Examples Of Tonal And Atonal Music

[harryupbabble]

In terms of pop music, it seems it's mostly tonal, meaning that it sticks to chord progressions that are tonal? If you can, please provide a list of pop songs that are not tonal. Here is a list of "tonal" songs according to the band The Axis of Awesome that uses (there are many other tonal chord progressions used in pop music) mostly the I–V–vi–IV progression:

Journey – "Don't Stop Believin'"
James Blunt – "You're Beautiful"
The Black Eyed Peas – "Where Is the Love"
Alphaville – "Forever Young"
Jason Mraz – "I'm Yours"
Train – "Hey, Soul Sister"
The Calling – "Wherever You Will Go"
Elton John – "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" (from The Lion King)
Akon – "Don't Matter"
John Denver – "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
Lady Gaga – "Paparazzi"
U2 – "With Or Without You"
The Last Goodnight – "Pictures of You"
Maroon 5 – "She Will Be Loved"
The Beatles – "Let It Be"
Bob Marley – "No Woman, No Cry"
Marcy Playground – "Sex and Candy"
Men At Work – "Down Under"
Jill Colucci – "The Funny Things You Do" (Theme from America's Funniest Home Videos)
Jack Johnson – "Taylor"
Spice Girls – "2 Become 1"
a-ha – "Take On Me"
Green Day – "When I Come Around"
Eagle Eye Cherry – "Save Tonight"
Toto – "Africa"
Beyoncé – "If I Were A Boy"
Kelly Clarkson – "Behind These Hazel Eyes"
Jason Derulo – "In My Head"
The Smashing Pumpkins – "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
Joan Osborne – " One of Us"
Avril Lavigne – "Complicated"
The Offspring – "Self Esteem"
The Offspring – "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid"
Akon – "Beautiful"
OneRepublic – "Apologize"
Eminem featuring Rihanna – "Love the Way You Lie"
Bon Jovi – "It's My Life"
Lady Gaga – "Poker Face"
Aqua – "Barbie Girl"
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Otherside"
The Gregory Brothers – "Double Rainbow Song"
MGMT – "Kids"
Andrea Bocelli – "Time To Say Goodbye"
Robert Burns – "Auld Lang Syne"
Five for Fighting – "Superman"
The Axis of Awesome – "Birdplane"
Missy Higgins – "Scar"
Alex Lloyd – "Amazing"
Richard Marx – "Right Here Waiting"
Adele – "Someone Like You"
Christina Perri – "Jar of Hearts"
Crowded House – "Fall At Your Feet"
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Under the Bridge"
Daryl Braithwaite – "The Horses"
Pink – "U + Ur Hand"
The Fray – "You Found Me"
3OH!3 – "Don't Trust Me"
Tim Minchin – "Canvas Bags"
Blink-182 – "Dammit"
Kasey Chambers – "Not Pretty Enough"
Alicia Keys – "No One"
Amiel – "Lovesong"
Bush – "Glycerine"
Thirsty Merc – "20 Good Reasons"
Lighthouse Family – "High"
Red Hot Chili Peppers – "Soul to Squeeze"
Banjo Paterson – "Waltzing Matilda"
Bic Runga – "Sway"
Ben Lee – "Cigarettes Will Kill You"
Michael Jackson – "Man in the Mirror"
Mika – "Happy Ending"
The Cranberries – " Zombie"
Natalie Imbruglia – "Torn"
Miley Cyrus - "Wrecking Ball"
Imagine Dragons - "Demons"
Idina Menzel - "Let It Go"[15]
Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris - "We Found Love"
Avicii - "Wake Me Up"
Flo Rida - "Whistle"
The Script feat. will.i.am - "Hall of Fame"
Carson, Christopher, and James - "Always on My Mind"

[jancivil]

I know exactly 3 of those.
Let It Be and One Of Us are definitely tonal.
Yep, because of the chord progressions.
EG: 'One of Us', verse does something like vi IV I V I...
Lotta V-I.

Africa, I don't know quite what to say.
The chorus does something like ii bVII IV I
(The verse has some meandering 'weak' root movement & I think 'bVII' - I some more again*)
*That {as a feature} to me = def not tonal.

also, the chorus has a different 'tonic' than the verse.


Y'all's Mileage May Vary

wait, I HAVE heard that Michael Jackson number and I'd prefer never to hear it again

[jancivil]

Jack Johnson

dis de only Jack Johnson I know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEBKksupBVA

object lesson: Henderson provides '1' thruout on the bass, and it's just not tonal
McLaughlin plays some pretty unnameable chords, but it's not atonal

[jancivil]

anyway this, just because it's so badass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcFiA-NyTew

Herbie Hancock does these dissonant NOISY stabs (it sounds like 'something bad happened') on a Farfisa

at around seven and a half minutes Cobham says fuckthis swing and plays this REALLY STUPID rock beat and McLaughlin starts doing funk riffs eventually. they're not right in the head
I remember picking this record up in the late 70s, & M o F G


fucka buncha pop music

[harryupbabble]

Maybe atonal music is too advanced and complex to non-musicians or the general public. And if I am going to make music, I think I should start with the "tonal" stuff and progress from there. I guess a lot of people here at KVR have gone to that process already and some may even be super-advanced music-wise that pop music just seems trash to them. I'm not a music-maker that is trying to make music for people that are "in the know" yet. At the moment I'm just trying to find pop song methods that works. I may have started this thread hoping that sticking to tonal music is justifyable but I am finding that some supposedly atonal music are quite enjoyable. I mean I really like that one by The Residents. And I super-love that song by System Of A Down but maybe it's not atonal music. And that bug video from a few pages back... is that an example of atonal music that is "all tension"? It was kind of interesting.

