Perry Mason Theme harmony – which modes / chord?

[joebegly]

@Troy

Here’s an actual real-world example. When we were doing the Volcano seminar, we had to notate Yngwie’s “Little Savage”. It’s in F# phrygian dominant. I asked myself, what is the tonic chord in phrygian dominant? It’s major, right? So F# major is the key, right? Then we’ll just add accidentals to get the “phrygian” and the “dominant”.

So that’s what I did. Here’s the mess that resulted:

Six sharps and four naturals in one measure! ChatGPT can probably read that. I can’t.

I wonder if this is different because it’s a mode of the harmonic minor though. We know for certain there’s not really a key signature for harmonic minor, so maybe different rules apply here? For example, this is a mode of B harmonic minor (at least I think lol I never committed the modes of harmonic/melodic minor to memory). B Harmonic minor wouldn’t have an A# in the key signature, so why would we pick a key that does for the modal interpretation? I guess by following your nice simple rule of “the fewer accidentals, the better” you’d arrive at the same answer.

@Troy

Did I turn around and fix that on the site? Why no, I have not. If you’d like to read six sharps and four naturals, you can still download that file right now!

While I think it makes sense to learn to read sheet music in plenty of contexts, I just never do it for rock guitar. If I have a score where there are tabs, that’s what I’ll read. Classical stuff, fine. They typically only supply the standard notation. But if I picked up a Barrios book where someone had tabs beneath the notation, I’d probably start with that and only look above if some fingering felt weird.

That said, I’m glad there are other people who care enough about “the right way” for sheet music. This is important stuff!

[Troy]

@joebegly

B Harmonic minor wouldn’t have an A# in the key signature, so why would we pick a key that does for the modal interpretation?

I didn’t. I think two sharps is the way to go - F and C. Then if you need A# it’s an accidental, just as in harmonic minor. I think that’s the simplest possible way to notate this.

The more we discuss, the more I’m convincing myself that the best general rule is “fewest accidentals”!

[Riffdiculous]

@joebegly

I’m glad there are other people who care enough about “the right way”

The “right way” is tradition, and I think tradition would have have accidentals. But it’s definitely easier to read using a “mode key signature”, and rules are made to be broken.

While we’re at it, let’s finally get rid of transposing instruments… friggin’ using the wrong name for notes, bah!

[joebegly]

@Riffdiculous

While we’re at it, let’s finally get rid of transposing instruments… friggin’ using the wrong name for notes, bah!

lmao prior to music school I had no clue that was even a thing. Back when I did scoring (hey, shut up, Beavis!!!) fortunately there was “concert pitch” toggle and I could do what made sense, then the correct notes would get printed for the instruments. Just had to keep sane ranges in mind lol! That can made a huge difference in terms of how seriously the players take you when you hand them the score lol

[joebegly]

@Riffdiculous I think we’ve discussed my old-man-yells-at-clouds radical ideas of improving the English language by removing superfluous letters/letter combos for more consistency. I think the idea of making transposing instruments behave like the rest of us creates a similar problem where anything that’s in print “the old” way either needs to be changed (probably not happening) or we’d have to know about the possibility of 2 standards.

The other thing I never knew prior to music school is that the guitar itself isn’t even written as it sounds (down an octave). I’m pretty dumb I guess. I played piano before guitar and during my formative years there were probably hours where I sat at the piano while dabbling between both instruments and I never realized what I thought the notes were on guitar were an octave lower than written.

[Riffdiculous]

@joebegly

The other thing I never knew prior to music school is that the guitar itself isn’t even written as it sounds

At least guitar gets the letter right! haha Though imagining a dystopian alternate universe where all guitarists read grand staff is amusing.

[joebegly]

Sounds like the makings of an HBO series that would be watched by only about 20% of even members of this forum , let alone your average guitar player I’d watch it though.

[Riffdiculous]

Lmao Of course I would, as well.

From the makers of The Man in the High Castle comes… The Guitar in the Grand Staff!

[Scottulus]

Dmaj/Cmin = DF#A CEbG so what is it really?

The base is C Eb G right? That’s the lowest group of notes, and the that’s what our ear will hear as the reference. C Minor triad, with a Dmajor triad over top.

What’s a D to C? Well it’s a maj2nd or Maj9th interval. So we have Cminadd9 so far. What is the A to C? Well it’s a maj6 or maj13 interval. The F#? That’s a tritone. Play these notes as a chord, and you have a
Cmin6add9(#11) Probably could be written better, but it’s a minor blues scale minus the b7. Very hip. Easier to write and play this as a polychord/slashchord I think…

Amin7b5 has ACEbG in it; This chord in relation to Cmin? That’s a vi chord of some sort OR if you rearrange it it’s a Cmin6.

in Ebmaj/Cmin you have the notes CDEbFGAbBb So there’s that, and it works over most of the tune…
So yeah, the overall key signature of 3 flats to tell us what key it’s “generally” in. and you COULD do a Dorian thing BUT what about C Melodic or Jazz minor? CDEbFGAB and hey C Harmonic minor works over a lot of this as well; CDEbFGAbB… So like many jazz tunes I’d say it’s based in Cminor/Ebmajor but y’all have a “mixed minor” bag here… Jazzy though so I had a lot of fun jamming over it using all of the above, all of the diatonic chords to all of the above and of course, don’t forget Cminor blues/Cminor Pentatonic…

Then again, I might be thinking of something completely different…

Apologies if this is tragically unhelpful…