Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

To celebrate the Christmas season, I thought it would be appropriate to work on a Christmas classic. I ran across an article by CBC news which relays news about the Associated Press reporting that Wham!'s Last Christmas was voted the most-hated holiday song in Bulgaria.

In my opinion, another song that is equally annoying is Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. 

Instead of purchasing sheet music for this song, I decided to dictate the chords by ear.
Since there were a couple of incomplete chords in the recording, I placed a chord that I thought  fit the harmonic structure of the music. For example, the A7add9 chord in the bridge is actually 
missing a C# (I could be wrong...but I can't hear it!). I placed brackets around these incomplete chords.

Please note that the lyrics below is improperly formatted. I didn't break up verses in order to save some space.

Sources

YouTube Video:  Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

I reformatted/edited lyrics borrowed from ultimate-guitar.com and added my own chords.

Analysis

<SLOW INTRODUCTION>

<FIRST VERSE>
G
I don't want a lot for Christmas there is just one thing I need
C                                            Cm
(I) don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree
G
I don't need to hang my stocking there upon the fireplace
C                                                 Cm
Santa Claus won't make me happy with a toy on Christmas day
G                              B7   Em                                Cm6/Eb
I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know
G/D                         Em    C                 D7               G
Make my wish come true...All I want for Christmas is you, you, baby

<SECOND VERSE> (...Same chord progressions and placement as first verse)

<BRIDGE>
B7                                Em
All the lights are shining so brightly everywhere
B7                                 Em
And the sound of children laughter fills the air
Cm                              G                Em
And everyone is singing I hear those sleigh bells swinging
(A7add9)
Santa won't you bring me the one I really need
(G/D)
Won't you please bring my baby to me

<THIRD VERSE> (...Same chord progressions and placement as first verse)

<CODA>

This song is harmonically interesting because it contains uses of modal mixture, secondary dominants, and the augmented "French Sixth" chord.

Modal mixture is the practice of borrowing chords from different keys that are related to the tonic. In this song, the C minor chord is "borrowed" from G minor, which is the parallel minor key of G major. This is easy to find because the pitch Eb is not in the G major scale. 

A secondary dominant used in this song is B7. B7 is the V7 of Em. In Roman numeral analysis, the B7 can be labeled as "V7 of vi". The A7add9 is also a secondary dominant chord. It's the V7 of D major and can be labeled as "V7 of V". 

The French Sixth chord is the Cm6/Eb. A French Sixth contains the scale degrees b6-1-2-#4, which are the pitches Eb-G-A-C#, respectively. The b6 and #4 have strong tendencies to resolve down and up to scale degrees 5.

You're Gonna Lose That Girl

Title: You're Gonna Lose That Girl

Words and Music: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Sheet Music: "The Beatles Best" published by Hal Leonard (ISBN 0-88188-598-3)

Recording/Video: The Beatles - You're Going to Lose That Girl [Restored & Remastered]

Analysis

<Chorus>

B7                   E                    C#m7

You're gonna lose that girl. 

                        F#m7       B7
You're gonna lose that girl 
                           
<Bridge>

                       F#m7       D

You're gonna lose______
G                             C                                  G
I'll make a point of taking her away from you. Yeah. 
                                      C                               F 
The way you treat her, what else can I do?

Tonicization of G Major (bIII)
CLICK TO ENLARGE

The most interesting section in this song is the bridge, which E major momentarily moves to G major. In music theory, this type of key change is called tonicization and we would say that G major has been tonicized.   

To achieve tonicization, composers need to use a chord (or sometimes a single pitch) to relate two different keys. This kind of chord, called a pivot chord or common chord, must contain pitches that are shared by both keys. In this case, the only pitches that exist in an E major and G major scale are A, B, E, and F#. As you can see in the diagram above (click to enlarge), a D major chord, which contains A and F# (colored in red), is used as a pivot chord. A D major chord is a bVII in E major, and a V in G major.

Following the D major pivot chord, G major is firmly established with a IV-I cadence. Well...maybe not 'firmly' established because IV does not contain a leading tone. However, the "Yeah.__" that John and Paul sing actually lands on a G. At first, this may not seem like a big deal, but this is the only time the melody lands on the tonic! The rest of melodies in this song end on scale degrees 2, 3, or 5. So I feel like I have enough evidence to use 'firmly.'

Now to move back to E major, a F major chord that contains the common tone A (again, in red) serves as a pivot chord. F major is bVII in G major and bII in E major, also known as a Neapolitan chord. The transition from the F major chord to E major sounds a little odd because all pitches in F major move down together in parallel motion. This is exactly why  Neapolitan chords usually appear in first inversion form in classical music to avoid parallel fifths, a big NO NO in classical composition. 

And one last note. The Fm#7-B7-Fm#7 progression that happens between the chorus and bridge is ii7-V7-ii7. Note that the V7 does not resolve to a tonic chord. This is called retrogression. It is rarely found in classical music but quite common in pops. A famous example is the ending of a blues (V-IV-I).

By the way, wikipedia is a great source for learning music theory!

