africa progressions
TRANSCRIPT
8/4/2019 Africa Progressions
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Chord Progressions in "Africa", Stealing Musical Ideas andsomeother BS:I kinda did a short study of a "Africa" by TOTO a few months back with some of my students. Totallyforgot about it until Slain performed a kickass acoustic rendition of it this Sunday. This song has geniuswritten all over it. So thought i'd share what my students n I learnt and shed some light on this song and
probably show u how analyzing a song can be helpful.
Now, to understand this you need to know a bit about music theory and chord progressions. For those ofyou who are not familiar with chord progressions i'll try to explain a bit of it.
Chord progression, as the name implies, is a sequence of chords which are in a particular key. Youwud've heard musical jargon like "Beethoven's 3rd in C minor" or "Let it be" by the Beatles in C major.What they are referring to, is the key of the song/piece. Each key has a set of chords which are derivedfrom the major scale.
Ex: The chord progresson of the first four bars of "Let it be" is C major-Gmajor-A minor-F major. Now allthese chords belong to the C major progression or are in the KEY of C major.
Hopefully this gives you a basic idea about chord progressions. I'll post a more detailed blog on it if youguys are really interested.
Ok now to Africa ! This song was written by the keyboardist David Paich & the drummer, the late JeffPorcaro.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_1t8kK6wA
The song was written in 3 Keys : E major, B major & A major
lets look at the chords in these 3 keys.. you'll need to keep referring to the table below.I II III IV V VI VII
E major key: Emaj F#min G#min Amaj Bmaj C#min D#dim (diminished)B major key: Bmaj C#min D#min Emaj F#maj G#min A#dimA major key: Amaj Bmin C#min Dmaj Emaj F#min G#dim
The chords in Africa are made up only these chords (almost all - dimished is never used though)
Lets look at it section by section:
Intro : |Amaj | G#min | C#min |
Which is in the key of E maj. This is also the catchy main "motif" of the song.
Verse : | Bmaj | D#min | G#min | F#maj || Emaj | F#maj | G#min | Amaj|G#min| C#min|----> n we're back to main motif.
The verse is in B major , a completely different key. But Paich just din't pick up the key at random. See
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how he uses C#min, which a common chord in the E major and B major key (the VI of E major & II of Bminor) to bring about a smooth change in keys.
This also can be heard in the last bar of every verse line where there is jump to the main motif of the songas the word ends. Here he connects the two keys using G#min (another common chord in the E & Bmajor key).
This concept is known as PIVOTING around a common chord or PIVOT CHORD MODULATION and isused extensively by song writers and composers. Helps in creating a flowing key change.
Chorus: | F#min | Dmaj | A maj | E maj |
The chorus is in the key of A major. To get to the this key the C#min chord (the last line of the verse endswith the main motif) is used, which is a common chord in Emajor & A major to again bring about a smoothkey change.
Last line of the chorus leading back into main motif :| F#min | Dmaj | Amaj | C#min | Emaj | F#min | G#min | Amaj | G#min | C#min|
|------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------| last chorus line |key change to E using Amaj chord as pivot| n back to main motif|
Lets look the keys themselves. E major, B major & A major... no, these key weren't picked up randomly !
B major and A major are the IV & V chords of the E major scale !!
Paich probably decided to take the IV & V of the Emajor key after writing that catchy intro, n make them
the keys for the verse and chorus. just brilliant !!
We now have a basic idea of how Africa was composed. Some of these chords are extended to give a bitof flavour and feel. When combined with the extremely groovy rhythmic drum pattern of Jeff Porcaro, theend result is simply brilliant. In essence, this song has everything that a good song should have; itstechnically awesome, musically brilliant n most importantly, its so freakin catchy !!
Ok.. So how does this help you??Here's how you can use the same procedure to write a song of your own.
1) Write a catchy motif.2) Use the IV & V chords as the key changes for verse and chorus.3) Use pivot/common chord to have smooth transitions between key changes.So use the same procedure in a different key. Extend chords add sevenths, ninths, thirteens, suspendthem, invert them etc. Then work on the rhythm itself. Do it bossa nova style, jazz, country, fusion, pop,rock, metal and what-not. There are no limits.
As Picasso stated "a good artist copies, a great one steals". The Beatles happily and proudly admitted tostealing ideas. You can find a lot of Beatles ideas in Radiohead songs.
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