Analysing Songs

wonderwall is a song with the third fret of the high e and b strings ringing throughout as drone notes, so you can picture the chords more simply as em g d am c, and not worry about the sus4, add9, etc. that should simplify things a little, i hope.

as for the blues thing, i believe it's because it is a combination of african melodies and european chord structures. i'm sure there's a better explanation, but that's the best i can do.

After my somewhat failed question for a song in A minor (my bad...) i'll now try i more educational question.

Nothing wrong with your A minor question at all.
To find in which key a certain song is written, i write out all the notes that are used, both in chords and single notes. Then i put all these notes together and try to see to which scale they belong. Is this a good way to find the key in which a song is written?

Well, it's one approach, but because of accidentals and such, not a very good one, especially in minor keys which can use a lot of diatonic notes.

The basic and most productive method of finding out the key is by ear. What chord/note sounds like "home"? What chord/note does it keep coming back to? Play the song, stopping on each of the chords or notes. Where does it feel "finished, complete"? This is the important part of key, not which notes it uses.

Three rules of thumb:
1) Very many songs start with the home chord.
2) Almost all end with it.
3) If there's only one dom7 chord in the song, it's usually the V (Wonderwall breaks this rule).

David Hodge has written a lot of fantastic articles on this subject that you'll find in the theory section (start with Five to One, You Say You Want a Resolution and Minor Progress)
For example:
The song Wonderwall by Oasis uses the chords:
Em7
G
Cadd9
Dsus4
A7sus4

I found out that the notes that are used are:
A B D E G

What can i conclude from this...i know these notes make the E minor/G major pentatonic, but i don't not know where to go from there...

Well, Wonderwall is in E minor, begins and ends on E minor and uses only the notes of the E natural minor scale. Read David's lesson on this song, too (Sustained Tones: An Animated Discussion).

And one other thing:
The blues in E uses the I IV and V chords of the E major scale, yet you play the E minor pentatonic over this progression...where is the logic behind that?

Thanks!

Well, that's the blues for you. The defining characteristic of blues is the use of "blue" notes. There are three notes that get this name, the b3 (G) of the minor scale that rubs up against the 3 (G#) of the major chord, the b5 used as a passing tone between the 4 and 5 and the b7 that causes the normally stable I chord to sound tense and dissonant.

It's not exactly logic.

You are on the right track. Now that you have a collection of notes used, you've limited the keys considerably. With notes ABDEG you can rule out the keys of F, all the flatted note keys, and all their relative minors (all will have Bb), and you can rule out the keys of A, E, B, and F# - all of those will sharp the G.

That leaves you with C, G, and D for your possible keys, plus their relative minors of Am, Em, and Bm. That much you're sure of.

Analysis can be a very complicated topic, particularly when the notes and chords allow for more than one possible key. Wonderwall's actually kind of unusual in that you've got six choices - most tunes will either be identified at this point, or you'll only have a couple of choices. The real deciding factor is the tonal center - the note the melody rotates around. Finding the tonal center can require looking at the shape of the melody, the resolution of tension and release, and even the length of time notes are held. Rather than get into all that, I'll give you the method that will work for 90% or more of the pop songs you can't identify by just the notes/chords.

Virtually every song has a tonic chord somewhere. With no B chord, you can rule out Bm, and you're down to five possibilities out of 24.

Now take those five and assign numbers to the chords... 'test fit' them if you will. I'll write the sus chords with a *, and mark them as major or minor as appropriate to the key:

Key of C: I, ii*, iii, V, vi*
Key of G: I, ii*, IV, V*, vi
Key of D: I*, ii, IV, V*, VII
Key of Am: i*, III, iv*, v, VII
Key of Em: i, III, iv*, VI, vii*

Next... virtually all pop songs will have a I-IV-V or i-iv-V, even if it's not a three-chord progression. So from the chords above, we can toss out C and Em. So now we're down to three - G, D, or Am.

Finally, the sus chords... they're added for color, but they want to resolve. A song using both D and Dsus might be in D, but a song using only Dsus probably isn't. So we rule out C and Am, and it's in the key of G.

Like I said, this method will work for about 90% of tunes that can't be nailed down. Wonderwall is a tricky one, because at times it 'feels' major, and at other times minor... but there are two spots that lead you to a major tonality overall: the bridge, which has a major feel, and the solo - which is mostly a major arpeggio.

For the blues question, Helgi's right - it's not exactly logic. Theory isn't like math... it's more like anthropology. You look at what people have done, and you write up your guidelines as they apply to the genre.

Blues doesn't fit 'traditional' music theory, because traditional theory is based on classical music, and blues have entirely different roots. Blues does have a well developed structure and its own rules, and those rules say you use a scale with a b3 and b7 over the tonic chord.

Hi Noteboat, and hbriem thanks for the indepth theory man I wish I knew my theory to this degree.
The song in question is quite easy to play all the chords are nice and close and tight.
My question is when I think of Noel Gallagher putting wonderwall together I don't somehow visualise him hypothesizing theory to this degree. I could be wrong, I'm at a stage now where I can do quite well with my technique but don't really understand how far I should take the theory learning. I have lessons and my teacher is very able in both but he leaves it up to me to decide what to push on i.e practical or theory. I love the idea of being able to understand academically why I'm doing what I'm doing. Something tells me however Noel picked the key chose what he liked within the key linked some progressions and hey ho Wonderwall.

Could you guys tell whats the best way to come by the music, raw theory or just experience playing but not fully understanding the underlying theory.

Also how do I get your book Noteboat looks like just the thing to advance my theory understanding.

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Could you guys tell whats the best way to come by the music, raw theory or just experience playing but not fully understanding the underlying theory.

"Best" means being able to do both. There's nothing wrong about writing "what sounds good," but to ditch theory for it is silly. Where theory helps is when you've run into a wall. Say you've written a cool chord progression but you can't figure out how to get it back to the first chord without sounding too abrupt. Theory can help you there.

The "best" usually listen to a lot of different music and when they hear chord progressions they really like, they remember them, occasionally analyze them and often copy them.

If you want a hands-on walk through of using both ways, check out a (very) old article of mine called "Building Bridges," which you can find on the Guitar Columns page.

Hope this helps.

Peace

I'm with David - you should approach music both ways.

Don't get hung up on being 'right' by theory - if it sounds good, there's theory to explain it... it's pointless to make the music sound less good to conform to the theory you know.

But don't discard the theory. Let's say you were writing that song, and you came up with that chord progression. Now you want to put a melody to it, so you need to figure out a good scale. Using the notes in the chords, you come up with six good choices - but that's not the important part of theory.

The important part: you've identified 18 not so good choices!

The value of theory isn't in learning what to do - it's to avoid wasting your time chasing down blind alleys only to find the results don't work well.

The "best" usually listen to a lot of different music and when they hear chord progressions they really like, they remember them, occasionally analyze them and often copy them.

Is this really how the "best" write songs? I'm trying way too hard then...