Ionian Tonic Arrivals as Generators of Chorus Quality in Pop/Rock Songs !!! BEGIN TIMER !!! !!! BEGIN TIMER !!! !!! BEGIN TIMER !!! [NEXT] Hello, my talk today will be divided into five parts, which you can track in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. BACKGROUND The labels of “verse” and “chorus” are ubiquitous in the analysis of pop/rock music, and theorists have thus sought to explain the typical features of these two section types. [NEXT] In general, theorists characterize a chorus as the “focal” point of the song, as more “memorable” and having more “energy” than a verse. [NEXT] A chorus is said to typically be thicker in texture than a verse, with an increase in volume and instrumentation, often via the addition of background singers [NEXT] In terms of lyrics, a chorus is said to typically deliver a more “general message,” include the title of the song, and repeat its text upon future iterations. [NEXT] Temperley has also noted that chorus melodies are often less pentatonic and more coordinated with the underlying harmony, while Stephenson notes that chorus melodies tend to use slower rhythms. [NEXT] Explanations of the harmonic factors involved are common as well, though somewhat underdeveloped. [NEXT] Covach categorizes verse-chorus songs based on whether the harmonies in the verse reappear in the chorus or not, but he does not describe how this harmonic contrast is usually brought about. [NEXT] The role of tonic seems important, as Everett and Endrinal state that verse and chorus sections prolong or emphasize tonic harmony. [NEXT] Stephenson notes that if a verse begins on tonic, the chorus will usually being off tonic, while others have noted that a chorus section typically ends on tonic. [NEXT] Statistical data from Summach’s dissertation supports these latter insights. HYPOTHESIS Although these observations are interesting, much remains to be said about the role that harmony plays in structuring verse and chorus sections. [NEXT] A few authors, most recently Doll, have identified one strategy, in which a minor-key verse is paired with a chorus in the relative major. My paper today builds on this work by presenting a broader theoretical context to understand how chorus quality may be generated within the harmonic domain. Ultimately, my approach reframes the issue from a cognitive perspective. I posit – to the extent that harmony contributes to our perception of something as an instance of a particular section type – that the strength of chorus quality corresponds to arrivals of the Ionian tonic. By “arrivals,” I mean the average number of times that the chords change into the tonic. By using the term “Ionian,” I do not mean that rock music should necessarily be conceived of as a modal system Rather, I mean that our sense of which passage acts as the chorus is influenced by the “Ionian-ness” of the tonic. [NEXT] In what follows, I provide examples of this theory grouped into five scenarios: 1) Verse and chorus share the same diatonic collection but have different tonal centers (such as minor and relative major); [NEXT] 2) Verse and chorus have the same tonal center but different diatonic collections (such as minor and parallel major); [NEXT] 3) Verse and chorus have different tonal centers and different diatonic collections (such as G minor and D major); [NEXT] 4) Verse and chorus have the same diatonic collection and tonal center, but the chorus includes more arrivals of tonic; and [NEXT] 5) Verse and chorus have the same diatonic collection and tonal center, but the verse avoids tonic. When I say “diatonic collection,” I mean the pitch framework as would be implied by a key signature. I find that categorizing passages generally as major or minor, based on the quality of the tonic triad, is a convenient starting point, but I am not necessarily tied to a common-practice key system. EXAMPLES Due to limitations of time, we will explore only one example of each scenario in depth, but I will touch on others as well. [NEXT] Let us begin with Scenario 1, in which the verse and chorus share the same diatonic collection but have different tonal centers. The song “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake provides a good example. In this song, the chords for the verse and chorus are drawn mostly from the “three flats” collection. But the shift from C minor to the relative major of E-flat in the chorus creates a dramatic change in tonal emphasis that helps generate a palpable sense that this chorus is the focal point of the song. Note that there is a first-inversion G major chord in the verse, which is an exception to the prevailing diatonic collection. [NEXT] Of course, this G major chord is the tonal dominant of C minor and thus strengthens our sense that C minor is the tonal center for the verse. So