When transcribing music, we can all get hung up on the mechanics, the harmonic implications of a chord or melody line and while that's deeply nerdy fun, it can sometimes blind us to the emotional uses and qualities of certain harmonic devices.
I recently transcribed Let's Dance by David Bowie and it was in response to a rather spicy debate about it's key and the use of a G natural in the bass... See? DEEPLY nerdy.
If you don't want to wade through my analysis and just want the hightlights, click here for the TL;DR 👍🏽
The crux of the discussion was the presence of the G Natural in the opening rundown line in the bass and how, if the passage really was in the Key of B♭m, the G clashes and shouldn't be there...
This is mechanically true: It doesn't belong in B♭m (B♭-C-D♭-E♭-F-G♭-A♭).
In order to explain it's presence, people were getting deep into the weeds of Chord Theory and Modal Mixture and while these are very handy th0ught processes and tools they were massively overthinking the issue. The general concensus was that it was in B♭ Dorian and while there are definitely reasons to think this, it's not right.
Let's investigate and dig a little deeper and see what's really going on...
The song starts with a chord being built one note at a time until it is a fully formed E♭7 chord.
The next passage (which is also the Chorus and Solo riff) is, as we know, in B♭ minor and B♭ minor DOESN'T have an Eb Major chord in it.
So where does this E♭7 chord come from?
If we look deeper into the song; when we get to the Verses we modulate to A♭ Major which DOES have an E♭ Major chord in it, the 5 chord. Not only that but this E♭7 building motion occurs at the tail end of the Verses as they transition into the Choruses.
From this we can say that the 4 bars of the Intro that build the E♭7 chord are outlining the 5 chord of A♭ Major because it occurs in the Verses and we know the Verses are in A♭ Major...
Still with me? This is the kind of thought process I go through when I transcribe!
The first chord of the B♭m passage is widely accepted to be a B♭sus4 chord (though there was a lot of heated debate about this...). This will become important shortly when I move from theory to psychology...
The E♭7 chord, being the 5 chord of A♭ Major, really wants to resolve back down to A♭ Major and provide that nice, warm and fuzzy, Perfect/Authentic Cadence.
However, in this instance, the movement is NOT home to A♭ Major but to B♭sus4 which is odd...
Let's look at this movement.
If we stayed in A♭ Major, E♭7 to B♭m would be a 5-2m movement but we don't stay in A♭ Major...
In moving from A♭ Major to B♭ minor as a Key center, the E♭7 chord no longer has a place as a whole unit; it's root note, E♭, is the 4th note of the B♭ minor Scale but the chord on top of it in B♭ minor is E♭ minor not Major.
*** Quick refresher of the Chords of the Major and minor Scales:
The chord of E♭7 has a little clue in it's construction that helps us pivot into a B♭ minor tonality. The 7th note, the leading tone of the chord is D♭ which is, coincidentally, the minor 3rd of B♭minor.
So when we move from E♭7 to B♭m we are moving a few things into place that set up the B♭ minor-ness of the passage.
E♭ to B♭ is a new 4-1 movement establishing B♭ as our new root tonal center and the leading tone, D♭ in the E♭7 chord, is the minor 3rd of B♭m which colours in that minor tonality going forward.
All of which brings us to the suspended chord...
For those who don't know, a Suspended chord takes out the 3rd note and substitutes either a 2nd or a 4th...
So, Csus2 would be C-D-G (1-2-5); Csus4 would be C-F-G (1-4-5). As you can see, these chords have no 3rd note and it's the 3rd note that colours a chord as either Major or minor.
These chords are kind of unstable, open and ambiguous and because they're neither Major or minor, they're open to be led astray somewhat.
Generally, a sus4 chord wants to resolve nicely DOWN to the Major 3rd and settle. If it resolves down to a minor chord, the suspended 4th note moving down to the minor 3rd note, then it's more jarring, unsettling and dramatic, more angular and feels like a pivot.
A sus2 chord likes to resolve UP to a minor 3rd and that feels and sounds more satisfying but it too, can resolve to a Major and have a different effect.
That's a great question. Why not just go straight into the B♭m chord?
Well, and this is just my take, because of the open and uncoloured feel of the sus chords, they lend themselves to being used to set moods and expectations and that's what's happening here.
The song's use of the sus4 to minor chord instead of the Major does a few things:
It sets up a "Major" expectation.
We've just come off the back of a dramatic Major 7 chord so emotionally we're in a "Major mood". The sus4 chord, as we've seen, wants to resolve back down to the Major 3rd so we naturally expect it to move to A♭ Major; however, inside the E♭7 chord, we've already subconsciously primed the pump with the 7th, the D♭ which is the minor 3rd of B♭m...
The openness of the chord itself and the imagary it conjurs.
