You Say You Want a Resolution…

In the world of power chord rock, these kind of subtleties tend to be left by the wayside. Since most power chords leave out the third of any given chord altogether, the authentic cadence tends to rule the roost.

But IV minors do still crop up from time to time. Many songwriters like to use them as part of the bridge; it’s a great way to bring a surprising change of pace without really disrupting the sense of tonality beyond the point of comfort. In the Moody Blues’ For My Lady, you can see how this switch at the beginning of the bridge initially throws us off guard but ends up resolving back to the root at the start of the chorus quite nicely:

Bonus points to those of you who spotted the descending bass lines in the first line of the chorus as well as in the final two lines of the bridge.

I’m going to write it out again with the Roman numeral designations so that you can see how it compares with our chord progression chart. Pretty favorably, wouldn’t you say? The I to III and the III to II in the chorus are the only “occasionally” progressions in the whole thing.

Meanwhile, Back At The Hotel…

I’m actually writing the bulk of this before my last column goes online (it makes me look like I’m capable of time travel sometimes) and I’m wondering how many people are going to write me about the breakdown we did of Hotel California. In particular the part where I brought up how the last line of the verse used the fifth to close the phrase and lead up to the chorus? I might as well have been out and out saying that the chorus was going to start on a B minor, right? But we all know that that’s wrong. The chorus of Hotel California starts out with a big swinging strum of the G major chord, doesn’t it? I’ll wait here while you go check it out in the TAB files, sheet music or whatever. Yes, it is indeed D major. So did I just goof up big time or what?

Well, fortunately for me, there is this thing known as the deceptive cadence. And, also fortunately for me, it lives up to its name. It starts out like the authentic cadence in that it begins with the V chord, but then another chord is substituted for the root. Do you remember the way I freaked you out last time by playing the Ab major chord at the end of Happy Birthday? That is a great example of a deceptive cadence.

By far the most prevalent deceptive cadence used throughout music history is V to VI. VI is, note-wise, very structurally similar to I. Especially if you’ve inverted the I. Oh, right, we haven’t covered inversions yet, have we? Okay, in brief – when we discuss a chord, it is generally accepted that we are talking of it as though the root is the lowest note in the bass. When we invert a chord we are simply replacing the root with one of the other two notes in that chord. For instance, if the third is the lowest tone we would call that a first inversion chord. A second inversion chord would have the fifth it the lowest position. Here’s our G major chord and its first and second inversions:

Now please don’t get all concerned about this yet, we’ll come back to it in depth in the relatively near future.

Anyway, let’s look at and listen to the difference between an authentic and deceptive cadence in C major:

Please note that I ask you to start with the C major chord in each case in order to give yourself a sense of tonality from which to start. If you were to just play G to C or G to Am, how would you know what key you were in? Cadences only work if you’ve established a key to begin with. If you don’t believe me, try this: play G to C to G to Am to G to D and then tell me what the next chord should be. How on earth did we end up in the key of G? By not establishing C major as our “home” our ears and head automatically put us there. Talk about deceptive…

And as interesting as this V to VI cadence is in a major key (where the VI is always a minor), check it out in a minor key where the VI is a major chord:

That’s pretty intense, isn’t it? Either way, V to VI is a great way for a songwriter to throw a phrase out of whack, to send a song spinning off on a wild reckless moment of abandonment. Now let’s go back and look at that half verse of “Hotel California” and follow it into the chorus. First with the actual chords:

And now with Roman numeral designations:

This time, for sure, the V is leading back to the Bm root that starts the second verse. You can take my word on this. Please believe me…