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Post by Liebezeit on Jul 9, 2019 2:49:07 GMT
Hi all, it's been a while since I've started a thread, so I'm starting it now. For those who aren't apt about jazz, The Lick is a seven note riff that occurs in some popular music and jazz; it starts with the tonic note, ascends to the subdominant, goes to the supertonic and leading tone and back to the root note, and it's often played in a Dorian scale. ( D minor scale, I think Edit 9 July 2019: D Dorian. Thanks Richard)  From what I could find, I'm a Marionette has a somewhat Lick riff in the verse though it doesn't go to the supertonic, though I do feel there are more, but I think it's more into their obscure songs like the Waterloo or Ring Ring era. Feel free to point out which songs have these :-) |
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Post by richard on Jul 9, 2019 10:04:45 GMT
I can't think, offhand, of any ABBA song that uses that phrase/riff. (Technically, for those interested, it's notated in.C major, so jazzers would probably regard the riff as being in d-dorian - or d minor, as you say, Jonathan).
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Post by shoshin on Jul 9, 2019 23:57:18 GMT
...Technically, for those interested, it's notated in.C major...
You mean because there are no sharps or flats marked? I think that might be reading too much into the 'score'. If it's the key of C major then the D minor progression would indeed be Dorian, but The Lick doesn't contain a sharpened 6th to differentiate it from a natural minor. If you strum a C maj to the D minor Lick it actually doesn't work too well at all, because the brain wants that final D to resolve to the C. In fact, any chord in the C maj progression works better with The Lick than C maj itself: Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7 (like it!), G7, Am7 (not so good  ), Bm7b5. It's versatile across loads of other chords of course, hence its once famed ubiquity.
If you strum a C7 rather than C major, this works somewhat better with the D minor Lick. I think this is a clue, because it now contains B flat, the Aeolian 6th in a D minor progression. So IMHO we may as well just assume that the key here is D minor. The standard jazzily satisfying chords over it would of course be Em7b5, Am7, Dm7.
Hearing The Lick these days is the musician's equivalent of being rickrolled. In the video below, the guitarist is doing his thing in front of the President of Finland. With nerves of steel he cheekily slips in a deliberately obvious and pedestrian Lick towards the end of his solo. The bassist and vocalist acknowledge this with we-got-the-joke smirks.
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Post by richard on Jul 10, 2019 11:05:14 GMT
Well, Martin, of course it depends how you want to sequence the riff, as notated, how you choose to harmonise it, how jazzy the chords you want to use, tempo...To my ears, it sounds fine ending on CM9 in C major, or FM6 in F major, or just based on a G pedal point - or D minor, as you suggest. But lots of possibilities.  Just a sidenote that occurs to me because of the notated musical example in the OP: Surprise is sometimes expressed that successful songwriters such as Lennon and McCartney, and Benny and Bjorn, and many others, can't or couldn't read music. But obviously that doesn't mean they don't have the musical knowledge; it's just that it's not an explicit, theoretical, textbook kind of musical knowledge. (I think George Martin, the Beatles' producer, once said that had Lennon and McCartney started getting bothered about 'proper' musical knowledge, that it would have hindered them. I don't agree, but it's an interesting point.) |
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), Bm7b5. It's versatile across loads of other chords of course, hence its once famed ubiquity.