What key is “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac actually in?

Here’s a simple-seeming song that is a subject of a lot of music-theoretic controversy. “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac only has two chords (plus a third chord that only appears once), so it seems like it would be easy to analyze its harmony. And yet, no one can agree what key it’s in.

The two chords are F and G, repeating endlessly for one bar each. During the choruses, you could call them Fmaj7 and G6. There’s also that lone Am chord in the instrumental break after the first chorus. The vocal melody is all on the A minor pentatonic scale. That would seem to settle it: the song is in A minor. So why all the controversy?

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Bring It On Down To My House

I came to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys through my dad. He had the first volume of The Tiffany Transcriptions on CD, a series of live recordings that the Texas Playboys made for radio syndication. My dad was an impeccably highbrow opera fan, and aside from the Elvis Christmas Album, Bob Wills was the one concession to his Midwestern roots. His own parents had probably gone out dancing to the Texas Playboys in South Dakota when they were young, so I assume my dad had the Tiffany Transcriptions CD out of nostalgia. My sister and I found it when we were going through his stuff after he died. We liked it a lot better than the opera CDs, so we ended up listening to it on endless repeat while we emptied drawers and closets.

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Visualizing secondary dominants

In my MusicRadar column honoring Roberta Flack, I thought of a new analogy for secondary dominant chords, and I figured that I should work it into a new explainer with some new graphics. So, if you are having trouble understanding how these chords work, read on.

Secondary dominant chords solve a specific problem: how to make functional tonal harmony more interesting while still keeping things functional. The first concept you need to understand is that every major and minor key has a chord built on its fifth scale degree, the V7 chord. In Western tonal theory, these are the dominant chords, so named because they dominate the key: they create tension and suspense, which is released when you resolve to the tonic chord. The circle of fifths is a useful visualization scheme for the keys and their dominant chords.

Now let’s consider the key of C major. It comprises the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. You can combine these notes to form seven chords: C, Dm, E, F, G, Am, and B°. These chords sound good together in pretty much any order and any combination, but they are bland and lacking in drama. How can you introduce some more color into your C major harmony without throwing random notes and chords around?

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A year of writing for MusicRadar

I am now a year (plus a couple of weeks) into my first professional (non-academic) music writing job as a columnist for MusicRadar.

Most of the columns so far have been assignments from my editor Matt. Once I got the hang of things, I started pitching more ideas too, most of which Matt has agreed to. Continue reading “A year of writing for MusicRadar”

RIP Roberta Flack

I asked MusicRadar if I could do a Roberta Flack column in honor of her passing, and they agreed, so here’s an analysis of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” along with a broader appreciation of her. Before researching the column, I did not know her music beyond the greatest hits, how funky and political she could be, and generally what a profound artist she was.

There is a wide racial gap in Roberta Flack appreciation; I am not unusual among white people for having slept on her completely, while my black friends treat her as a canonical figure. She occupies a similar position to Patrice Rushen in that way. Like most white fans of black American music, I tend to be drawn to the more intensely raw sounds of people like Howlin’ Wolf or James Brown. I grew up being suspicious of musicians with smoother, more polished surfaces. As I have grown up, that has changed, but it’s still an aesthetic growth area for me.

Is music getting dumber?

For the first time, MusicRadar asked me to write about a couple of scientific papers rather than a song or album. The basic argument of both papers is that popular music is getting simpler over time. 

The papers have some limits to their data sets and methodology that should lead you to take their sweeping conclusions with a grain of salt. The meta-level point is that anytime anyone else wants to pay me to critically explain academic papers in plain language, I am open to it.

Update: a colleague pointed out that this post is ableist, which is true. I was trying to satirize the clickbait-y framing of the MusicRadar assignment and don’t think I succeeded.

Terrapin Station

I took a break from analyzing the Grateful Dead while working on other things, but now it’s time to resume, with a tune that is deeply loved by Deadheads and not of conceivable interest to anyone else.

Terrapin Station is a weirdly disjointed album, reflecting the conflicted motivations behind its creation. After their record label collapsed, the Dead signed with Arista, and both the band and the label wanted to move some units. Clive Davis hired Keith Olsen to produce, in the hope that he would bring some of that Fleetwood Mac magic to the table. However, the band brought in all kinds of odd material: Bobby’s reggae song in 7/4, Phil’s sarcastic parody of slick LA rock, Donna’s first original song ever, and Jerry’s 16-minute orchestral prog-rock suite with impenetrable lyrics. That did not add up to a recipe for heavy radio airplay.

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Doechii on Colbert

I’m having a busy week on MusicRadar! They had already assigned me the Kraftwerk column, but then Doechii won her Grammy, and like everyone, I got all fired up about her. So I convinced my editor to publish my take on Doechii’s breathtakingly great performance of “Boiled Peanuts” and “Denial is a River” on Colbert.

This was my first opportunity to write about hip-hop for MusicRadar, and I hope it won’t be the last.

Fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn

My latest assignment from MusicRadar was to look at “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk. My studies of electronic music history have seriously neglected these guys, so it was nice to have a reason to dig into their music.

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Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine”

I am mildly obsessed with this recording, both as a work of art and as a music teaching resource.

While I have mentioned this track several times on here, I haven’t really dug into the details. So it’s time to change that. There’s a lot to talk about: the genre, the chords, the melody, the rhythm. Let’s take them in order. Continue reading “Ray Charles sings “You Are My Sunshine””