Songs that use Pedal Point

stick around to find out how you can learn even more about music with today's sponsor pianote a pedal tone or a pedal point is when we keep a consistent bass note underneath moving chords above so the intro here of Jump by Van Halen is built from a massive pedal point where we just keep C in the base and we have all of these other chords above like that's a G chord over a c chord c chord F chord g chord c then a few SAS chords at the end there if we matched the Bas line to follow the chords as would be more conventional of a chord progression it completely loses its character it just sounds completely different so the pedal Point despite seeming like a very simple idea just keeping a bass note there adds so much to this core progression it changes the context in which we hear these chords above so for example actually that G chord above C even though we're playing a g and we're playing a C really we're kind of more hearing a C major 9 sound because this C over G is just a C major 9 missing the Third so pedal point is one of those things which can result in some really interesting sophisticated chords but from your point of view as a player you're actually doing something quite simple just holding a consistent bass note another great example of pedal Point using the song is in Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears the main song is built from a vamp of the cord a going down to the chord g which is Chord five to chord 4 of the key but we don't have the sort of more predictable Baseline that you would write for that a a baseline that just follows the [Music] chords now instead Tears for Fears put the entire chord progression over a a pedal point of our tonic note D so we have D just staying in the base and then above that the chords of the progression five and four but over the one and it creates so much more tension so much more detail in the core prod the most common way to use a pedal Point really is to have the tonic note as as the thing we're pedaling that's what we had in Van Halen that's what we've got here the tonic note standing strong and just dominating the whole thing laying a foundation over which other chords from the key can be played pedal point is a great way to build tension in a piece of music a great example of this is Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor in verse one despite the moving chord changes the Bas is just staying on the tonic note it's pedaling that tonic note underneath every single chord and this creates that sense of tension throughout the whole section back on the street did my time took my chances compare that to verse two where now the Bas does follow the root note of each chord many [Applause] [Music] toast Glory we suddenly get the sense of release it's like the song was being held in place against its will and now it's been let loose and it can flow freely as you may have noticed Eye of the Tiger actually features two different pedal points in two different parts of the music of course we've got the bass guitar providing the pedal point we just discussed but on top of that we've got the electric guitar chugging away on the tonic note of C constantly playing C across all of these core changes Street and this is also a pedal point it's actually what we call an inverted pedal point because unlike normal pedal point which is in the base range underneath all of the music this guitar is chugging away on that consistent note in the treble range of the music so we call it an inverted pedal rather than a normal pedal point the tension of pedal Point makes it a very useful tool for a film composer for example John Williams is a big fan of using pedal point we can see it here in his score for Indiana Jones where multiple different chords are all played over a consistent pedal tone of [Music] C what's great about this is we've got all of these actually quite unrelated chords that usually wouldn't work that well together but because they're all played over this consistent pedal of C it kind of forceably marries them all together you might be wondering now why are we calling this a pedal point isn't that quite an unusual name what is it about a pedal here well actually it goes back to the origin of this technique which is in pipe organ music beyond the various manuals the various keyboards on an organ there is also a keyboard of pedals at the performers feet which play very low bass notes so the reason that keeping a sustained bass note under changing chords is called a pedal point it's because an organ player would have literally been playing that continuous bass note with a pedal hence pedal point so as you may have noticed I'm not in my familiar Studio not on my familiar backdrop I'm actually out in Canada at the moment at the pianote studio you might know piano as a long-term sponsor of my videos they've been really supportive of the stuff I do on YouTube and I'm here today making some videos with them piano offer a massive collection of tutorials and lessons covering every facet of playing the piano for example you may have noticed that during this video there's been a lot of Slash chords so if you wanted to learn more about how slash chords work well piano have a whole range of lessons to do with Slash chords including this one by Lisa one more time this little transition c g in first inversion SLB and then a minor and then just to kind of finish off our progression we'll move to F if you're interested in seeing all of that then do check out pianote with a free trial using the link in the description another example of this tonic