Major & minor keys in swing music

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Matthew
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Major & minor keys in swing music

#1 Post by Matthew » Sun Sep 21, 2003 7:40 am

The vast majority of the swing music I hear is played in a major key. Do you have any idea why?

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#2 Post by julius » Sun Sep 21, 2003 2:17 pm

I wondered about that too. My theory is that the music of the 20s that spawned swing was mostly pretty upbeat stuff given the psyche of the times. Then when the Depression came along the music stayed upbeat.

Then there's always the ambiguous major/minor structure of the blues, which accounts for a lot of swing music.

And of course within each song there are often key changes (even if not written out, they are implied by the chord changes).

But I'm just talking out my ass right now. Ask a bandleader.

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#3 Post by kitkat » Sun Sep 21, 2003 4:49 pm

Posted because Matthew told me to... :-Þ

In my 19th-century music class last year, I remember how minor keys were always searching to be "resolved"--and if they didn't, it made an impact. There was no such thing as a minor key for the hell of it.

If a piece was in a minor key and transitioned to major close to the end, was it supposed to be transcendence or simply a sugar-coating?

If a piece ended in a minor key, that made a real statement.

And this was my music professor talking to a bunch of skeptical people, most of them (I was among the exceptions) very trained in music theory & somewhat in composition. And my professor himself is pretty skeptical about traditional music theory. I think he's probably challenged just about every thought in his head at least once...but this seems to be something he's decided to agree with, because he takes it for granted when teaching, and all my classmates did so when listening.

Apparently there is simply no such thing as an all-minor song for the hell of it. Thus, you're either going to not feel like / notice that a song was really in minor because it ended in major. Or if it does end in minor, it's going to have some strong statement with some sort of negative shadowing (even if it's not as black-and-white as "minor is depressing," most of its connotations for the end of the song seem to be somewhat negative)...and that's just not happy and upbeat like swing.

It'd be interesting to listen really carefully to swing songs that end major and see if they have some otherwise-overlooked minor parts in the beginning or middle.

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#4 Post by djstarr » Sun Sep 21, 2003 7:45 pm

Did a quick google search and found this site: http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Minor.asp

Interesting read --- I'd say major and minor scales in popular standards are used to set moods; swing has it's share of minor key based songs --- i.e. Summertime is in a minor key. And "A tisket a tasket" is in major, then switches to minor in the middle when she loses her basket.....

I think the reason that major keys are typically used in swing is because major keys are the default for most Western music; minor keys are reserved to say something special.

To quote from the site about ending a song in major vs. minor key:
"Still the V7-i (major to minor) change is not as strong a statement as the V7-I (major to major). The reason is that we still do not have the leaning note in the change V7-i. The 4 to min3 is a whole step, while the 4 to maj3 is a half step. In earlier years, composers would always end their compositions on a major chord, even if the tune was in a minor key, to get that stronger ending. If the tune was in D-minor, they would end on a D-major chord. But today, one will also use the minor chord as the final chord."

And I never thought about the blues being a blues (minor) scale played over a major chord progression....

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#5 Post by Yakov » Mon Sep 22, 2003 10:04 am

"Why Don't You Do Right" is in minor. It has that basic jazz minor chord progression -- i-VII-VI-V. you can play it on the piano, using all white keys (two beats per note): A, G, F, E / A, G, F, E, and repeat. (Same form: "Hit The Road Jack" and changed slightly in "Sixteen Tons.") on a tangent: One interesting thing there is the way the leading tone is natural for the VII (G-major chord, here) but sharp (or "blues"**) when we get to the V (E-major, here). **MORE RELEVANT TO THE DISCUSSION: note that in this unmistakeably "MINOR" chord progression, three of the four chords are actually MAJOR!** interesting.

Similarly: When a song is in major, there are lots of minor chords in the song. For example, the basic I-vi-ii-V (1-6-2-5) sequence in "I Got Rhythm" (and thousands of other songs) has two minor chords, the 6 and the 2.

Also: another good example of a song that uses minor for the bridge section but major elsewhere is "Dinah."

As to why most songs are in major keys: To me it seems like major keys are more harmonically flexible. That is, you have a lot more options chordwise. That could be part of the reason.

-yakov.

**regarding blues scales: the "blue notes" are in fact neither minor nor major. on the keyboard (in the key of C), the "blue notes" would be unplayably BETWEEN E and E-flat, and again BETWEEN B and B-flat. Of course, you can only hear the note on instruments on which the tuning is more flexible by the player (most visibly on the trombone ferinstance, but true for all wind instruments). That's maybe why you get blues pianists playing those patterns where the finger falls from the Eb to the E, to approximate where the "blue note" is.

