The Harmonious Blacksmith: A Music Theory Exploration

Ep. 23 : Chromaticism

• Kevin Patrick Fleming • Season 2 • Episode 23

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Episode 23 of Season 2 of THE HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH

In this episode, we are exploring CHROMATICISM, the CHROMATIC SCALE, MAJOR and MINOR TONALITY, BASS LINES, TRIADS, CHORDS, CHORD PROGRESSIONS, CHORD INVERSIONS, and CHROMATIC MELODIES. The Blacksmith goes into 2 epic songs for analysis :

‘Hey Joe’ by Jimi Hendrix  and

’Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin

The Blacksmith reviews concepts like KEYS, SCALES, INTERVALS, HALF-STEPS and WHOLE-STEPS, CHORD INVERSIONS, and more!

HB explains how one of these songs has an obvious Chromatic Melody and the other one has a hidden one. Special NEW character makes Cameo in this episode! Don’t Miss it!

#podcast #musictheory #musichistory #musiccommentary

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UNKNOWN:

Music Playing

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to The Harmonious Blacksmith, a music theory exploration. This is a podcast all about the beginnings, middles, and endings of music theory from A to Z. We start from scratch, we build from scratch until we have some kind of structure, and then we learn how to organize, analyze, and interpret what we hear in music. Thanks for joining in, everybody. Today's episode is... Episode number 23 of season 2. And today's episode will be all about Chromaticism. Thank you, robot clone of me. That's right. Today's episode is all about Chromaticism. Chromatics. We're going to talk about what chromatics are. We're going to define it from the start, of course. We're going to talk about how it gets inserted into music we know and love. We're also going to talk about how you might be able to use it in improvisation which may turn into a two-part series again. And I would like to thank everyone who tuned in for my very first interview in my interview series on episode 22, which was called Meet the Blacksmith. I am super excited about putting together those interviews for your enjoyment. But before I do, we are going to talk about chromatics and chromaticism. And by the way, if you're new to my program, first of all, welcome. So how are you? happy that you're here and just so you know it is a cumulative and linear podcast I started from a single sound we learned what pitch and notes were then we learned what scales and melody and harmony and chords and triads and chord progressions on and on and on it goes all the way back to the beginning so if this is your first time hearing my podcast welcome but feel free to go back to the beginning and you can catch up back to where we are and finally for all of y'all out there thank you so much for the support take a look in the description of this episode where it says support the show give that a click and just take a look at your options there for a very forgettable dirt cheap price you can really help my show and really keep this content rolling thank you so much for checking that out and as always i am your passionate music theory host and my name is kevin Patrick Fleming. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you to all my peoples out there. What up? What up? Thank you. Oh, that's so nice to hear. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. So without further ado, we plunge into episode 23 about chromaticism.

SPEAKER_03:

Kevin, did you say chromaticism?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I did. You know what? Take it easy over there, robot. I didn't know you were going to be a part of this episode. You need to just kind of chime down over there. Okay?

SPEAKER_03:

Okay. But I want to have fun with music theory,

SPEAKER_01:

too. Okay, yeah, we all... We all want to have fun with music theory. I'm just not sure we need your robot voice chiming in the whole episode. You know what? I'm a pretty open-minded, benevolent guy. I'll let you stick

SPEAKER_00:

with

SPEAKER_01:

me. But you gotta promise me you're gonna stay out of the way and let me talk to the good folks out there listening to my humble programs.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, let's start the show, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, and today's program starts with the question, what is... chromaticism chromaticism refers to the use of notes that are outside the realm of a diatonic scale or key within a piece of music does not compute okay you don't understand that robot okay well basically what chromaticism is it's the use of extra colors outside of a scale or key in music we use it in ways to spice up what is normal sounding or what we're used to hearing. It adds tension. It adds more interesting sounds. It just adds for unexpected colors and passages of all kinds. It's really just a way of expanding our musical canvas, so to speak, when it comes to writing or playing music.