pedal where we're keeping the tonic note pedaling in the left hand underneath changing chords is your song by Elon John so the intro of your song is like [Music] this but Alton doesn't do the left hand part that I just did he doesn't follow the chords in the right hand so the chords we're getting here are E flat A flat B flat and then back to a flat over rather than following each of those chords and underpinning it with each chords root note he just keeps E flat the tonic note pedling in his left hand underneath the changing chords [Music] above and it adds that Lush tension to what would otherwise be a fairly simple move up 1 five and four of the key Elton is actually very um prone to using pedal point in his music and I think part of the reason for this is because he is a piano player when you write at the piano you are simultaneously deciding on the Harmony Part so the chords in the right hand but also the Basse part you can you're kind of making executive decisions on how the bass and the harmony will interact whereas if you're writing on guitar the bass part will be provided by someone else on a bass guitar so you wouldn't have that same executive control over what bass notes are played the bass player might decid to Pedal but he probably instead will just go for the default route of following the chords as is so often the case so piano players can often see a bigger picture of Harmony and make decisions like that one of Alton's best uses of pedal point and once again this is a tonic pedal so the pedal point is staying on the one in this case b is I'm still standing the opening section which is very similar to the chorus is in B minor we're getting all sorts of different chords but underneath all of them is a consistent pedal note of B and even when we go to the verse even though we've now gone to the major key we're still pedling that same tonic hold so as we go into the verse with I'm still standing we're going from B minor to the parallel major B major but of course both of those keys have the same tonic of the note B so despite the key change the Bas can keep pedaling through with b and it creates so much tension but it also kind of glues the whole thing together it's it's just a great way of adding that cohesion to the core progression and also sort of Bridging the Gap between that move from B minor to B major almost to the point that you don't notice that there is a key change between the sections of this song pedal tone gives Harmony a sense of being being still a sense of being static we can hear this for example in Us and Them by Pink Floyd where all of the chords of the verse are over a d pedal point every chord has d as its lowest voice so the harmony is very much sat still on that pedal point of D but with each chord we get a different perspective a different point of view on that static D tonic [Applause] note [Music] so all of the pedal points we've looked at so far have been what I've been describing as a tonic pedal where the note we're pedaling the note we're keeping underneath everything in the base is the tonic note and that is the most common type of pedal tone but the second most common type of pedal tone or pedal point is what we can call a dominant pedal where instead of pedaling the root note we're pedaling the fifth degree dominant refers to the fifth degree so for example if we were in the key of E B would be the fifth degree of the scale so if we were to take chord forward and cord five like this we keep the fifth degree underneath them this is a dominant [Music] pedal and you might recognize this move as the intro of I'm Not in Love by TC C where they you open with this dominant pedal not another great example of dominant pedal is in the song You Keep Me Hanging On by The Supremes here the electric guitar is repeatedly playing the note E flat the song is in the key of a flat so E flat is the fifth degree of the key hence dominant pedal and this is also actually an inverted dominant pedal because the guitar is playing in the treble range rather than the Basse range [Music] free another fantastic use of inverted pedal point is in Johnny Cash's version of HT during the chorus of the song we get this persistent G pedal in quarter notes over the moving core progression adding a sort of solemn sense of urgency to the music have it all I so earlier I mentioned tonic pedal which is the most common type of pedal when we're pedaling the tonic note of the key I also mentioned dominant pedal which is when we instead pedal the fifth degree of the scale dominant meaning fifth but we could pedal any note we like in the key and a great example of the power of pedal point is turn it on again by Genesis this song is ultimately in the key of B and sure enough for the entire intro and opening verse we're getting a pedal point of B underneath every single core change and there's a lot of core changes [Music] [Applause] here then in the bridge we instead get a pedal point of the flat 2 degree of the scale C natural under every single chord down on my look again I can show you I can show you some of the people in my life I can show you I can show you some of the people in my life so that's pedal Point let me know in the comments if you can think of some other great examples of pedal [Music] point [Music] [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 72,590

Keywords: 7th chord, dominant 7th, music theory, major 7th, minor 7th, 7 chord, major 7, diminished 7, half diminished, augmented, sus4, chords, explained, how to, symbol, triangle

Id: -uckt1o_EUM

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023