Vale / in Memorium

[roar]

Brilliant writer. RIP.

[Pies4shaw]

Hilton must have sold millions of guitars with his opening riff on this landmark recording from 1964.

Am /C /D /F
Am /C /E7 /E7
Am /C /D /F
Am /E7 /Am /E7

Teach all of your children to play this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHbKdI26RkE

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jan/31/hilton-valentine-founding-guitarist-in-the-animals-dies-aged-77

A very short story: As a child, I was fascinated by this song - the chord progression is very powerful but seldom used in rock music (Cream later used a modified fragment of it in Tales of Brave Ulysses and, most famously, in the verse of White Room). To me, the Animals' 1964 recording was like a bridge between the "old" music of The Beatles and the "new" music of the Spencer Davis Group. I got my mother to buy me the sheet music. In those days, "official" sheet music was a weird approximation of the actual recording (I remember being tragically disappointed when I was given the sheet music for American Pie a little later and rushed to the piano with it, only to find that it didn't set out a single bit of Paul Griffin's famous piano accompaniment - not even in the two slow verses where there is only piano). This one did contain the arpeggiation for the introduction but, presumably because only about 3 people in the world with a voice like Eric Burdon could sing it in its original key and because it was easier (slightly) to play neatly on the piano in D rather than A, it was transposed to D minor. Of course, the sheet music didn't set out Alan Price's quite brilliant organ solo (or his little improvisations between the verses and at the end), either. All in all, it was a reasonably ordinary product for 20 cents. Wanting to play this song did, though, teach me to use chord charts (which do not exist in classical piano music, as it is notated) - I spent a long time looking at the very sketchy bit of piano that was on the sheet and trying to work out what relationship it bore to the "guitar" markings above the stave - and what either of them had to do with the music on the record. Finally, the penny dropped and I realised that it wasn't necessary to buy the "sheet" for a song - you could just listen to it and (more or less) hear what was being played.

And so, now, more than 50 years later, I hear Hilton's magical opening notes and feel the entire world of popular music opening up because of the link between his sounds and the stupid sheet music.

Of course, he also played on many other Animals hits, including "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "It's My Life", "Inside Looking Out" and "We've Gotta Get Outta This Place" (I was reasonably certain Eric was singing that one about the suburb where I grew up - but that's another story). Here's one of those with Hilton playing another famous riff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7RTUEZMyg

And here's "Don't Bring Me Down", with Hilton having moved to a Telecaster and a fuzzbox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FZU4JVOmro

Tasteful, simple and perfect. There's a musical epitaph.

[stui magpie]

I'm with you on the sheet music. As a kid with no music stores in 50km's I resorted to listening to songs multiple times and writing my own then improvising once I had the basics nailed.

[Tannin]

Yes indeed. It's a progression which would be right at home in a different genre - imagine it inFiddler on the Roof or Oliver - but unusual in a rock context. Employing an out-of-key D major chord in song based on A minor is common, but that E major is quite odd.

Even odder, it was not a new song, with fancy new rule-breaking, convention-smashing changes to suit the rebellious mood of the 1960s, but a traditional tune passed on from one player to another for so long that no-one knows who actually wrote it.

[Pies4shaw]

^ In the progression, it's actually the F that's unusual. The Am/D is an old jazz progression (Gershwin messed with it to create "Summertime", for example, although he went a little further and used Am6 to Am+7, effectively creating a very ambiguous tonality for the first lines of each verse) and could be heard as the central motif of, eg, "She's Not There" by The Zombies. If you don't have the F and go, instead, back to the Am, you basically have Josh White's old version. That starts to sound much more like "St James Infirmary". Woody Guthrie recorded a version which, I assume, was adapted from one of the English-seeded traditions (maybe from Appalachia, I don't know), because he basically sings it all over the one chord, much in the way that some of the great ballads like "Matty Groves" were sung (that is, with a focus on a melody that necessarily implies chords but was originally unaccompanied).

Anyway, Hilton always said he just got the progression from Bob's recording (and Bob certainly did use the same chords, albeit with a walking bass).

Bob got that progression from Dave van Ronk. Van Ronk said he got it from Hally Wood's version and changed the chords (introducing the progression the Animals used, albeit with the walking bass that you hear in the two Cream songs and also - and I don't know why I didn't mention this one in the same context, "For Your Love" - rather than the tonic-bass progression the Animals use). Hally Wood's version, like Josh White's goes to the E, rather than the F, so it has a more "traditional" sound. So, it may be that Dave van Ronk is actually the source of the "modern" progression used in House of the Rising Sun.

A brief listen to Bob's version, though, shows why the greatness in the Animals' recording lies, first in Hilton Valentine's arpeggiation of the chords (I put aside for present purposes the added advantage of having Eric Burdon, instead of Bob, singing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP_caKDfoyU

[PyreneesPie]

Really interesting stuff. "The House of the Rising Sun" opening riff is practically immortal.

