I am trying to analyse the following progression: Am C/G D/F# F E7 . If I use the SHR there is no Key which fits, using the compound chords. The tune is the Chet Atkins version of the House of the Rising Son. Any ideas how to analse this correctly?
If I remember correctly (it’s been years since I took Griff’s Theory course) Griff says in the preface to the course that for guitarists he specifically left out theory things like voice leading, four part harmony, cadences and other stuff that music students have to study in college because the vast majority of it isn’t of use to guitarists.
Most of the time.
Here is one time where knowing counterpoint instead of standard harmony would help in your analysis. (I’m going to vastly over simplify here because counterpoint is a two semester course of study where the first semester is a tightly controlled set of rules called species counterpoint and the second full semester is something called free counterpoint).
Take a quick look at the melody of the song “The House of the Rising Sun” (also recorded many times as the “Rising Sun Blues”).
It is a purely diatonic melody in the key of A minor. The first part (consisting of two phrases, leading to the climax in the next phrase) starts on the Tonic, the root of the key. It’s A in this case. The end of the second phrase ends on the Dominant, the fifth of the key. It’s E in this case. There are no sharps or flats and the melody is clearly, in my mind, in the key of A minor (I wouldn’t call it Aeolian mode because of the next part of my analysis, which is building the counterpoint).
The melody makes a diatonic ascent - A, B, C and D, with a little leap back to the tonic, then continues starting at the tonic an octave higher and makes a diatonic descent A, G, E, D and finishes on the Dominant, the E (yes the F was left out but that is most likely a melodic decision, not a harmonic one, as it is… well… the melody
So, normally in counterpoint, each “voice” has its own melody and you build counterpoint starting with either the bass line or the melody line, add the one that you didn’t do first, then fill in the middle voices.
The melody of the song is pretty fixed and HotRS in arpeggiated form, in a lot of cases, has a rising bass line (mimicking the melody). A, C, D F, which then falls, A, C, E. As the chords change.
But let’s look at a typical harmonization for the song, something like this:
Ok, all that melody and bass line stuff is still just standard harmony, so where did the F# and G# (in the D major and E chord) come from? It could come from the key of A melodic minor (which has both an F# and a G# leading to the A root). It’s a possibility. It’s also why I don’t believe the melody is Aeolian mode.
Anyway, on to the version you are analyzing.
Chet, using a standard country and bluegrass technique of descending bass line, goes the opposite direction from a typical harmonization and creates a true counterpoint. The bass line descends while the melody rises. He gives us A, G, F#, F and E in the bass.
So the way I’d think of this version is in counterpoint, rather than harmony. Although harmonically, it could be A melodic minor except the F# in the bass line wouldn’t normally fit in melodic minor (its F# when ascending and F natural when descending).
Anyway, I prolly don’t know what I’m talkin’ about anyhow.
Eric