[Smt-talk] I - II- IV as a progression (counterpoint)

[Justin Mariner]

On Sep 3, 2009, at 10:07 AM, jcovach wrote:

> Or to put a little less abstractly: if somebody
> is strumming away on the guitar, playing a chord sequence using the  
> conventional
> voicings and with no regard to traditional voiceleading--or at  
> least, no
> *conscious* regard--is it helpful to account for the resultant  
> music in terms
> strongly directed by voiceleading or contrapuntal concerns and  
> practices?

It seems to me that traditional voice leading and counterpoint have
varying degrees of importance in different popular styles, and the type
of voice leading is actually quite an important factor in how the
harmony works. Two songs which use II - IV with exclusively parallel
motion are The Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" and The Pretenders' "Precious."
The Pretenders example is particularly striking in its use of chromatic
parallel harmony to obscure tonality. In fact, when we move from the
intro on G to the verse which alternates between A and C triads, it is
unclear whether we're moving to II in G Major or modulating to A for a
I - bIII progression. The return to G and D chords in the chorus
suggests that we were in G the whole time, but the coda further clouds
the issue by transposing the minor third progression up a step to B -
D. The ending "resolves" B down to A. So while the materials are clear
enough - a major triad on every note of the G Major pentachord - the
persistent chromatic transposition breaks the diatonic system to
obscure our sense of key, not unlike In dem Schatten.

All of this seems to belong in a different world than Yesterday or the
Donovan example, which use somewhat more traditional voice leading with
a falling chromatic resolution of the raised fourth scale degree. I
believe this is what accounts for the rising and falling interpretaion
mentioned in some posts. The technique seems to be a type of modal
mixture, the foreign/lydian II achieving a degree of resolution in the
diatonic/Ionian IV.

Justin Mariner
Assistant Professor
Schulich School of Music
McGill University