Donkey Kong Country - Life in the Mines

While I was playing my favorite SNES game, Donkey Kong Country, on this relaxing Sunday morning, I realized that some of the music was actually interesting. Not having a notated musical score of the music did not stop me from analyzing some background music. I remembered how I used a spectrograph for musical analysis in a theory seminar and I downloaded a demo version of Photosounder (http://photosounder.com). A spectrograph comes in very handy when you don't have a notated musical score. A spectrograph notates pitch frequencies in a graphic form. The graph below shows the first 2 minutes and 10 seconds of the BGM to "Trick Track Trek" called Life in the Mines (You can enlarge the image by clicking on it).

Spectrogram of Life in the Mines
CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE

Analysis

Key: G Dorian 
Meter: Quadruple, I'm treating it as 4/4

Form: The music can be divided into three sections. There's an 8-bar introduction. The intro's followed by the first section consisting of 13 bars (A), and continues on to a variant of A which has a slightly different instrumentation and rhythmic feel (A'). Intro-A-A' is repeated until you finish the stage, enter a bonus stage, or if you are killed by flying Neckys.

<Introduction>

This section has three musical elements:
1) Bass sustaining a D pedal tone (colored pink in the spectrogram above)

2) Synthesizer playing ascending glissandi (they look like bear claw marks in the spectorgram highlighted in yellow.)

3) Ostinato by percussion instruments. (Ostinato refers to a repeated rhythmic unit)
Percussion instruments are difficult to pinpoint in spectrograms because of its overwhelming amount of overtones. Since spectrographs notate everything that's sounding out there, the image it produces often comes out distorted because of the overtones. (I will not transcribe the percussion parts, but this visualization of a MIDI file can give you a better sense of what's going on in the music).


<Section A>

This section starts with a melody played by a pan flute-like instrument. The melody appear as purple smudges on the spectrogram, and it can be notated like this:

Pan Flute-like Melody with 'call and response' effect

Note that there is a 'call and response' effect which recalls music from ancient civilizations that reflect the mysterious atmosphere in the mine where Donkey Kong and Diddy have to jump around and collect bananas in. 

The basic chord progression in section A is Gm-Bb-C-Gm, which in roman numerals is i-III-IV-i.
It's sometimes tricky and pointless to provide Roman numerals in modal music, but here they make perfect sense. The IV-I progression is called a 'Plagal cadence.' When you sing hymns at church, you will always say Amen over this progression.

One interesting note on the last Gm chord is that there is a 2-3 upside-down appoggiatura (colored red):

Bar 1-4 of Section A

The second half of the phrase in bars 4-8 resolves on a Dm chord rather than a Gm. This creates a 'deceptive' cadence.

Bar 4-8 of Section A

The last 9 bars of this section is similar to the introduction. There is again a pedal D in the bass and in the high register we have descending glissandi (colored in green in spectrogram). The glissandi conclude the phrase and continue on to the following section A.' While this is all happening, a new melody in the background appears:

'Plucked' Sixteenth-note Melody in bars 8-11

                                                                           

At first, this melody doesn't seem to be much of a significance, but it contains two important notes that determine what the underlying chords are above the sustained pedal D in the bass — A & Bb. You hear Dm when you hear an A, and an inverted Bb when you hear the note Bb.


<Section A'>

To be continued...

Radiohead - High & Dry

High & Dry

Band: Radiohead

Lyrics/ Music: Thomas Yorke, Jonathan Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Edward O'Brien, and Philip Selway

Sources: Sheet music downloaded from musicnotes.com & YouTube Video below.

Analysis

I'll start with chord progressions because I love them.

There are only four chords used throughout this song and they are E, F#m7add11, Asus2, Esus4. The chorus section uses the first three (Ex.1).

Ex. 1 Chorus Section

For those not familiar with 'add11' and 'sus', it basically stands for non-chord tones. The 'add11' in F#m7add11 refers to the 11th note above F#, which is a B. You simply add pitch B to F#m7. 'Sus2' in Asus2 refers to the 2nd whole-note above A, which is also B. You add B to an A major chord. Ex. 2 below is the result you get when you write out all pitches.

 
Ex. 2 Chords written out

If we take out the 'add11' and 'sus2' for now, we have a simple I-ii7-IV-I progression (Ex. 3). In classical music, ii7 is usually placed after a IV chord to avoid parallel fifths. However, in pop music you often see ii7 chords placed this way.

Ex. 3 Simplifying Chords

Now, when you back the B into the F#m7 and A chords, you'll notice that B appears in every chord and ties everything together (Ex.4). The B is a common tone and functions like a pedal tone in classical music (Ex.5). But in this case, rather than appearing in the bass voice, the B appears above it. I think a theoretical term for this is 'ciphering tone.' Besides the common tone B, E also appears in every chord.

Ex. 4 B as a common tone (in red)

Ex. 5 An Example of a pedal tone (B in bass)

Conclusion

Common tones and the use of a plagal cadence (IV-I) enables minimal pitch movement and a lack of a leading tone, creating a soothing atmosphere. And the cool thing about this is that you can sing a B or an E throughout the whole song and you will NEVER sound out of tune!