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#6 Post by julius » Mon Sep 22, 2003 1:49 pm

Yakov wrote:
As to why most songs are in major keys: To me it seems like major keys are more harmonically flexible. That is, you have a lot more options chordwise. That could be part of the reason.

**regarding blues scales: the "blue notes" are in fact neither minor nor major. on the keyboard (in the key of C), the "blue notes" would be unplayably BETWEEN E and E-flat, and again BETWEEN B and B-flat. Of course, you can only hear the note on instruments on which the tuning is more flexible by the player (most visibly on the trombone ferinstance, but true for all wind instruments). That's maybe why you get blues pianists playing those patterns where the finger falls from the Eb to the E, to approximate where the "blue note" is.
Any major chord that you build can be turned into a minor chord. All you do is lower the third by a half step. Major keys are not of themselves any more or less flexible than minor keys, as you can tell if you've ever heard a major-key song turned into a minor-key progression.

The blue notes are playable. In the key of C, for example, F# is a blue note. And the reason musicians play Eb to E is not to approximate a blue note, it's because just playing a note by itself is kind of square. You want to mimic an expressive human voice; the voice tends to slide from phoneme to phoneme instead of enunciating each one clearly. On a piano this is only possible by playing a grace note or a quick trill.

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#7 Post by Yakov » Mon Sep 22, 2003 4:36 pm

yeah, the F# is the flat five, but if i (or any number of recorded musicians) were playing or singing it i might hit it sharper than F# (but still below G). like you said, we're sort of trying to approximate the human voice which, of course, is not segmented like a piano.

-yakov

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#8 Post by Lindy Bomb » Mon Sep 22, 2003 6:14 pm

Alot of people associate major with happy and minor with sad. They have been conditioned to think that. It has nothing to do with tension, as minor heys have the same set of intervals as major music, they're just in different places in the scale. I think, to go along with what Julius said: keep the music upbeat and happy=keep the music upbeat and major. This doesn't have to be the case, but most often it is. Think about how much pop music you hear in minor, and then think of the subject matter.

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#9 Post by morte100 » Mon Sep 22, 2003 6:24 pm

So, this is a pretty technical discussion of all this, and it's mostly over my non-music major head. however, I will say that I've always been attracted to songs that I've perceived to be in a minor key. Now, whether they are or not, I couldn't say for sure. "Golden Earrings" is an example of a song which I intuitively believe to be in a minor key.

For the less technical among us, could some of you list additional swing songs that are in minor? I hope it will help me better understand this thread.

_david

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#10 Post by julius » Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:47 pm

Topsy starts out in minor (same with Streamliner by Bill Elliott, which is a ripoff of Topsy).

Strange Fruit is (if I recall correctly) in a minor key, as well it should be.

Comes Love
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby (note that there is an implied key change to major scale: "the way you actin' lately makes me doubt" -- this is just a result of the chord progression)
Summertime
I Love Paris starts out in minor and modulates to major (at "I love Paris every moment"). This is an actual notated key change in the music.
Cry Me A River
Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen
My Funny Valentine (?)

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#11 Post by Yakov » Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:33 am

speaking of the progressions -- i actually do think that major is more harmonically flexible. yes, any chord can be minor or major etc. but in major you can go to the 3 chord and it sounds like part of the progression -- in minor you go to the 3 chord and it sounds like you changed keys. check out some lead sheets, you'll see that minor songs often have simpler progressions than major, or that they switch to major and back.

interesting you should say that about IS YOU IS OR IS YOU AIN'T MY BABY -- does it change to major or is that "just" an accident of the progression? answer: both. (if i were in music theory class, I might call it "a temporary tonicization of the parallel major.") that's something about minor, is it often tends to switch to major and back.

GEE BABY, AIN'T I GOOD TO YOU is similar: starts in minor but there are also major elements. Get your Louis & Ella CD out and listen closely.

if we're playing in A minor (we're not, but it makes talking easier):
"What makes me treat you the way that I do" - this line is in minor, BUT the last chord played is not A minor, it's A minor 7 (ACEG), which resolves...*
"Gee baby ain't I good to you" - to the major. by the time we get to "you," we've resolved to a C-major chord, which moves up to E7 (with the G-sharp pushing up to the A) which resolves back to the A minor chord for "Nothing's too good..."

of course, the bridge in GEE BABY ("I bought you a fur coat...") is all in major.

BEI MIR BIST DU SCHOEN: It's a Yiddish theater song -- of COURSE it's in minor! :wink: this one is really simple. it's in minor all the way through. (talking in Am again) it starts on an A minor chord then goes to D minor (iv) for the bridge. I just love the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall version, where Ziggy Elman takes the (very very minor) klezmer trumpet solo.

