I was planning to talk about “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac in class when we discuss modal harmony. Music theory teachers like to bring this tune up as an example of Lydian mode, but I don’t hear it as being in F Lydian. It’s also not clearly in C major, or A minor, or really any specific key or mode at all! That’s an extraordinary level of ambiguity for a song whose melody only uses five different notes (plus a sixth note that only appears once) over a grand total of two chords (plus a third chord that only appears once.)
I was looking for ways to illustrate this harmonic ambiguity, and thought it would be fun for everyone if I took the vocal stem and put different chords and progressions under it. So here’s a series of reharmonizations: a jazzy one in A major, then simpler ones in C major, D Dorian, A minor, C blues, A blues, D blues, and F major.
While I was at it, I thought I would try different pieces of instrumental music under the vocal stem too. I kept trying things, and trying things, and kept finding more and more tunes that fit. Just about anything that’s fairly close to C on the circle of fifths, doesn’t change keys, and has a tempo anywhere near 120 beats per minute could potentially work. My most delightful discovery was the Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846 by Johann Sebastian Bach.
My daughter suggested I do Pachelbel’s Canon too, so I pulled a wedding arrangement from YouTube and tried it, also with excellent results.
This one has extra thematic friction because “Dreams” is about a long-term relationship ending that appears on Rumours, the most divorced album of all time.`
I was also very pleased by the combination with a live performance of “Fire on the Mountain” by the Grateful Dead, because its musical slovenliness makes a fascinating contrast to Fleetwood Mac’s studio-honed precision.
Fleetwood Mac and the Dead even shared a producer, Keith Olsen. This Dead show was recorded the same year as Rumours, too.
Here’s the isolated vocal if you want to try this for yourself. It’s pretty fun just playing different chords underneath on guitar or whatever.
So why does “Dreams” have such a remix-friendly melody? There are two factors: its ambiguity, and its disconnection from its underlying chords. I analyzed the song in detail in a previous post, but will give the high points of that analysis here. Like I said above, the melody only uses five different pitches for most of the song: G, A, C, D, and E. At first, the phrases all start on A, and they end on A or C. As the song goes on, there are occasional emphases on G and E too. Stevie also sings a single B, in the line “It’s only right that you should play it like you feel it”, on the second half of the word “right.” And that’s it! That’s the melody’s entire pitch content.
Taken out of its original context, this melody doesn’t strongly insist on any specific harmonization. If I had never heard the song before and you sang me the melody, I might guess it was in A minor. But I could easily believe that it would work in C major or F major, and would believe it as being in D minor too. I could also hear it as a pentatonic melody in C, A or D blues. And whichever key you told me the song was in overall, I could fitting specific phrases to all kinds of weird chords from outside of that key.
So what about the song’s actual chords? There’s a brief Am in the break after the first chorus, but otherwise the entire song is a loop of F and G for one bar each. Those chords don’t belong strongly to any specific key either! If I hadn’t heard the melody, I could interpret the loop as being in C major, A minor, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, or even D minor. The loop concludes equally well on C, Am, F, G7 or Dm.
The melody and the chords both draw on the same white-key pitch collection, but there isn’t any obvious correspondence between the specific melody notes and the specific chords. Stevie seems to go out of her way to avoid placing chord tones on strong beats, and to maximize conflicts like accenting C on top of a G chord. In an article on Music Theory Online, Matthew Hough points out that the song is an archetypal example of melodic-harmonic divorce, which has become a defining feature of contemporary pop songwriting. David Temperley thinks that the divorce in pop originates in the blues, where the relationships between melody and harmony don’t follow the conventions of Western European tonal tradition. “Dreams” is a couple of steps abstracted from the blues, but the lineage is there.
It’s interesting to compare “Dreams” to the intro to “Sara”, another Stevie Nicks tune that alternates F and G, though in “Sara” she puts them both over a C pedal.
Stevie’s “Landslide” also uses standard major-key harmony in a way that avoids clear resolution in “Landslide”.
Anyway, reharmonizing a song can teach you a lot about music theory, but what is the educational value of remixes beyond comedy and novelty? When you’re remixing, it isn’t enough to think about key and tempo; you have to pay attention to song structure too. “Dreams” would seem to have a conventional verse-chorus structure, but the section lengths are weird. After the eight bar intro, there’s an extremely long verse, 28 bars. You could think of it as having two distinct subsections, a 16-bar “verse A” and a 12-bar “verse B”, but Stevie’s vocal runs right across the subsection boundary. It’s hard to keep track of where you are in the form because of the static chords and Stevie’s stream-of-consciousness melodic phrasing. There aren’t the usual paired phrases and tension-release structures that keep you oriented in musical time.
