"Every typical Beatles' song has at least one rather unconventional chord progression. Often there are more and sometimes the chord sequences even come close to endangering the songs' musical comprehensibility. There is, however, some kind of harmonic structure beneath these remarkable chord progressions, preventing this to happen. In the Beatles' songs each of the basic chords can be replaced by several other types of chords. Separated by minor third intervals, the tones of these stand-in chords show a diagonal relationship. This principle of diagonal substitution helps the listeners to understand the songs musically. Closer study of the early Beatles' songs reveals yet another point of support. In each song there is a tight relation between the clusters of these stand-in chords and the semantics of the lyrics. As the meaning of the words in a song does shift along two dimensions, the chords will shift along the same lines. This correlation between words and chords offers a flexible way to shift emotional meanings in conversational contexts."http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME03/Words_and_chords.shtml
No comments:
Post a Comment