<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Aug 30, 2009, at 12:27 PM, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite">Today I heard Donovan's 1968 "Atlantis," which prominently features a I - II - IV chord progression, not unlike the verse of The Beatles' 1965 "Eight Days A Week." [. . .]</blockquote><br>Off the top of my head, I suspect that I-II-IV is indigenous to rock, and wonder whether it might derive from the more bluesy bVII->I->bIII. (If you reinterpret bVII as the tonic, you end up with I-II-IV.) It would be interesting to trace its history in 20th-century popular music. [. . .]<br><br></div></blockquote>We should note some important distinctions between such chord successions as II - IV - I and bVII - I - bIII as they typically work in rock contexts. The former succession, II - IV - I, inhabits the diatonic system but for the "domestication" (as Naphtali Wagner so elegantly terms it) of the raised 4th scale degree, which is tamed into its natural form before moving. (This is a favorite construct for the Beatles and others in 1964-69.) The latter succession, which Dmitri correctly ascribes to blues-based rock, inhabits the minor-pentatonic world, whereby scale degrees 1 - b3 - 4 - 5 - b7 are each doubled in major triads; usually, no voice leading is present or if it does exist, it is of secondary value to the underlying chord changes. Thus, one succession chromaticizes the diatonic scale, and the other is pentatonic. One progression makes a bold voice-leading move, and the other presents only doublings with no voice leading at all. The coincidence in that, in each situation, the roots combine for identical [025] collections is irrelevant to style and syntax, as discussed in my <i>Foundations of Rock</i>. </div><div><br></div><div>One example of how apparent voice leading can work against the parallel nature of triad-doubled pentatonic scale degrees might be heard in the guitar voicing in the intro to "Proud Mary"; here, the false relations involving ^b7 and ^7 in moving from bVII to V, and a few chords later, involving ^b3 and ^3 in moving from bIII to I, inject new interest into the bVII - V - IV - bIII - I succession borrowed from "In the Midnight Hour" and elsewhere. Guy Capuzzo's essay on Neo-Riemannian theory and rock music in <i>Spectrum</i> 26/2 is relevant.</div><div><br></div><div>--Walt Everett<br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Walter Everett</div><div>Professor of Music</div><div>Chair, Department of Theory</div><div>The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance</div><div>1100 Baits Dr.</div><div>Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2085</div><div><br></div><div><a href="mailto:weverett@umich.edu">weverett@umich.edu</a></div><div>voice: 734-763-2039</div><div>fax: 734-763-5097</div></div></div></span> </div><br></body></html>