This is where we move into the psychology of music and chords: the sus4 happens on the lyric, "Let's Dance..." and it's openness, it's lack of Major or minor tonality, functions as a literal open invitation to the Object of the song to dance with the narrator of the song.
The chord is stabbed, not held or strummed, so it's more space than sound across the first 2 bars of the passage, heightening the openness and ambiguity. And this brings us to the G♮ that started it all...
This note is what started the whole debate and deep dive about this song.
In the very first bar of the passage, the bass walks down B♭-A♭-G-F and understandably, people see the G♮ and think it clashes or must be a mistake or it means that the passage ISN'T in B♭ minor after all and is in fact in B♭ Dorian (B♭-C-D♭-E♭-F-G-A♭)...
Well, they're half right... There are Dorian vibes here.
The bass is outlining a B♭ Dorian line in the walk down but, and this is important, it's only doing this because, in the sus4 chord, there's no explicit Major or minor tonality so there's space to switch it up for colour...
What do I mean by that?
Well, we're back to imagery. The openness of the sus4 chord and the lyric over it is an invitation to come and join the song's narrator in a dance and the walk down is suggestive of the invitee taking his hand and descending to the dance floor...
The walk down of B♭-A♭-G-F is more tonally "delicate" than the more diatonically accurate walk down of B♭-A♭-G♭-F which has a more "clompy", even aggressive, conclusion with the G♭ to F step... the semitone step in the MIDDLE of the walkdown creates a kind illusion of uncertainty, of hesitation on the way down, whereas putting it at the end suggests grudgingly stomping onto the dancefloor to do something they don't really want to do...
It's all subtle stuff and you may think I'm talking out my butt here but this is how I read it and feel it.
So, the song starts in A♭ Major, on the 5th degree of the Scale, building up to an E♭7 chord. This sets up the exptaction of a "return to home" in the form of an A♭ Major chord but we pivot to a B♭ tonality instead.
The root note E♭ of the E♭7 has changed from being the 5th degree of A♭ Major to the 4th degree of the new Key center, B♭. This 4-1 movement is more abrupt and "step-like" than a Perfect/Authentic 5-1 Cadence.
The Leading note, the 7th of the E♭7 chord is D♭ which is also the minor 3rd of B♭m which serves to subtly prime us to accept the eventual switch to B♭ minor...
We land on a B♭sus4 chord which is neither Major nor minor but, because it's a sus4 chord, we unconsciously expect it to resolve to a Major chord and because we've just had the E♭7 we're expecting it to resolve to A♭ Major, even though we haven't quite processed the modulation from A♭ Major to B♭ vibes.
The sus4 chord isn't sustained in any meaningful way which leaves a massive amount of space. It's functioning to establish B♭ as the Key center but it's not declaring Major of minor.
This openness leaves room for the bass to deploy a Dorian flavoured walk down, B♭-A♭-G-F which works in the context of B♭ and the fact that Dorian has a minor vibe too with the flattened 3rd, D♭ which is unconsciously carried over from the E♭7 chord...
We know that this passage of the music is definitely in B♭ minor by looking at the chords further in. We have a clear and definite G♭ Major chord which is the flat 6th chord of the Key. The presence of the A♭ Major chord is implied as the bass passes through A♭ a few times as it moves between B♭ and G♭.
Then we move on to the psychology...
The B♭sus4 chord is ambiguous, open and inviting a pleasant and comforting resolution (4th down to Major 3rd most of the time) but here it's going to pivot to the minor instead.
The sus4 chord happens on the lyrics, "Let's dance...". It's working as an invitation from the singer of the song to the other person in the song. It has no center of it's own but desperately NEEDS to resolve to a safe "yes".
Underneath this chord, the bass is playing that Dorian walk down with the G♮ and this is also adding to the imagery: it suggest someone stepping down to the dancefloor to join the singer but hesitating halfway down, perhaps worried about what will happen if they say yes... It's a more subtly and evocative line than putting the semitone interval at the end where it belongs in the Key.
And then the Chorus lyrics take on a certain melancholy... "Dance the blues"... "Sway through the crowd to an empty place"...
These are lyrics about offering someone a way out, freeing someone from their trapped life, even if just for the momentary distraction that a simple dance can provide and they all happen inside the minor Key framework so fit the darker tone of the harmony.
Meanwhile, the Verses are more open and optimistic, "And if you say run, I'll run with you; and if you say hide, we'll hide...". They're in A♭ Major, a whole step down (more grounded) and brighter, a vision of a future where the two dancers are together and free agains the world...
There's a lot going on in this track, harmonically, mechanically and psychoacoustically. I'm not sure they thought this clearly and deeply about it all when they wrote it, but at an unconscious level I've no doubt that they "knew" this stuff because they felt it.
Anyway, that's my hot take... 👍🏽 Click the button below to get your copy of the transcription and enjoy.