SPEAKER_02:

Expanding the musical canvas. Let me go get my paintbrush.

SPEAKER_01:

No, paintbrush. What? No. Oh, you heard the word canvas. I don't think our robot friend knows quite what a metaphor is. And before I launch into audio examples of chromaticism, I think it's important to kind of understand where it comes from. So you might say, okay, we have these extra colors, these extra notes outside of a diatonic key or scale. Well, where do they come from? Well, everybody that listens to my program should know that everything comes from scales and this is no different. It's just not a diatonic scale. It is a different kind of scale that these notes are pulled from. And with that information, we can now ask the important question, what is the chromatic scale? The chromatic scale is simply all 12 pitches in our system in order like any other scale. But this particular scale is special because the formula is that every single note is a half step away from every other note. So just think about all the natural notes and all the sharps and flats that are all included in our musical alphabet, and it's just all of them in a row. So you could even start on A and say it's A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, and then eventually we're back to A. The chromatic scale from From A to A would sound like this. So you can tell it has this kind of forever rising tension that feels like it's never going to get back to the octave or the root note. To sum up, generally in the Western system, in tonal harmony, we write music in diatonic major or minor key. But now what we're doing is we're just saying that all the pitches in the entire system are now available for use. So think about it like this. A piece of music might predominantly be a 1 4 5 and therefore use a diatonic scale that's a G major scale I'm in the key of G and that was a 1 4 5 G C and D Pretty basic, pretty simple. But what we're saying is instead of just being able to harmonize and use the notes in the diatonic scale, we are now going to be able to use the tweener notes or the in-between notes that are in between those notes. Which makes for an interesting palette of colors. And there are more examples to come.

SPEAKER_03:

Now I understand, Kevin. You do? I will put the paintbrush off and pull out my bit tar and play a chromatic scale.

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm guessing that a bit tar is like a guitar for robots? Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03:

That is precisely correct,

SPEAKER_01:

Kevin. All right. Well, we're just glad you're participating and following along now, Robot. Good to have you on board.

SPEAKER_03:

This is so much fun, Kevin. What is

SPEAKER_01:

next? Well, it's time for some audio examples. So I'm going to start with one of the cooler ones. This is an example from a song called Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix. To be clear, Jimi Hendrix didn't write Hey Joe. This is his version of it. He covered it. But this is the version that everybody in the world knows because because it's Jimi Hendrix and he was an incredible guitar player. The chromatic melodies that I'm referring to in Hey Joe, the Jimi Hendrix version, come in at the end of the song and they're used kind of like a walking bass line to connect the chords. So the part that we're studying sounds like this. And that by itself is pretty darn cool. If you haven't heard that before, do go put that in your track list to listen to the Jimi Hendrix version of Hey Joe. It's old school, but it's super cool, man. Check it out. So I'm going to just start with the chords that you happen to hear in this song, and then we'll talk about the chromatic lick that I just played and how it's put together. The first chord is a C. Then there's a G. then D, then A, then E. And these are all major chords, by the way, which makes this progression kind of strange. It's actually what we call a circle progression. A circle progression is a chord progression that is based on an interval rather than a key. For example, the interval of a perfect fifth or a perfect fourth are the most common for circle progressions. So this particular circle progression in this cover of Hey Joe by Jimi Hendrix starts on a C chord, and then it goes a fifth up to G, and then another fifth up to D, another fifth up to A, and then finally another fifth up to E. And that's where it stops for the moment. And then it just repeats. So now that you know what a circle progression is, here's what it sounds like in a sort of jangly acoustic version of Hey Joe, the Jimi Hendrix version.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, that's a really fun one to play. I had to just do that. So you may or may not recognize that, but that's basically what the song sounds like in acoustic form. Now that you've heard that and you heard me play the chromatic line, let me bring the chromatic line back in and show you how cool it is. So what the chromatic line is doing is that it's connecting the chords kind of like a walking bass line, if you understand what that is and i do have previous episodes on that by the way so our circle progression starts on a c and therefore our chromatic lick starts on a c and the chromatic lick serves the purpose of connecting the c chord to our next chord which is a g so we're going from a c to a g But what Mr. Hendrix does is he plays this line. So what that is, is the first note harmonizes with the C. The second note harmonizes with the C. It's a low E, and that low E is the third of the C major chord, because remember a C major triad is C, E, and G. So the first two notes of that chromatic riff are C and E. They harmonize perfectly with the chord. But then he gets chromatic. And what he does is he goes C, E, up a half step to F, up another half step to F sharp, and then up another half step to G. that is a chromatic lick at its finest ladies and gentlemen so again a c note with a c chord then he starts walking to the e f f sharp and then we arrive on a g for the g chord Now he keeps this kind of chromatic motif going. So after the G chord, we arrived on the G note. Now we're gonna have a chromatic riff that's gonna connect us to our next chord, which is going to be D. So now we're starting on G, and he does a chromatic walk-up again to D. So this note is B, which is also in a G chord. So again, the first two notes of this riff are in the G chord. Harmonized perfectly, beautiful. We love that, we know that. Then there is a rising chromatic riff again that goes like this. Same exact way the last one did. So now we have the first lick going. And then the second lick goes. So look, you can tell the order, the ascending and descending is a little different, but the idea is the same. So now we just arrived on the D chord. So that entire walk up there took you from a G to a D. And the chromatic motif continues of course. So now that we're on a D chord. It goes like this. It walks from a D to an A. So now we're going from a D to an A. And it's gonna sound like this. And now we've arrived on an A. So D. and then walk to A. Is the chromatic rift starting to sound repetitive or familiar? That's because it's basically the same thing over and over again. So now that we've arrived on A, we're gonna go from A to E to finish the chord progression. And that's gonna go like this from A to E. And we made it to the end where we then get a blues riff after that. That's just a pentatonic riff. It has nothing to do with chromatic. It's just cool sounding.

SPEAKER_03:

That was cool, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. What is next? What is next is an analysis of one of the most epic folk rock and roll tunes of all time, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. Now this is a perfect example of chromaticism, but maybe not exactly how you think. It's a little hidden in this one. Compared to the last example, it was very, very obvious. Well, actually, that's a pretty good way to describe it. I mean, let's go ahead and get into it. At the beginning of Stairway to Heaven, you have the epic, recognizable part that sounds like this. So now that you have the basic idea of what chromaticism is, were you able to hear a chromatic line in that? Listen to it one more time and see if you hear chromaticism anywhere. Okay. Did you hear it in the bass line? Remember, the bass line gives you so many answers, as we've learned in previous episodes about chord progressions and keys and what scale we are and things like that. But in the case of the intro to Stairway to Heaven, it really is the fact that the bass line just descends in a chromatic way. So the bass line at the beginning sounds like this.

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, could you hear it now? That slinky line that slinks down. So let's get into the analysis of it. First of all, the overwhelming majority of Stairway to Heaven is in the key of A minor. And so we start on the tonic chord and it sounds like this. So most of you can probably guess by now that that is an arpeggio on an A minor triad or A minor chord. So the chord would sound like this. And the arpeggio sounds like this. And if you listen to the very first note, which is the bass note of the chord. Remember, there's a difference between a bass range and bass function. And in this case, even though the note is kind of high sounding, it has a bass function because it's the lowest note of the chord. And that's where the walk down starts. So we have a root A on our tonic chord. And then we get this very interesting chord. Listen to this and see if you can tell what kind of triad this is. Your hint is this is like the chord that sends you off in the intro of every Star Wars movie to send you off into the main story or whatever after we watch the cool beginning with the big ships and everything. It is an augmented triad, which is really interesting. It ends up just being a chromatic chord. Now, I know I'm throwing a lot at you in this episode. Concern yourself less with the chord analysis and key analysis, and remember that the focus is chromaticism. So coming off of this A minor triad... He goes to an augmented triad. And then we get a major triad. And that is in fact a C major chord. And if you follow the analysis so far, that's going to be a major three chord in the key of A minor. Remember? Recall that in a minor key, one, four, and five are minor. Three, six, and seven are major. And the two chord is diminished.