[Pies4shaw]

^ Sure is. He starts playing it here, on his acoustic guitar, in a live, solo performance almost 50 years later - but how long does it take to know what song it is? It takes the drunk audience in the video about 4 seconds (literally): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeEyyqDICs8

A thoughtful tribute by the Washington Post can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/the-animals-guitarist-hilton-valentine-dies-at-77/2021/01/31/49f67806-632d-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html

[Tannin]

Interesting comments which I enjoyed, but as to this -

[watt price tully]

Sad indeed. I grew up not playing but listening to “The House of the Rising Sun” . Their version of that famous song reminds me of my childhood

[Pies4shaw]

No, Tannin. E (E7) is the regular dominant (dominant 7th) of A minor. You would only use Em as the "dominant" of Am (or Em7, if you'd rather) if you were playing a minor blues (eg, Ball and Chain, Strange Brew etc) or some other modal form. E7 is not a "major 7th" - the Emaj7 would be comprised of E, G#, B and D# - and would be peculiar as a chord in this key (although you could get away with it with the right voicing, because it contains the flattened fifth - D#/E flat of the A blues scale - I expect you'd find examples of that in, eg, Chicago's music). As for which of the D and F chords is out of place, that's a matter of perspective, I suppose. The D (major) turns up as the diatonic 4th triad formed from the "melodic" minor scale ascending, whereas the F (major) turns up as the diatonic triad formed from the "natural" minor scale. In the melodic minor, the triad would be F#dim, so the F is effectively a modulation, in this particular sequence. In music that uses the diatonic "natural" minor chords, the D (major) is much rarer - so, eg, "All Along the Watchtower" or the last section of "Stairway to Heaven" (Am/G/F). On that, though, the move from the "natural" to "melodic" form is intrinsic to the tonal change in Stairway to Heaven (because that is the only part of the song where the use of an F# is actually unimaginable - compare with the rest of the piece where the D major chord (and various suspensions of the D major, such as the ones that follow the Amin7 in the "Oooh, it makes me wonder" motif) is ubiquitous. I suppose you could say that the "melodic" 4th chord (D major) is out of place in HOTRS - but when improvising over the structure, one plainly has to move from a mode using the F# to a mode using the F when moving from the D chord to the F chord. It's that change that creates the harmonic tension. The melody of the song maintains that tonal ambiguity neatly because it does not use either F or F# at all.

The rest of this we could talk about elsewhere.

And so back to the thread:

[Tannin]

I agree with most of that. E is indeed the dominant of A minor, but it is E minor or Em7. The key point here is that the G# in E major (or E7) is out of key. That is why the chord sticks out - the ear is not expecting a note so obviously out of key.

You are correct to say that 'E7 is not a "major 7th"' but incorrect to imagine that I said it was. What said was that we were replacing dominant 7th with a major 7th, which is correct but (on re-reading) ambiguous. I'm writing intervals but you are reading chords. Let's rephrase it for clarity: in playing the E major chord (or E7, it makes no difference) we are replacing the dominant (or minor) 7th interval of the A minor key (A-G) with the major 7th (A-G#) interval and this, of course, is the note which sticks out like dogs' balls. Compare what happens to the song if you replace the E major with an E powerchord (which, having no 3rd, makes no claim to being major or minor, it's all Es and Bs). It flows better - but lacks flavour. Now throw a D into that powerchord (on a guitar you are playing E E B D B E). That works better - but it's leading us in a different musical direction.

We don't need to complicate things here by considering alternative forms of the minor scale: none of them fit nearly as well as the natural minor does. The entire song is in A natural minor other than those two chords borrowed from A major. Mucking about with alternative minors to make the E major fit doesn't wash: A harmonic minor seems sensible at first, but results in a C augmented, which is hopeless. And so on.

Time to rush: I'm cooking my nearly-favourite dish (goulash) and it needs atrtention.

[stui magpie]

^

Smokey paprika?

[Pies4shaw]

The resolution from E aug to A minor is common in minor tonality (for reasons that are best left wholly unexplored, the example that comes immediately to mind is Mario Lanza singing "Guardian Angels" at the final phrase, "And shows me paradise" - at the end of every prior verse you will hear the same augmented chord resolve to the dominant 7th). As, for that matter, is the third of the chords created by using the G# (the G#dim or G#dim7, as you prefer). The raised seventh note is intrinsic to the harmony of the minor key. There is nothing at all unusual about it. The raised seventh is always written as an accidental - but it is foundational to the harmony. That's, of course, why the A harmonic minor scale is called "harmonic" - you use it to build the chords. When you do, you get E major (or E7 if you add the "d"). The E major is the dominant chord of the A minor key.

Try this three bar sequence:

Am/E (that is, E major, not E minor)/Am. That is the basic building block of minor harmony. It is found everywhere. Think, say, the opening bars of "Fur Elise" or the opening bars of Jethro Tull's "Bouree". The E major chord (or E dominant 7th) is the foundational harmony that creates the A minor key. The G# in that chord isn't "out of key". It establishes the key. If, in fact, you don't use the G#, you are actually creating chords all in the key of C major - and the proper construction of what you are doing playing only the chords of the "natural" minor scale and using the notes of the "natural" minor scale in A minor is that you are playing in the Aeolian mode of C Major. I don't know how it would be possible to be clearer about this.

Em7 is not a "dominant 7th". It is a 7th - of sorts - made on the dominant note of A minor and starting with a minor interval. But "dominant 7th" always means the major triad with the added seventh - in the interval structure of major third (here E to G#), minor third, (here G# to B), minor third (here B to D).

I suppose I should add that the use of the D major chord also performs an oblique harmonic function of separating the A minor key from C major. (I say "oblique" because, of course, the D major chord is not formed from the "harmonic" A minor - it's actually formed from the ascending form of the A melodic minor scale and the following F chord is formed from either the descending form of the "melodic" minor scale or the "natural" minor scale, as you prefer to see it.) Once the D major sounds in that sequence, you could (in theory) modulate into G major (thereby implying that you were previously in C major and that the D is the dominant chord of a change of key into G major) or resolve into the A minor key. What you most definitely cannot do is try to use a C major key harmonic structure after that D (without special harmonic treatment) - because the F# is so remote from the C major scale. Of course, the F# is also very remote from the the notes of the next F major chord - that's why I hear that chord change as very powerful.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chick-corea-obit-1127283/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhQTjgoTdU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_D6Kve1SM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zir6HqjDMo

[watt price tully]

Returning to forever. Vale indeed.