Interestingly enough, on Sony Legacy's FROM AVENUE A TO THE GREAT WHITE WAY (a comp. of swing-era popular Jewish music in its various forms), there is an outtake of SING SING SING that contains a klezmer solo by Ray Musiker on sax, over Gene Krupa's "exotic" drum solo. I haven't heard it yet.

hey! there's another song that's in minor -- Louis Prima's SING SING SING! and, true to what we're talking about, it changes to major for the bridge: "When the music goes around..." Doesn't seem to be emotionally motivated, though. Interestingly, when Benny Goodman's orchestra played the long version of SING SING SING, they played a minor version of the beginning of Fletcher Henderson's CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS as a riff on the song. (CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS is usually major.)

speaking of Louis Prima -- I can't remember the name of the song, and I know he didn't write it, but he plays one that goes "Press the first valve down... and the music goes round and round, oh oh oh, and it comes out here..." That song starts in major and switches to minor.

By the way, in case all this "switching" talk is confusing, let me make a note on music forms... traditional "song form" (stretching back to the 1600s and earlier) is AABA, which repeats -- AABA, AABA, AABA in jazz. "I've Got Rhythm" is a classic example:

A - I've got rhythm I've got music I've got my gal who could ask for anything more
A - I've got sunshine in green pastures I've got something something who could ask for anything more
"B" SECTION OR BRIDGE - Old man trouble I don't mind him you won't find him round my door
A - I've got rhythm I've got music I've got my gal who could ask for anything more, who could ask for anything more

and then AABA repeats until the end of the song. So, for the most part, when we say a song "starts" in major and "switches" to minor, usually that means the minor section is the BRIDGE of the song. get it?

of course, lots of songs are not AABA... "April in Paris," "All of Me," etc

wow, that message was fun to write :lol: hope it made a little sense :shock: :)

-yakov

* in traditional jazz styles, 7 chords are always moving someplace -- namely, up by 4. (unless it's a 12-bar blues) so a C7 will always move to an F. in the example, A7 moves to Dm7 -- which cycles to G7 and lands decisively on the C major triad, no 7. i realize i might be talking gibberish now.
Last edited by Yakov on Tue Sep 23, 2003 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#12 Post by Yakov » Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:38 am

one more: a note on major and minor for music theory neophytes 8)

A minor is the key I use for examples because it's all white keys. that is to say, it's the "PARALLEL MINOR" of C-major, which i hope everyone knows is the major key with all white keys. most songs, when they go from minor to major, they switch in that way -- between (in this case) A minor and C major. So you're still using the same set of keys, or "key signature" (which is in this case blank). "SING SING SING" starts in A-minor and go to C-major for the bridge.

Of course there are always exceptions -- "April in Paris" really does change all the accidentals, going from C-minor to C-major.

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#13 Post by Yakov » Tue Sep 23, 2003 7:42 am

ok sorry this is my last post today. "SWINGIN' THE BLUES" is a good example of what we were talking about before : the ambiguity of the "blue note." the MELODY includes an undisputably flatted (or MINOR) third, but the harmony is standard 12-bar major blues. meaning freddie green is playing a C-major chord with an E while harry sweets edison is playing E-flats.

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#14 Post by djstarr » Tue Sep 23, 2003 1:39 pm

morte100 wrote:So, this is a pretty technical discussion of all this, and it's mostly over my non-music major head. however, I will say that I've always been attracted to songs that I've perceived to be in a minor key. Now, whether they are or not, I couldn't say for sure. "Golden Earrings" is an example of a song which I intuitively believe to be in a minor key.

For the less technical among us, could some of you list additional swing songs that are in minor? I hope it will help me better understand this thread.

_david
Here's a good page that is at a level at little less advanced than what Yakov is posting at: http://www.guitarmain.com/m_gloss.html

We also haven't brought up the use of modal scales in a lot of more current music - All Blues is the classic example of this. Seventh Son also might be a modal tune.

It's easier to understand if you can see the scales visually on the piano - I'll show you sometime at Sonny's if you want.

And a classic example of a song which stays in all minor is "Minor Swing" by Django Reinhardt - you can hear a sample here: here

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#15 Post by djstarr » Tue Sep 23, 2003 1:41 pm

Yakov wrote:By the way, in case all this "switching" talk is confusing, let me make a note on music forms... traditional "song form" (stretching back to the 1600s and earlier) is AABA, which repeats -- AABA, AABA, AABA in jazz. "I've Got Rhythm" is a classic example:
thanks for posting about AABA form - I'd say it was pretty common that the bridge (B) would be in a different key than the chorus (A) so it can be distinguished as the bridge right? And often it would be minor if the chorus was major and vice versus.......

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