[Smt-talk] I-II-IV as a progression

[Patrick Fitzgibbon]

I'm currently toiling away on a little treatise (i.e. my master's thesis) in
which I prove that post-1997 Radiohead exclusively constitutes the Best
class of art in the history of human aesthetic activity. (Black humor -- you
gotta find your yuks where you can under such conditions.) This exploration
of personal and cultural memory includes consideration of a collection of
stylistic cliches known as "blues
turnarounds<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQUIBRnqFE&annotation_id=annotation_869601&feature=iv>,"
wherein the tonic is embellished via interior chromatic descent in
preparation for the hypermetric downbeat. From this figure we may abstract
the scale-degree line 5 - #4 - 4 - 3, as well as b7 - 6 - b6 - 5. As
initially noted, the former is embedded in the progression I - II - V (- I
...). (For the objectively finest example of all time, check out Radiohead's
"You and Whose Army," *Amnesiac*, 2001.)

A variant of the latter might be observed in Dmitri's example, "Lithium." As
Dmitri points out, the initial chords (I - iii - vi - IV) are hardly
particular to rock music, though it seems worth noting their close
association with I - V - vi - IV, an extremely common
progression<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHBVnMf2t7w>in the
repertoire -- with no authentic dominant. As for the bluesy graft bVI
- bVII - V - bVII, could not the entire progression be understood as the
harmonic realization of an undergirding scale-degree descent spanning *1* -
7 - 6 - b6 - *5*? (Uncle Heinrich would be so proud of me. Actually, I
expect he'd be deeply, deeply disturbed.)

More generally, one might regard certain blues conventions as memetic sites
within which descending minimal voice leading among contiguous chords is
stylistically normalized. The continuity of such descents is framed by the
constituency of some tonally prior sonority, e.g. a tonic I7. Of course,
this conception serves as but one means of rationalizing a cultural
transmission.

Finally (pardon my prolixity -- I'm busy procrastinating), in response to
Walt Everett's query, it seems to me that the initial texture of "Yesterday"
manifests 1) a fairly common left-hand realization of G major (represented
with fret numbers, ordered from strings 6 to 1) [3,2,0,0,3,3] in conjunction
with 2) a common right-hand fingerstyle pattern in which the thumb strikes a
metrically strong bass note, while the index, middle, and ring fingers
strike the highest three strings on metrically weak beats. Since the chordal
third is not among these strings (i.e. 6, 3, 2, and 1), it would thus be
omitted.

Love,
-- 
Patrick Fitzgibbon
Graduate Student in Music Theory
University of Iowa
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