.

requiring the dominant chord for a "tonality" is only demanded by a relatively narrow style of music in one culture.

is a song that goes, I, IV, I, IV and that's all, somehow lacking in a home key? That assertion is ridiculous.

That's only because classical music intentionaly goes the wrong way the circle of fifths, or vice versa.

Classical Schmassical - that there is Santana's Song of the Wind (if you throw in a ma7 or two).

I'm with Jan on this one.

Not all songs are constructed in the same manner so one can't cookie cutter paste one idea into an unrelated example.

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Last edited by Gillman on Sat Jun 30, 2012 10:04 am; edited 1 time in total

All this is just an agreement of rules.

Song of the Wind is Cma FMa7 or (Cma7 Fma7) from memory. So you can basically solo endlessly on C major scale - great place for beginners to learn to solo on something other than a blues. Frank Zappa makes cracks about the "secret Carlos Santana chord progression" in the title of one of his tunes. He (Carlos) has tunes (on Abraxas) with the classic iimi7/V7 alternation.

I was reading someone talking about Santana using a IVma/Vma alternation which never actually resolves to a tonic so that it retains a harmonically indefinite feeling. These simple patterns all support endless noodling on guitar - eg Song of the Wind - pretty well. There is a funny sort of out-of-phase sound on the guitar in that tune which I had thought might have been a static position on a phaser but, looking on Youtube, I see him playing a Gibson L6S which has controls to give all the in-phase/out-of-phase combos for two humbuckers so that may explain the "hollowness" in the the tone. I think he played a Fender Twin in those days - before he started playing hot-rodded Fender Princetons from Mesa Boogie.

Yes, but all of the terms used to describe chords and scales and harmony generally came out of that 'relatively narrow style of music in one culture'.

Part of the reason why the enterprise of music theory never really shows any progress is because people take these terms and use them to describe music that is at bast tangentially related to the music of that 'one culture'. Then they change the meaning of some terms, carry over the meanings of other terms, and turn the whole thing into the musical equivalent of a cross between the Elements of Style and How to Win Friends and Influence People put together using the cut up technique.





I don't think it's ridiculous. It's simply a borderline case that illustrates the problems with our rather promiscuous use of some very old terms.

Exact. I IV in C. Next.

What exactly is your problem? Are we supposed to be disagreeing? I was simply confirming the changes - it is Ima7 IVma7.

As far as the organ chords at the beginning - this album segues each track into the next IIRC - I wondered if this was a bridge from Just in time to see the sun into SotW.

It seemed to me you were approaching this in a non-serious way and as far as the chords you seemed to be asking some kind of question with your 1)... or 2)...?

In this case it certainly wasn't on the mxolydian C. There is no Bb. Where did you get that idea? It is on the white notes - C ionian/F lydian.

It also isn't a I V because both chords are ma7s. So you kind of defined a little sample space for yourself there which did not include the solution. Does this happen to you a lot?

I didn't disagree, you clearly hear a Cmaj7, I won't elaborate on a mistake, how do I cancel this post now?

no, it crosses the border into the land of complete dipshittery.

as does the premise, "it's the most basic form of harmony". this is putting the cart before the horse in extremis.

If you can say that I - IV lacks a home key, the "needs a V to be a home key" is reasonable! Obviously it is not. Case closed methinks. Should we now discuss the definition of 'ridiculous'?

The Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression is what FZ thought to call a guitar solo he published on Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, taken from City of Tiny Lites. i - IV, perfect for dorian playing.

the Frank Zappa secret chord progression will be bVII - I, perfect for mixolydian; with the lydian flavor on bVII.

gonna ride across the border... with mah tweezers gleamin...


gonna ride, like a dipshit, into the dawn

Traditionally, if you are working with strictly tonal music, then V is needed (at some point) to establish the key.

Sometimes a composer might not want to establish the key though (at least not straight away), and this is a perfectly valid approach - creating a tonal ambiguity to keep the listener guessing. But if a piece of music in C major never has a G chord, then you cannot really say with certainty that it is in C major!

If a piece of music is supposed to be tonal, and it just keeps alternating between a G major triad and a C major triad for example, then it would more likely be perceived as C major (V and I) than G major (I and IV).

Of course, if you're not going for the tonal approach, then you don't need to establish a key and so you can do whatever you want.

The fact you said "perfect for dorian playing" for example just proves this. Yeah, it might be Dorian, but it's not tonal - that is, you can't really say it's in a specific key (which as you know, is not the same as a mode).

If you start adding sevenths to the triads, then this makes it easier to establish the key. If the above example was Gmajor7 to C major for example, then it cannot be in C major anymore and therefore might support the Imaj7-IV idea.

Of course it also depend on how the chords are used, their voice leading, inversions and so on.

But tonal music has to work a certain way, otherwise by definition it isn't really tonal music!