On May 26, 2007, at 5:53 PM, Phil Daley wrote:
Rock music is non-tonal? That's news to me. Doesn't it do 1-4-5-1?
No it doesn't. The vast majority of rock music is cast in the dorian or mixolydian modes, neither of which possesses a leading tone. Furthermore, it is derived from the 12-bar blues, which is itself decidedly non-tonal (3 parallel, four-note chords, including what in tonal music would be a [forbidden] retrogression).
It's non-tonal nature allows rock music to be unusually flexible in its chordal sequences, and a strong final cadence can be formed from any chord directly to the home chord. The one exception to this is the authentic cadence, which is for the most part found only in parodies of classical style (e.g. in "Bohemian Rhapsody").
Because the music is not tonal, some chords that are routine--even banal--in tonal music have a strikingly different effect when used in a rock song. My favorite example of this is the song "She's Not There": the chorus rocks gently between D minor and A minor (the home key is A dorian), until the words "Don't bother trying to find her, she's not there," where the progression is Dminor, C, E. Now, E major is the ordinary dominant chord in A minor and is utterly routine for music in that key; but in this song it strikes the ear as a completely unexpected altered chord, whose uncanniness perfectly illustrates the text.
It is not tonal. Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://www.kallistimusic.com/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