although I categorize the verse and chorus as having the same basic diatonic collection, I do allow for some chromaticism. [NEXT]. [NEXT] “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young is another good example of Scenario 1. [NEXT] In other songs, chromaticism is a bit stronger. The song “Rio” by Duran Duran, for instance – which I categorize as Scenario 2 – has a verse that conveys E minor (albeit with some Dorian color) and a chorus in the parallel key of E major (albeit with some Mixolydian color). I thus categorize this song as one in which verse and chorus share the same tonal center but different diatonic collections. [NEXT] Despite the chromaticism within both sections, it is the arrivals in the chorus of the major-key tonics and dominants that represent the strongest Ionian moments in the song, and it is these moments, I posit, that help convey chorus quality to the listener. [NEXT] [NEXT] Interestingly, other examples of Scenario 2, such as “Temptation Eyes” by the Grassroots or “Kiss On My List” by Hall and Oates, also show a good deal of mixture, perhaps because the inherent mixture of a parallel key encourages thinking in this way. [NEXT] Scenario 3 is exemplified by another Duran Duran song, “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Here, the verse and chorus have different tonal centers and different diatonic collections. I categorize the basic tonality of both the verse and chorus as major, but not necessarily Ionian. [NEXT] In particular, the verse includes only the lowered version of scale-degree seven. We might thus categorize it more specifically as E Mixolydian. So while the chorus is also in major, it is much more Ionian, especially with the 1-5-4 progression at the beginning of each four-bar phrase. There is a Lydian flourish at the end of this chorus excerpt, but the “Ionian-ness” of the chorus tonic has already been strongly established by this point. [NEXT]. [NEXT] Note also that the chorus includes more frequent tonic arrivals than the verse, even though tonic occupies a greater portion of the verse. I believe this increase in the average number of tonic arrivals helps further convey chorus quality to the listener, especially when a verse is tonic heavy. [NEXT] “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” by the Police also epitomizes Scenario 3, with a verse in G minor and a chorus in the somewhat unrelated key of D major. [NEXT] Scenario 4 includes songs that rely exclusively on arrivals of tonic, rather than any modal or tonal differences, to convey chorus quality. In the song “Just What I Needed” by the Cars, both the verse and the chorus are grounded in the same major key. In the verse and chorus sections, if we add up the durations of the E major tonic, we find that tonic lasts a total of two bars in both sections. But in the chorus, the chords move to this E major tonic twice as often. [NEXT] It is this increase in tonic arrivals that I hear as reinforcing our perception that this chorus is a destination point, in part because the short chord cycles lack the longer range harmonic direction of the verse. [NEXT] [NEXT] AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” provides another example of Scenario 4. Here we see the arrivals on the A major tonic double in frequency when comparing the chorus to the verse. My final scenario involves songs in which the verse and chorus can be heard in the same major key, but where the verse avoids tonic. [NEXT] The Prince song “Little Red Corvette” illustrates this scenario. I hear this song entirely in Db major, even though the first-time listener may not intuit Db as the tonal center until the chorus, since the verse material includes no instance of a Db chord. But upon arrival of the chorus and its strong 4-5-1 motions, my ears interpret the verse as withholding the tonic of the song. I readily admit, however, that it is possible to analyze this verse in other ways. Instead of viewing the verse in Db, we could see it as in the relative minor of Bb. Or perhaps we could view the verse as Bb Aeolian. Or maybe we might prioritize the opening Gb chord and call it a Lydian passage. [NEXT] Whatever specific analysis we choose, Ionian tonic arrivals remains a viable and useful concept to help explain our perception of chorus quality in this song. One benefit of framing chorus quality in the way that I do, therefore, is that it allows for readings of rock as a modal system as described in the writings of Moore, multiple tonal systems as described in the writings of Everett, or something in between, such as the sectional centricity described in the writings of Capuzzo and Burns. [NEXT] [NEXT] The Police song “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” is another good example of Scenario 5, since the bass line in