Still, I mean I don't understand physics science and I think that the moment that I do, I will respect Einstein and people like that less and think "hey that wasn't so mind-boggling". Not all physics scientists are impressed by Einstein, right? I read (more like skimmed) that book by Walter Piston... Harmony is the name of the book, and all I really got from it is how important the V7-I chord progression is to tonal music. The rest, I'm still trying to understand (maybe I'm not trying too hard). But maybe I would end up stuck in the "general public" mode (if that's what it is) forever and never progress and never get to be really "in the know". I think I've been trying to find songwriting methods that work for at least 5 years now. My excuses are "the internet is too much distraction" and "scrabble eats most of my time" and "these songwriting tools that I have access to are inadequate, except for a few" and "my brain is not built for songwriting".

So, I am off to some other distraction. But, is this song atonal? It seems to have lots of tension and few, if any, release. Aarrghh, I don't know. Whatever it is, I find it really funny. Pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo pogo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ausVTbgTCpU

This one is supposedly pure atonal music... also funny and enjoyable, to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC9qvWaei6g

[rp314]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8OyFPFymnM

[jancivil]

...super-advanced music-wise that pop music just seems trash to them.

I wouldn't say that, but I have been exposed to a lot of it recently, and 1% of 1% will be maybe worth a shit.

I think this situation gets worse as time marches on.

I think it's better to open your mind up beyond popular music, if only to play the percentages...

[jancivil]

This one is supposedly pure atonal music... also funny and enjoyable, to me:
{residents, weird for the sake of weird I suppose}

Yeah, no. Who supposed that? Glad you had a good time tho

[jancivil]

Residents... it's usually hard for me to get into because they typically used such_cheap_sounds
but that thing is so off the beaten track yet accessible in some ways, I recommend it over Man in the MIrror anyway.

________________________________________________

this composition was huge for me as a 14-year-old acidhead
it still is
kind of the ultimate in so many ways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRYlTZQ7alI

mind-expanding

[aMUSEd]

Yes an extraordinary piece

[jancivil]

Not all physics scientists are impressed by Einstein, right?

Fvck them.

I read (more like skimmed) that book by Walter Piston... Harmony is the name of the book, and all I really got from it is how important the V7-I chord progression is to tonal music.

Reminds me...

“There wasn’t anything there that I thought was useful for what I wanted to do. I didn’t like the sound of the musical examples...Still, I guess it was better than putting up with the stupid classes they had at the high school.” - Frank Zappa on the Piston book.

At 16 or 17 he wrote this to Varèse:

I have been composing for two years now, utilizing a strict twelve-tone technique, producing effects that are reminiscent of Anton Webern.

During those two years I have written two short woodwind quartets and a short symphony for winds, brass and percussion.

I went to the Jaycee and studied harmony and music appreciation and history for one semester and came out of it with A's and B's.

I plan to go on and be a composer after college and I could really use the counsel of a veteran such as you. If you would allow me to visit with you for even a few hours it would be greatly appreciated.

It may sound strange, but I think I have something to offer you in the way of new ideas. One is an elaboration on the principle of Ruth Seeger's contrapuntal dynamics and the other is an extension of the twelve-tone technique, which I call the inversion square. It enables one to compose harmonically constructed pantonal music in logical patterns and progressions while still abandoning tonality.

[Felix Meyer and Heidy Zimmermann, eds., Edgard Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006), 403–404.]

Which strikes me as hilarious. So bold. "for two years" and this ambitious.

Later he would present himself as never academic but there he is as a senior in high school pushing for an audience with his hero.

Here's something pretty original, tho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo1cIpi-2b8

[nineofkings]

To clear the air, yes, 99% of the music you hear will be tonal if you're not seeking out atonal music on purpose. 0.9% that remains will be in movie scores. 0.1% will be some of the examples posted in this thread .

And yeah I only discovered Ligeti's Atmospheres recently and it changed the way I think about polyphony.

[jancivil]

To clear the air, yes, 99% of the music you hear will be tonal if you're not seeking out atonal music on purpose.

The air was not so polluted before this post I think, it was just complicated rather than facile like that.
This 99% claim isn't even true in Starbucks. Because blues and blues influence, for one.
So maybe there is a problem with "you hear", I don't know who the subject of that clause is. Me, I've heard 4 of upbabble's long list.

"0.1% will be some of the examples posted in this thread" - but I listen to such as a matter of course.
I sought out and *heard* a couple of McCartney songs today, but they're really GOOD songs. But while I like a very small % of what's on Starbucks Spotify, there's enough old blues and, eh, Bright Lights Big City by whatshisname. Which isn't bad! They're not being so hip in here afaic.

Outside of this or Walgreen's, it's a big world out there.

[jancivil]

Youtube just recommended Ligeti - Le Grand Macabre part 1 to me

[StudioDave]

... Bright Lights Big City by whatshisname...

Jimmy Reed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcGW1sUEZgk

Best,

dp