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About the song linked below, is it right to say that its key is D Mixolidyan?

Verse: D Am C G D

Chorus: D Am D Am C G D

The reason I'm asking this is note D (and D chord) has for my ears a central role in the song and therefore it seems inappropriate to me move the focus to G saying that the key is G major. But I'm just looking for confirmation

Richard
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LeoAn
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4 Answers4

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Any mode or scale can be built on any tonic.

So, yes, you can have D mixolydian... or D flat mixolydian, C mixolydian, etc. etc.

If you have analyzed the song to have a D tonic and is mixolydian in mode, then you can say it's in D mixolydian. It's good that you analyzed for what is the tonic, then the mode. That's analyzing tonality. Simply seeing all the chords fit into a key signature of one sharp... therefore it's in G major, is not the way to analyze tonality.

Keep in mind lots of music changes mode and/or changes tonic. It common for music to shift back forth between modal and tonal harmony. Greensleeves in an example where the harmony is modal in some parts Em D Em and tonal in others B7 Em. Lots of music labelled "modal" does that kind of thing. The "modal" music of the Renaissance did that kind of thing. Even if the Clapton song had a A7 D in it, you might still call it "modal" if you felt there was enough modal harmony to justify it. There is no strict cut off for what to consider modal.

Rock music is so heavily flavored with the mixolydian mode, especially from the ♭VII chord, it's hardly worth applying that modal label to most rock harmony. Rock melody is often very pentatonic and so omits certain degrees which would otherwise make specific modes clear.

This Clapton song is interesting on both points. It does have a ♭VII chord, but additionally is uses a minor v rather than a major dominant. Melodically, in the verses, it is not omitting the seventh scale degree - which happens in a lot of rock music - instead it emphasizes the ♭^7 degree. However, in the chorus, at the conclusion (cadence) of the line "let your love rain down on me," the melody does skip over the seventh degree. If one were to put a A7 D move in this song, that would have been an obvious place to put it.

Most people would probably simply say it's in D. You could make a case for calling it mixolydian. I would understand why. If you called it D major, I would say "hold on, not like Mozart D major."

Michael Curtis
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    I think that you raise some good points here, and the final paragraph is a good summary. This question provides a good example of how rock and blues can be slippery under attempts at traditional analysis. –  Oct 05 '21 at 16:28
  • Would it be _wrong_ to say that the key of the tune is D or D major? If you had a song list with a column "key", wouldn't you write "D" in that column without thinking you've mislead someone? In practice, I've found it very difficult to explain why it's OK to say "in D", but not "the key is D major". Yes, there might be an academic distinction, but I haven't found the distinction to help in any practical situation. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Oct 06 '21 at 13:10
  • @piiperiReinstateMonica, why does that scenario matter? If one has a table of music of mixed tonalities and you add a _column_ called "key", that's a problem for the person who made the table. In what key is Ives' _The Cage_? "Key" is not a quality of all songs. – Michael Curtis Oct 06 '21 at 14:25
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    Who are you giving the explanation to? If someone doesn't understand the wide range of tonalities that can be found in music, and you just want them to do something like play along to _Let It Rain_, I would just give them the chords, and not talk about tonality... that doesn't change the actual tonality of a song. – Michael Curtis Oct 06 '21 at 14:29
  • @piiperiReinstateMonica - I did consider that concept, but threw it out on the grounds that I wouldn't call D minor 'Key D' either - and certainly not 'F major'... – Tim Oct 06 '21 at 15:11
  • I'm saying that languages change, and even if "key" historically used to imply a certain harmonical style with V chords etc., that's not de facto the case anymore, at least not universally. Nowadays key means something like just the tonic note and if the third above it is minor and major. Google search reflects this de-facto practical meaning. If you type "clapton let it rain key" in a Google search, it will tell you "The song is in the key of D major", and for a lot of intents and purposes, that's not wrong today. Languages change, and the meanings of words change. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Oct 06 '21 at 15:42
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    I'll learn my music theory not from Google search, thank you! – Michael Curtis Oct 06 '21 at 16:18
  • https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+ives+the+cage+key ...what do you get for that if you let Google try to think for yourself? – Michael Curtis Oct 06 '21 at 16:22
  • So do you mean that the Clapton song is not in any key at all, and it would be wrong to state any key for it, for any intent or purpose? In that case, I feel that the OP's question "is it right to say that its key is D Mixolidyan?" could have been addressed a bit more directly. IMO, "key" means just the main tonic and major/minor, and not allowing this modern approximation is fighting against windmills. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Oct 06 '21 at 16:49
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    @piiperiReinstateMonica -- you can say that the notion of key has become ambiguous, or that some music has an ambiguous relation to the notion of key: take your pick. I choose the latter. –  Oct 06 '21 at 17:47
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D Mixolydian is a mode of the parent key G major - both contain exactly the same 7 notes. The main difference, as you say, is that a piece in key G is recognised as that, due to the home note/chord being perceived as G. This has a home of D, thus will be in D Mixolydian - or the Mixolydian mode of G. It ought to have the key signature of one sharp (F♯).

