Out of the One, Came Many

swing68

I come back to this clip as the fons et origo of all things Barry on the guitar. It's not everything and more a gateway drug to deeper examinations by YouTubers such as Jazz Guitar Scrap Book (who serendipitously posted this Barry-themed post 11 days ago):

https://youtu.be/7reOAaveCi0?si=doggeQdH3YtIGym7

Buco

Unfortunately a couple of minutes into it, I couldn't follow any longer... fantastic player though and obviously very knowledgeable. Lessons like that are more like presentations.

Here's Barry's take on modes, lol

https://youtube.com/shorts/s-ZPdaW0m8E?si=_71SZUyOW5tYliqa

Buco

A question; does anyone know of a few songs that make use of a backdoor dominant, bVII7?

I may have found an answer... Yesterday during the band practice with Bill and Randy we played Over the Rainbow. And I spotted Db7 while the song is in the key of Eb

Also, as soon as I started typing it dawned on me...What a Difference the Day Makes, (if in the key of Eb as well) when it moves to to Ab it goes to Db7 before going back to Eb.

Now, supposedly that song form is what Django based Nuages on. And they really are identical. Except, Django made use of tritone substitution in the opening bars of the melody. So it goes Eb7/D7/G instead of A-/D7/G.

The rest is the same, except when it comes time for backdoor dominant.

When looking at Nuages, when the form moves to C, it goes to C- before going back to G. If you used the backdoor dominant, you'd go to F7 instead of C-. As mentioned earlier in the thread C-(6) and F7 are cousins and that's where the concept of playing iv6 lines and phrases over ii V7 comes from.

paulmcevoy75

Lady Bird has the back door. I think There Will Never Be Another you had one too.

paulmcevoy75

Ok maybe not TWNBAY but if you make the Ab- into Ab-6 it's basically D7 so....

Buco

@paulmcevoy75 yes, you're right, nice. With tunes like Lady Bird I always saw that as a temporary key change. And it is but it's both, quick ii V in a different key and a backdoor dominant. Just Friends does the same move.

TWNBAY does the same movement as WADTDM (such cumbersome titles) so that counts too.

Then there are many tunes that make use of IV to iv...I'll See...Dreams (and you'll see some charts do Bb/Bb-/Eb7), After You've Gone does exactly the same thing.

Then you have that thing where you have a ii going to iv (or bVII7 if you will), like in Avalon G- to Bb-6 (or Eb7) before going back to F. Then, Someday You'll be Sorry does that same thing. C'est Si Bon as well, etc...

Over the Rainbow sort of stands out to me as the truest to that theory concept because everything else stays in tonal center and then that Db7 surprises you by coming out of nowhere, and it sounds amazingly nice with the melody...oh, Out of Nowhere, another one that makes use of ii iv (bVII7) movement.

It's much more common than I thought...I'm sure there are countless more...

Lango-Django

Hey, Buco, the Beatles were particularly fond of that I to bVII change that you like

The most obvious example of that is “A Hard Day’s Night” (G major to F major) but there are countless others.

”All My Lovin” fakes your ear out by going first to the false dominant chord and then to the real one…listen for this right after the lyric “remember I’ll always be true” (D major to B7 in the key of E major)

Another neat little Lennon trick was to go from the false dominant to the subdominant, which you can hear in “Help” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” among others. The effect on the listeners ear is to make it unclear eactly what is the key of the moment

***

My love for the Beatles cost me $500 the other day.

Dammit.

We got a new car that came with free Sirius XM radio, which offers the Beatles channel (#18)

So anyway the other day I’m driving by myself and singing right along with John Lennon’s marvellous lower harmony on “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”

I’m really nailling it!

Until

uh oh

careless lane change without checking blind spot carefully

CRUNCH

Broken rearview mirror for me, cracked plastic mirror casing of the other guy’s car

Ouch

Five hundred dollars deductible.

So now when I’m driving, I’m not listening to the Beatles anymore.

Will

Buco

Oh man, accidents suck. Foreshadowing title though, there's some dark humor in there... John singing I Don't Wanna Spoil the Party to you... next thing you know... whack!

What harmony sponges those guys were. I wonder if they heard stuff like that someplace else and said "hey let us use this somehow" or or they were just sort of messing around.

Lango-Django

But speaking of neat chord tricks, I recently discovered this one by Buffalo NY’s own Harold Arlen

on the final “A” section of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” he replaces the tonic Eb chord with an unexpected Am7b5, which lends an extra emotional urgency to the melody.

That substitution would never have occured to me in a million years… perhaps guitar players don’t see chords in quite the same way as piano players? Because they don’t have all these crazy different fingerings that we do, perhaps it makes it a bit easier to fool around with slight changes to the chords and seeing how that changes the sound

I didn’t actually suspect it but the tonic Eb chord and the Am7b5 are only different by one note…

I often use this fingering for an Eb chord with an added sixth aka Eb6

6 6 5 5 4 X (Bb-Eb-G-C-Eb)

Well just dropping that chord’s low Bb note 1 fret down to an A gives you Am7b5

5 6 5 5 4 X (A-Eb-G-C-Eb)

Only problem is that fingering that chord is a bitch, so most guitar players wouldn’t think of using it…

Whereas a piano player could easily make that change just by moving one finger

Will