Hey there folks,
Every once in a while a student asks to learn a song from my childhood. This is a rarity that usually evokes a bunch of memories as I learn more about the background sounds of my youth.
One of my younger students asked to learn Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street. She's been wanting voice lessons, but also has some experience with piano. When people ask me for voice lessons I almost always include some piano lessons. I think it's an important tool to give a tactile experience to learning to sing.
I was surprised to find that it's actually got some clever melodic figures in it. It's rooted in a C major scale, but uses two accidentals throughout. Eb and Bb. This is a great opportunity to introduce the black keys on the piano to children.
It's basically a C blues. The I, IV and V chords C, F and G are the primary harmonies.
One of the things I appreciated about this song is that the melody feels like it "arrives" on the second measure with the F chord. The half note (long tone) completes the phrase (Sunny Day). As I worked through the song I noticed that I kept thinking of the melody from the perspective of F instead of C. When I did this, the accidentals made a different kind of sense.
Bare with me as we take a turn down this road of Modes.
Modes are a different perspective of a scale. Below is a F major scale. But if we start that same set of notes from G to G, we get a mode. There are as many modes of a scale as there are notes in the scale.
F G A Bb C D E F ionian (Major Scale)
G A Bb C D E F G dorian
A Bb C D E F G A phrygian
Bb C D E F G A Bb lydian
C D E F G A Bb C mixolydian
D E F G A Bb C D aeolian (Minor Scale)
E F G A Bb C D E locrian
F G A Bb C D E F ionian (Major Scale)
There are 3 modes that are closest related to the major scale. The Ionian is the fancy word for the major scale. If we look at the lydian mode (Bb to Bb) it looks a lot like a Bb major scale, except the 4th note is a half step sharp. We describe the lydian mode as a major scale with a #4. The mixolydian scale (C to C) is a major scale with a b7.
We can apply this several ways, but this melody is using different modes all rooted from F. Initially it seems as though the entire thing is F major.
F G A Bb C D E F
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Until measure 7 where we have B natural. Our 4th note is now sharp, which creates an F lydian. We keep walking down the street until measure 9, where we encounter Eb. Now our 7th note is a half step flat. This gives us F mixolydian. Finally in measure 10 we get Bb and we return to F major, with our 4th note lowered back to it's typical position. This actually fits quite nicely within the jazz vocabulary.
That said you could see this all from the perspective of C, but that is a lot harder to describe with our scale vocabulary. C major becomes partially minor, but not in any sort of common way. None of our C minor scales that are commonly seen have just Eb and Bb.
C D Eb F G Ab Bb C C minor
C D Eb F G Ab B C C harmonic minor
C D Eb F G A B C C melodic minor
Except for one of our modes.... C dorian would be spelt C D Eb F G A Bb C (minor scale w/ a natural 6)... lol.
All of this to say, there are lots of perspectives to view music from. None of them are absolute. Music is too abstract to be black and white in most cases. Ultimately, the best perspective would be from the composer Joe Raposo. Nonetheless, it's a good exercise to try and understand why the music is doing what it does. Especially, when it's something as successful as Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street.
You can download the sheet music here.
As always, enjoy the process, take your time, and keep playing.
Christopher
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