The chorus is slightly more normal, because it’s 16 bars long, and the melodic phrases have more symmetry and predictability to them. But Stevie’s last “You’ll know” spills over past the end of the chorus into the break, effectively making that part of the chorus too, so it’s really 24 bars long. This isn’t the weirdest length a chorus could be, but it’s not standard. I had to do some creative editing to get the various instrumentals to line up well with this part.
The other big consideration in remixing is timbre. Rock and pop songs are not just notes and durations; they are carefully crafted soundscapes. This is especially true for Fleetwood Mac songs, which are the high water mark for glossy studio rock from the golden age of analog. Audio production has its own tropes and stylistic language, and it also carries a web of extratextual associations. Stevie Nicks’ voice is instantly recognizable and widely beloved, and it has symbolic meaning even if you have no idea what she’s singing about in any particular song.
With all of that in mind, here are some specific reflections on my remixes. “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by the Temptations was the first song I tried under the “Dreams” vocal, not for any thematic reason, just because it’s harmonically static and close to the same tempo. The Temptations’ psychedelic soul is as much a studio creation as Fleetwood Mac’s tight, slick rock, but aimed at a Black audience and with more rhythmic variety and interest. Rock is basically just R&B played by white people, and hearing Stevie with a funkier background brings out the R&B aspects of her style, as well as the bluesier aspects of the melody.
The second song I tried was “Stayin’ Alive”, again, not for any stylistic reason, just because I had the instrumental all warped out and ready to go and I could easily drop it in. “Stayin’ Alive” has an extremely strange structure for a pop song, and it took some work to bring it in line with “Dreams”, but I was immediately delighted by the harmonic and rhythmic fit. The songs have a few things in common: both were released in 1977, both were and are inescapable on the radio and in public places, and both were sung by people with iconically feathered blonde hair.
I also had the “Groove Is In The Heart” instrumental ready to go, but was less confident that it would work, because it alternates I7 and IV7 and it isn’t an obvious fit for a white-key melody like “Dreams.” There are a few mild note clashes in there, but it works better than I expected. Stylistically, it’s a harder clash, because “Dreams” is serious and “Groove Is In The Heart” profoundly isn’t. Still, I do enjoy how Stevie’s voice interacts with the dense sample-based production.
The Bach WTC prelude was next, chosen because it’s in C major and the right tempo. I couldn’t believe how well it fit. That was the first track I posted to social media, and the strong reaction emboldened me to post all the rest of them.
I knew “Can I Kick It” by A Tribe Called Quest would work harmonically, that was no surprise, but I was gratified by how well it meshes stylistically. The vintage analog quality of the samples goes well with Stevie’s raspy singing. I tried lots of other hip-hop instrumentals too. “Ready or Not” by the Fugees was a good fit but the others sounded too weird or gimmicky.
I also knew “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter would be an easy fit harmonically, but that stylistically it would be more awkward, since it’s essentially frivolous and “Dreams” isn’t. Still, I do like how the groove fits.
I tried “I Will Survive” because I knew the key and tempo were right. I wasn’t sure whether the complex chord progression would fit the whole tune, and was pleasantly surprised by how natural they sound together.
I picked “Fire on the Mountain” for its static harmony. I knew it wouldn’t be an exact fit; it’s in B Mixolydian, which when pitched up to C Mixo is close to the “Dreams” pitch collection but not identical. I used some mild Auto-Tune to bring Stevie’s B down to B-flat.
In addition to suggesting Pachelbel, my daughter also insisted that I do the theme music from Dress To Impress, her favorite Roblox game. I did it just to indulge her, but it did end up sounding really cool, I didn’t realize that Roblox has such harmonically adventurous music.
I did plenty of unsuccessful experiments, too. “Oye Como Va” by Santana was a near miss. I thought it would work, because it’s in A Dorian, very close to the (arguable) A natural minor of “Dreams.” But the F-sharps in the D7 chord fight hard against the many F’s in the melody, and the macho Latin sound of Santana is a poor complement to Stevie’s wistful sensitivity. I tried lots of hip-hop instrumentals too, and they were almost all too slow. Also, the stylistic difference was just too wide, and the combinations sounded too jokey. I was going for actual musical compatibility, not pure silliness.
So, that’s what we’re doing in class tomorrow. It speaks highly of “Dreams” that I am not completely burned out on it after so much repeated listening and analysis. Sometimes songs become hugely popular just because they’re excellent.
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