Please help me understand what's going on with the chord progression in A Violent Yet Flammable World by Au Revoir Simone, an awesome song that was played in Twin Peaks: The Return:
The arpeggiated bit seems to me to sketch out G#m--E--B--E
b+. So changing the key to something less capo-ey for the ease of my primitive guitar player's brain, I get Em--C--G--B+.
My question is, how does the augmented chord fit into that progression? Should I think of the non-capo-ey version as being in C major and going iii--I--V--vii? Or should I think of it as being in E minor and going i--VI--III--III-with-an-extension-of-some-sort? Or am I thinking about this in completely the wrong way because of not being a keyboard player and not knowing much about how music works?
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is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?
What’s happening is that the first 3 chords are in natural minor, but the V chord is based on a major dominant chord - in other words it has a major 3rd - but the scale it’s based on also has a minor 6th. By rights, staying purely diatonic, it ‘ought’ to be a minor v chord with a minor 3rd, because all minor modes have a minor v chord. However often in music the V chord in a minor key is ‘allowed’ to have its 3rd raised to a major 3rd to create a better resolution back to the tonic - in this case a G (or F##), leading up to the g# minor. The major 3rd in the V acts as a leading note up to the tonic.
(This is what harmonic minor and melodic minor scales do. They enable the V chord to have a major 3rd. Over the V, the scale that the chord is drawing from is the 5th mode of either the harmonic or melodic minors, ”phrygian dominant” or “mixolydian b6” respectively. You can’t tell which because the 2nd note is absent, but that doesn’t matter, the important thing is that both have a major 3rd.)
So that explaines the major 3rd in the D# chord. What about the minor 6th? Well all that’s happening is that the composer has chosen to play an D#m6 chord instead of an D# or an D#7 chord. The minor 6th note is in the phrygian dominant and mixolydian b6 scales (it’s the B - in fact it’s the 3rd degree of the tonic and what makes the whole piece a minor piece. It’s even in the name, mixolydian b6. And an alternative name for phrygian dominant is the mixolydian b9 b13 (the b13 is a b6)).
Anyway, so although it sounds like stacked major 3rds (and hence why G+, B+ and D#+ all work as three major 3rds fit perfectly in an octave), it’s really a minor 6th . Now, if the III chord were actually B D# F##, that’d be a III+
(the same chord crops up in jazz, this time the V chord is the “altered chord”, based on the super locrian scale - another mode of melodic minor - which also has a major 3rd (actually a diminished 4th) and a minor 6th. It has the same notes and is a single stacked major 3rd away from the mixolydian b6).
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
I get your analysis from a theoretical perspective but my ears don't really *hear* the fourth chord as being a dominant or as forming a cadence. I'm not hearing the sort of drive back to the i chord that a cadence should deliver. If anything I find it more natural to hear the first chord as the ii and the last chord as a wonky and unsatisfying substitute for I.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.