the verse consists of a stepwise outline of the tritone between scale degrees 4 and 7. COUNTEREXAMPLES I am sure many audience members have thought of counterexamples to those I have presented, so I would like to now address the issue of songs that appear to contradict this theoretical paradigm. I contend that such examples require analytical explanation, since they involve conflicting perceptual information conveyed by different domains. [NEXT] Consider the song “Cold as Ice” by Foreigner. In his 2003 article, Covach analyzes the two main sections of the song as “chorus” and “verse,” as shown here. But these labels rub against the harmonic structure predicated by my theory, since the chorus is in minor while the verse is in the relative major. [NEXT] It turns out that harmony is not the only domain in which we find this mismatch between section attributes and section labels. Covach notes two of these mismatches himself: 1) that the chorus precedes the verse in the large-scale form of the song, and 2) that the lyrics to the “chorus” change on future iterations of this section whereas the lyrics to the “verse” remain the same. Additional mismatches may be found, in that the “verse” includes background singers as well as a general thickening of the instrumental texture. And so for many reasons, it is possible to hear the song as having a rather straight-forward verse-chorus construction. [NEXT] [NEXT] My point here is not to argue with Covach’s labels. Covach himself admits that this song has a “somewhat unusual” arrangement. Rather, my point is to show how a song may play with our expectations. Instead of laying out attributes in a predictable manner – which might be the telltale sign of a “formulaic” tune – songs such as “Cold as Ice” fascinate us perhaps in part because of the way they organize attributes in an unique and interesting way. [NEXT] Another counterexample is found in Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown.” In her 2010 article, Biamonte analyzes this song with the verse-chorus labels shown here. [NEXT] In the context of my theory, this chorus is remarkable because it avoids tonic entirely, at least until the very end. [NEXT]. Many rock songs have a similar construction, with a tonic-heavy verse followed directly by a harmonically-unstable passage that drives towards a final cadence. But since harmonic instability is a hallmark of a pre-chorus section, I hear the chorus quality in songs like this somewhat retroactively, as if the unstable material is building to a standalone chorus that never arrives. It is as if the prechorus and chorus roles have merged into a single passage. As a result, there exists the possibility that some other section in the song could generate an even stronger sense of chorus quality. [NEXT] In “Communication Breakdown,” we can actually take the tonic-heavy outro section and tack it onto the end of the original chorus section to create a new song form in which the original, harmonically-unstable passage now acts more like a pre-chorus [NEXT]. This last example provides perspective on the “terminally-climatic” song form described by Osborn, in which the first chorus is superseded by a more chorus-like section later in the song. We can understand that the potential for these terminally-climatic forms may relate to whether the first chorus “pulls out all the stops” or leaves room for some future section to take things even further. DISCUSSION So while many pop/rock songs utilize Ionian tonic arrivals to help generate chorus quality in the harmonic domain, many other songs do not. I provided a number of examples, many of which you may have noticed were drawn from the late 70s and early 80s. Like any songwriting strategy, it is probable that the strategy I described today is more common among certain artists or eras. Nonetheless, I posit that the underlying principle is a perceptual one, available to any who may choose to employ it. [NEXT] As some evidence of this perceptual basis, consider the recent research by Temperley and Tan. In their 2012 article, they present experimental findings that show subjects with little to no musical training consistently rate the Ionian mode as significantly happier than any other. Moreover, happiness decreases with distance on a line of fifths from the Ionian mode. Chorus quality, therefore, may be something we can associate with listener happiness. Ultimately, it would be nice to test my claims about Ionian tonic arrivals in a controlled setting, although designing an experiment that isolates a single attribute within something as complex as a real-world song would be challenging. Until then, my theory offers one of presumably many ways to explain and understand how chorus quality can be generated in the mind of the listener. Thank you. [NEXT]