Rick Beato - The Death of Key Changes: How Popular Music Got Boring

[highplainsdem]

Great new video from Rick Beato today.

And the article he's talking about can be found here: https://tedium.co/2022/11/09/the-death-of-the-key-change/

Btw, I'm posting this in Musicians, instead of Music Appreciation (which I host), for a couple of reasons.

The first is that musicians are probably more aware of the lack of key changes in recent popular music.

The second is that the guidelines in Music Appreciation ask people to please keep criticism of a particular piece of music to themselves, since if it's at all popular, it does have fans, and I don't want those fans discouraged from posting their favorite music. Some people will post no matter how much others criticize it, but a lot of people will hesitate to post something they love if they believe others will jump in and post just to attack it.

This Musicians group seems better suited to a discussion of a major change in popular music over the decades.

Anyway, I hope you'll read that article and watch Rick's video. I'd love to hear your comments.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. I like Beato

I don't think I have ever watched one of his vids that didn't entertain.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Generally Agree

My only complaint is about his theory shorts. They are actually too short because he offers zero explanation as to what he's doing, and a few of them are at camera angles where I can't see it for myself.
But, his regular videos are always eminently watchable. I like how excited he gets when the cool hooks in a song pop up.

[Walleye]

2. Very interesting. I'm not a musician but the key change song from the 60s I like is On Broadway

I think that has a key change in the middle am I right? I took orchestra and violin in high school and I think the teacher called it modulation in classical music

[highplainsdem]

8. Great song! Link to a page about the song you might like:

https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2013/07/arc-of-song-on-broadway.html

In this beautifully balanced recording, the sound of hopefulness is musically reflected in two key changes: once after the first verse and again after the second. It then settles into a nice groove with angelic “on broadway” responses from the rest of the group. To me, The Drifters sing about tenacious ambition.

[Blues Heron]

3. One from the beginning of a song is Me and Bobby McGee (Janis version)

Goes up a whole step after the first verse- as a truck would shift gears getting back on the open road. Really gets the song in gear. 1:15 on this vid

[nilram]

5. And another whole step at 3:06?

Or is that my uneducated ear.

[Blues Heron]

6. I believe that is just returning to the 1 of the new key

[nilram]

7. Oh, thanks. I looked down on this song when I was a kid

(mumble, mumble) years ago. It really is more interesting musically than I was aware.

[GenXer47]

4. we've also lost

diminished chords
augmented chords
contiguous ii-V's
modal interchange
tritone substitutions
polychords
hybrid chords
fermatas
tempo changes
solos!

Music reached a zenith in the late 60's and then cocaine and disco ruined pretty much everything.

[highplainsdem]

10. Yes. Even a short song like the Beatles' "Things We Said Today" could be

so musically complex:

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_We_Said_Today

"Things We Said Today" is mostly in the natural minor key of A and is in 4/4 (common time).[7] The song plays on alternating major and minor chords, with A minor playing in the verses before the release changes to A major. The transitions are marked by a change in harmony and an acoustic guitar flourish.[8] The song is melodically horizontal,[9] using chord changes typical in both classical music and jazz.[10] It consistently uses a B♭ chord, which musicologist Alan W. Pollack writes "adds even more spice to both the melody and harmony", and is suggestive of the "exotic Phrygian mode".[7] The chord is first heard at 0:23,[2] substituting for a more typical change of F minor.[1] Between verses, the song includes an extra bar of I as a vamp.[11]

I love that song...

[Ferrets are Cool]

14. Unless you are into progressive, like I am...then you can turn to Steven Wilson for all the above.

[highplainsdem]

9. Another classic rock hit with a key change - Bowie's "Young Americans":

I now have to resist the temptation to put that on loop for an hour...

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Nice Catch!

Third verse is, I believe, a whole step up.
There's also a modulation (minor to major) right after the sax solo.
Since you're messing with Hookpad, I found this:
https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/david-bowie/young-americans

[highplainsdem]

12. Thanks for the Hooktheory page! I haven't done much messing with

Hookpad yet, since I've been under the weather (and this cold is bothering my ears at times), but it is interesting.

I'd checked Wikipedia first to try to verify the key change I thought I'd heard, and found more info than I'd expected, from a book about Bowie's songs, according to the references.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Americans_(song)

"Young Americans" compositionally stands out from Bowie's prior recordings.[5] With an improvisational song structure containing three verses and refrains, a saxophone solo, a bridge, a breakdown, and two additional extended verses and refrains,[9] author James E. Perone says the use of four-measure phrases flow together through the use of dominant chords "in a completely natural way".[5] The song is primarily in the key of C major; the verses end on G major, extending into the refrains with F major before reverting back to C on the title phrases. The bridge deviates into A minor before the guitar closes it with A major, while the fourth verse is in D major.[9]

Actually, that's info from two books on Bowie's music, Perone's The Words and Music of David Bowie, and Chris O'Leary's Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76.

And I found more info here,on the website of a musician/producer/songwriter who teaches songwriting:

https://tonyconniff.com/bowie-a-songwriting-look-inside-young-americans/

There are some surprises in store, though. After a 4 bar Dave Sanborn alto sax solo (| Aminor | F | Aminor | F |)… the bridge chords:

|| Aminor Eminor | C | Aminor Eminor | F | Emajor ||

Ah-ha… Key change! Going to an ‘E’ chord here instead of Eminor sets up the next 4 chords – | Dmajor | Eminor | F G | Eminor A | – which glide us into the last part of the song a whole step up – in Dmajor (instead of Cmajor).

A great touch is that the last 4 bars of the bridge/modulation is played solo on a dinky-sounding chorused/out of tune guitar that completely undercuts the potential cheesiness of the new key entering. Brilliant!

There isn't much about this song in producer Tony Visconti's book. He was called in after they'd already done some demos, and was asked to fly to the US immediately. He rushed to the studio, jetlagged, and found out he would have to be the engineer as well, since Bowie wasn't happy with the American engineer there. Who was a good engineer, but Bowie was unhappy with the sound because, as Tony explained, in the UK they were still doing a lot of equalizing and compression on all the instruments during the recording session,as they'd been doing since before they had 8- and 16-track tape, while in America engineers were recording "flat" with no processing, planning to leave the "final sonic solutions" to mixing. Bowie wasn't willing to turn that over to the engineer, so Tony recorded it the way they'd been doing in Britain. And they managed to record the final version of the song that first day, even with Tony jet-lagged. But apparently this wasn't one of the songs where Bowie made last-minute changes while recording the final version.

This has always been one of my favorite Bowie songs.