Tim
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both progressions you mentioned can definitely be attributed to the Mixolydian mode:

D–Am–C–G–D or I–v–VII–IV–I

D–Am–D–Am–C–G–D or I–v–I–v–VII–IV–I

similar progressions can be found in The Doors' Hyacinth House

Serg Childed
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The song is not in mixolydian; it's D major.

The song makes use of "modal mixture", borrowing chords from D minor, which is how the C natural comes into play.

A song truly intended to be mixolydian would put much more emphasis on the sound qualities of that mode.

Aaron
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  • If there's 'modal mixture', why not go that extra step and just say 'modal' - Mixolydian modal? – Tim Oct 05 '21 at 16:22
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    I didn't down vote, but I think a bit more explanation that "modal mixture" is needed. What _other_ mode, specifically `D` major, is actually present? – Michael Curtis Oct 05 '21 at 16:23
  • @MichaelCurtis "Modal mixture" by definition means mixing major and minor. – Aaron Oct 05 '21 at 17:31
  • @Tim "Modal mixture" means major/minor mixture. When a piece is "modal", it means the music is designed to take advantage of the specific sound qualities of that mode. – Aaron Oct 05 '21 at 17:33
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    With no V, there doesn't appear to be much (if any) key D major in this piece. V is important in major keys. – Tim Oct 05 '21 at 17:41
  • @Aaron. I didn't ask for a definition of modal mixture. I asked where is the analysis that there is `D` major, or at least two different modes. – Michael Curtis Oct 05 '21 at 17:48
  • @MichaelCurtis Is that not explained in the post: "modal mixture — borrowing chords from D minor"? – Aaron Oct 05 '21 at 17:50
  • Borrowed into what _other_ mode? – Michael Curtis Oct 05 '21 at 17:52
  • @MichaelCurtis I specify D major in the first sentence. I'm not following what makes the post unclear. My apologies if I seem obtuse; can you give an example of the kind of explanation you're looking for? – Aaron Oct 05 '21 at 17:53
  • I don't mean what you wrote. I mean what is written _in the music_. How is D _major_ established with no dominant harmony? It's working very much in mixolydian... but that some how sets it up in D major? – Michael Curtis Oct 05 '21 at 17:55
  • @MichaelCurtis Got it. I'll see if I can explain what a piece that's truly "in mixolydian" sounds like. – Aaron Oct 05 '21 at 18:07
  • @Aaron - Might help - maybe a piece "in Mixolydian" would use VII-I more often than the piece in the OP? – Dekkadeci Oct 06 '21 at 12:26
  • @MichaelCurtis and Tim, do you mean that if a song only vamps a D major chord all the time, and there's definitely no V chord, then you a) wouldn't say that it's "in D major", or b) wouldn't say that it's "in the _KEY_ of D major"? – piiperi Reinstate Monica Oct 06 '21 at 13:00
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    @piiperiReinstateMonica, with a one chord vamp, assuming the song has a melody, I would probably look at the scale. For major/minor keys, at minimum I would look for a leading tone and the quality of the third. If the melody were, for example, pentatonic, no leading tone, and again the accompaniment is just a single tonic chord, I would say it isn't quite properly in a _key_. – Michael Curtis Oct 06 '21 at 14:15
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    @piiperiReinstateMonica - with no other chord *than* D, all through, a) you wouldn't get me to 'play' it, b) it's **in D** - or even *on D*. With no other sonic clues, that's all one could say. With an A/A7 it would be key D, with C/Am it would be D Mix - probably. By the way - @ only gets relayed to the 1st name after @. Picked this comment up 'by mistake'! – Tim Oct 06 '21 at 15:18