SPEAKER_03:

Slow down a little bit, Kevin. Sorry. Even my computer speeds can't

SPEAKER_01:

keep up. Oh, okay. Well, I'm sorry. Let me bring it back together a little bit. So let's go ahead and back and recall how a minor key works, and specifically the key that Stairway to Heaven's in, which is A minor. I will

SPEAKER_03:

play along

SPEAKER_01:

on my guitar. Oh, okay, sweet. You play along with that guitar. So let's break down the key of A minor. Remember that 1, 4, and 5 are minor, so 1 is A minor. 4 is D minor. 5 is E minor. And those are your three main minor chords. Now recall that the major chords are three, six, and seven. We've already heard that we have a C major in Stairway to Heaven. And we're eventually gonna see a six chord, which is F. And our seven chord is also major, which would be a G. So now that you've got all those chords set up for the key of A minor in Stairway to Heaven, you do get the I chord. You also get the III chord. You also get the major VI chord. You get the major VII chord. And then you go back to I, which is A minor. But in between, we do have this augmented chord. And we also have a D major chord. instead of a D minor chord, which is what is expected. This is a little bit more of a complex chromatic chord progression. It is basically centered around A minor, but it yields this cool bass line. So now, to add the bass line to the chords, you start with that A minor one, with the bass note that is an A. Then we get the A flat augmented. So, so far we went from the minor one to an A flat augmented triad. And so our baseline is going from A to A flat. So that's the descending chromatic lick we're talking about, A to A flat. Guess what comes next? Yep, it's G, but it's in the context of an inverted major three chord, which sounds like this. And again, the bass note is a G. So now we've gone A, A flat, G. What do you think is next? G flat? In this case, it actually acts as an F sharp instead of a G flat. It's one of those inharmonic things because it's the third of a D major chord. And this is an inverted chord. It is a first inversion. But now your bass note is an F sharp. So now we've gone from A... to A flat, to G, to F sharp. And now where do you think we're going? We're going to F. And that F is a root position six chord in A minor, which is F major. And then they finish the chord progression with a seven chord back to a one chord. And that is the entire thing. So again, we start on an A on the root chord. then an A flat on the augmented chord. Then we go down a half step to G on the second inversion C major chord, which is a three chord in A minor. Then that G goes down to an F sharp, which is the third of a first inversion D major chord. And then that F sharp goes down to an F natural, which is in the root position for an F major seven chord, a six chord in the key of A minor, and then the chord progression finishes with a seven chord, which is major G, and then back to one.

SPEAKER_03:

I did not know that chromaticism could be so much fun.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's really fun. Way to stick in there, robot. You know, you turned out to not be so annoying after all. Thanks, Kevin.

SPEAKER_03:

Maybe I can do the next show too.

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, well, wait, we'll see about that. We'll talk about it a little bit after the show. Okay, buddy. But now it's time for break. Today's episode was all about chromaticism. We defined what chromaticism is and also what the chromatic scale is in our Western system. We learned what a circle progression is based on our Hey Joe example that we wanted to analyze for chromaticism. We analyzed both Hey Joe and Stairway to Heaven, The Great Stairway by Led Zeppelin today and found out that both of them had very interesting chromatic baselines for us to enjoy. Thanks again for tuning in to episode 23 of season two, everybody. I appreciate you chiming in. And until the next episode, I will look forward to continuing this music theory exploration with all of you. Have a beautiful music-filled week, everybody.