Okay, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and expose my ignorance. My formal musical education lasted only a few years as a kid, when I learned to play piano. Since then it’s all been very informal. As such, I’m confused by or simply don’t understand some of the terms being used here by our more knowledgable posters.
I’d like to catch up, basically.
What are chromatic passing tones? The rest of those terms I understand fine, but I’m not sure about this one exactly.
I hear a riff comprised of ADACA. I thought A was the root note, the others are 4 and 3 steps away from the root, therefore I-III-IV. What have I got wrong there?
pulykamell explains it more here: “It’s not a i-iv-(iii)-i progression. You would never play it as em-am-em-gm-em. If you want to play all chord tones, you’d play it as E-A-E-G-A. But I would still consider that riff all over the I as it is usually played.”
He’s just saying that the chord itself isn’t changing, simply the notes over the chord. Because if it were an actual chord progression, as opposed to a riff over a particular chord, you’d have a lot of other notes in there that you didn’t want. Like if E is the root as in his example, and you went to the iv, you’d be playing all the notes in the Am chord (A-C-E). It’s especially obvious that this is wrong by the time you get to the Gm chord, which includes a Bb (along with a G and D), which isn’t even in the key of E minor. Not that that makes it wrong, but it sure wouldn’t sound right to me.
That the roman numeral notation in this context means chords rather than notes. Your “I-III-IV” would mean major chords (because you use upper case), in this case A major, C major (the major chord rooted on the third note of the A minor scale, which I would guess you are using) and D major. But the “Mannish Boy” riff does not really suggest those chords, or any particular chord sequence. It’s just a riff over the I chord.
Probably an example or two is the easiest way – you know them, I guarantee, but just not by that name.
Passing tone:
Say you’re playing a BB King kind of jazzier-bluesy thing on a solo on an A-blues, and to get to the G (the minor 7th of A7) you “pass through” the G#. It would sound pretty odd if you held onto that G# in this situation, but as long as you’re going on your way to a note that’s “inside” the A7 chord (the G), nobody really notices so much that you’re using an “outside” note, since it’s only played in passing.
Chromatic:
Here just means an “outside” note – one that doesn’t fit into the original scale or chord you’re on (here, an A7 or an A blues).
You can have passing chords as well – if you listen to any gospel piano, or Nashville country piano from the past 40 years (or more) you’ll hear a lot of chords which would be a bastard to notate correctly with roman numerals, but which make sense when considered “on their way” to some other more stable chord. I can’t think of a great example away from the keyboard, but you maybe get the idea a little bit.
One that comes to mind is from the blues: The part that goes V-IV often has a bV thrown in there a half beat before hitting the IV. So, in E, your last four bars are usually B7-A7-E7-E7. You can sneak in a Bb7 in there on the way down to the A7 as a passing chord. Also, there’s a common “turnaround” on the final E7 that goes A7->B7 with a A#7/Bb7 in between there.
I was originally in pulykamell’s camp (a riff on the I), but I think the N.C. is more accurate. It’s not a IV7 either.
Here’s the thing…the bass defines the chord. And the only way this sounds “right” is if the bass player plays the riff. Neither all A notes on the bottom (I only) nor A D D D A (I IV I) work. God forbid the bass plays a major 3rd in there. Yeah, you could hit a major 3rd note in an upper register, but it’d have to be as a passing/chromatic :D.
For the measures in between the riff, it’s a I7 chord. Not i. MAJOR. Gitbox players, this’ll separate the men from the boys. On a solo, think IV7 on the riff, I7 in between, and you’ll blow those minor pentatonic clowns of of the water.
I think Muddy & company were continuing to invent new ways to dance in between major&minor / I&IV and came up with something original.
Honestly, I can go either way on that. I or N.C. Even though the bass typically moves on that riff (although I think it sounds fine if the bass doesn’t), I don’t necessarily feel the harmony moving off the I. But I can be convinced either way–spelling out harmonies can get quite subjective; it’s not a neat science. N.C. is fine.
See puly? This is why part of me is okay with not learning to read music - the fact that the notation fails to capture the essence of the technique or feel is so frustrating.
The sequence in the OP is a *riff *- it is not a chord progression; riffs and progressions are two very different things. Riffs use single strings or partial-chord, multi-string clusters to…well, rock. If you were to try using a classical term for riff, leitmotif (wiki link) would be far better. In the case of the Mannish Boy riff, you are staying in tonic/main key chord the entire time, riffing on top of it. Naming with Roman numerals makes no sense.
Presumably “ri” is a mistyping of “re”. I believe the “do-FA-re-do thing” is exactly the same thing as the riff mentioned by the OP, except that, in place of the third note of the OP riff, the “fa” is held for an extra beat.
Thank you. The attempts to number the riff as a chord progression was really bugging me (plus they didn’t even get the numbers right. If you play it as chords, it’s I-IV-III not I-III-IV). As much as the riff has any name at all, it’s “the Mannish Boy riff.”
Bo, a chromatic passing tone really just refers to walking through the half-steps between tones on the scale. The tones aren’t typically played alone, but played on the way to another tone.
You know that standard 12 bar blues flourish when the progression ends on that little chromatic , three note walkup back to the tonic (like if you’re playng in E and you end with D-D#-E…“da-na-na”)? That’s an example.
I’m fine with musicians not reading music, too. I think it’s a useful skill, but I think it’s not as important as a lot of people think it is, especially in popular forms of music.
But that I/N.C. business really isn’t so much a notation problem as it is a theory problem. In standard sheet music, you wouldn’t see any sort of roman numeral markings or that kind of harmonic analysis. That’s just us geeking out here.
But I agree–it’s just a riff, played over whatever chord it’s played over. It’s usually the I, as in Mannish Boy, but you can easily set it in a 12-bar blues format and transpose it up a fourth or fifth and play the stops over the IV and V chords, too.
Do Re Mi. Mi is the major third up from Do. Re is the Major second up from Do, and Ri is an augmented second. Ma is the same enharmonic interval from Do as Ri, but it’s a minor third.
Gah. I mean (b)III* instead of (iii). And, while the actual song may not be analyzed as a minor key, that riff is borrowing from the minor in the melody–it’s why you can play a bIII chord. And I’ve definitely heard both the minor and major four chord, Even if the major IV is more common, I would still consider it to be an alteration, just like major blues is itself an alteration of the originally minor blues. (A blues scale is just a minor pentatonic scale with an optional added #4, after all.) When you play a blues riff, you are almost always borrowing from the minor, if you analyze the melody alone.
I’m of course assuming you mean A-D-A-C-A instead of E-A-E-G-A, using the OP’s key.
*The (b) is in parentheses not because it’s optional, but because it’s assumed when analyzing a minor key, but not a major one. I always found that weird, but whatever.
ETA: In actual analysis (and not just writing the chord on top for a musician), I always consider N.C. to be a cop out. If it’s using western tonality, and even sometimes when it isn’t, it’s possible to analyze.
