Note: this post of part of my “Chord Progression of the Week” series. A new entry will be released every Saturday.
Update, Nov 30 2023: the CPOTW series is currently on hold, as the time commitment required to keep it up does not fit nicely into my current set of obligations. The series will continue once this is no longer the case. Thank you for your patience; the wait will be worth it!
Introduction
This week I’ve been drawn to a very particular harmonic color: that of the chromatic mediant in a Lydian flavor, instantiated below as E Lydian following Db major. This is a sound I’ve enjoyed using for so long that I can’t remember when I discovered it. I have a memory of being in high school, around the time when I first began to diminish my study of written scores in favor of trying to make my own music, and having a stubborn tendency towards B major after playing something involving an Ab major chord, particularly B major patterns that included the note F (enharm. E#, the Lydian 4th of B) to conjure that special, rich sonority of the major 6th against the root becoming the raised 4th against a bass note a third up from the root. It was something that got stuck in my fingers, probably after chancing upon it one day and enjoying its color, and consequently got stuck in my ears as well, to the point where I’d have to deliberately avoid using it if I wanted to push for new ideas beyond habit.
The chord progression below pays homage to this wonderful and under-used sound.
The Chords
The progression is:
Db major 7 -> E major 6 (#4) -> F minor -> Ab major 7
A few comments before the recordings:
First, when writing out an n-chord loop, I find it intuitive to put the tonic chord at the end, so that the chords broadly read: unresolved -> resolved. However, with the chords above I’ve deliberately avoided this preference: I hear Db as the tonic chord (although one could certainly view Ab as the tonic chord, and view initial Db as the progression opening on a IV chord), and yet I’ve written it first. The purpose of this comes from a technique I really enjoy using: that of shifting the emphases in a sequence of harmonies to encourage myself to experiment with them more freshly. I find that this helps me when I begin to feel stuck, too comfortable, or like I’m running out of ideas.
Second, transforming the chromatic mediant of E major (with respect to Db) into E Lydian makes it less chromatic: the E major scale has an A natural as its 4th degree, which is foreign to Db major; A#, however, is enharmonic to Bb, which is the warm 6th degree of Db major.
Third (which will be shown in the score below), what I’ve described as “E major 6 (#4)” is a standard E major 6, but with an A# instead of a B (hence, [E G# A# C#] instead of the usual [E G# B C#]). I chose a 6th chord because I felt that it fit the surroundings well, but substituting the 5 for the #4 also sounds good in major 7th chords and any tertiary consonant chords. (There may be a better name for [E G# A# C#] than what I’ve called it. “E major 6 b5” feels wrong as it hides the Lydian intention of the chord.)
Fourth, I could be more correct with respect to Db major by calling E “Fb”, but I didn’t feel that this was necessary.
Here are some voicings, written out and recorded:
Applications
I’ve enjoyed improvising over this progression both with focused single-note lines and with chordal textures. An example of each follows:
1: Short melodic rhapsody with chords filling gaps in the lines.
2: The longest recording so far: extended exploration of some sonorities orbiting the idea discussed in the introduction.
Outro
That’s all I have for the third installment of Chord Progression of the Week. I hope something here has inspired you to explore some new musical ideas.
Materials
I generate my score pdfs with Lilypond, a program that compiles a plaintext encoding of music notation to a pdf which conforms automatically to notational standards and best-practices. I find this a more efficient way to work than using more standard graphical programs such as Musescore.
The Lilypond files (.ly), pdf files (in case they did not render properly), and audio files (.wav) are here:
Chords:
Imrov 1:
Imrov 2:
As the author of all the files in the lists above, I declare them to be licensed under CC BY 2.0. Copy and modify them freely with the requirement of attribution.
Banner image: “14th Street Theatre” by Perkins Harnly is in the public domain (CC 0).
