knight rider (1982)
Stu Phillips, Glen Larson. electronica/dance, USA/Hollywood.
key: F# phrygian-dominant/freygish/hijaz
mode: F# G A# B C# D E
melody: m f t r m'f'
form: intro — A A' — outro
meter: duple
English function names: tonic subtonic
Tagg (modified): home counterpoise (away)
Riemann: T ???
Scale degrees: I vii
Chords: F# Em F# Em
|:/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / :|There is a lot to say about this two-minute piece, so sit down and relax. First, I must confess: it might not really be a two-chord song. Perhaps you noticed right away. The other chords are very brief, so one can be excused *ehem* of not noticing on the first listen or when thinking about the song in one's distant memory. *ehem*
There is one two-measure instance after the drums kick in around the 13 second mark implying the II chord, G major (measures 7-8, if you like to count measures). The bass moves up to G, but there is no other harmony than the sixteenth note koto/dulcimer/synth riff, which is the same as when it is during the vii chord. One could argue that this is simply an inversion of the vii chord, since G and B are common to both the Em and the G chords. But in pop music inversions are far less common. My own immediate reaction was "oh crap this isn't a two-chord song," which means I hear it as the G chord and not the Em. Interestingly, this never happens again in the two-minute span of the piece.
The other moment where I thought "oh crap, this really isn't a two-chord song" are the two instances of a C major (!!!) incoming chord at the end of the A melody around the 45 second mark and the A' melody at the 1:05 mark. It sounds like a dominant-tonic motion, despite the fact that it's actually a tritone away and the root is most definitely non-diatonic. I'm not going to attempt to give this a Riemannian term, though that might actually be more meaningful than calling it a flat-V chord. Tagg to the rescue (incoming) once again.1
Every now and then I try to pass something off as a two-chord song that's not really a two-chord song.2 I try to be a purist about this endeavor as much as possible. I'm not much of a purist at heart,3 but if my point is to say "See all of these cool pre-existing songs that only have two chords that you could be using for teaching and learning?" then I kind of have to stick with the program. Sometimes, however, I just can't resist. It's not that I couldn't find other examples; it's that I like this particular example.
What I have above as THE LOOP is pretty much what gets sampled in other songs. And when I thought of this as a potential two-chord song, it's what came to mind. We'll see as we dig in deeper, those expectations and superficial impressions will get thrown to the wind some more. I'll post the full progression at the end.
Yet again with the scale names: We are very clearly outside of klezmer, outside of the Levant, outside of maqam traditions, and even though we are also outside of jazz, the jazz name for the scale "phrygian-dominant" is most likely the most appropriate name to use in this situation (even though it's an unwieldy name). There's got to be a klezmer version of this tune out there somewhere…4
One of the things I do with my HS students5 is to try to talk about how the feelings and images they respond to music with connect to actual music phenomena. This is still one of the hardest things and I will discuss it in more detail in after next post.6 This particular scale is known for evoking "the exotic," in all its glorious and problematic meanings. What I find interesting here, is that the exotic is now transformed into merely "mystery," specifically the man and car of mystery that are the subject of this show.7 Man, I loved this show when I was ten. Staying up on Friday nights! Nerding out with my older brother! Woo!8
The harpsichord (?)/koto (?)/dulcimer (?) synth-patch ostinato (riff) brings in some non-diatonic pitches: half-steps dancing around the fifth of each chord, reinforcing that Taggian idea that there isn't a single tonic, but instead two harmonic poles (F# and E) that we shuttle back and forth between. These half-steps create more tension, more mystery.
Let's talk about diatonic for a moment: Technically, traditionally, in a very orthodox Western Classical sense, diatonic means it's part of the major/natural minor set only. Anything else is not diatonic. This strictness doesn't serve us well, however, even in a classical sense, because as we've already noted, we've been adding extra pitches to the minor set for so long, it's so standard, it doesn't make sense to consider the addition of the raised 6th and 7th scales degrees to be non-diatonic — that is, not belonging to the scale/mode/key, implying other harmonic motion or melodic color. Likewise, it is clear from listening what pitches are from the phrygian-dominant set and what are additions/ornamentations — whether you can name those things or not. In the same way we learn how hard to throw an object to meet its goal without having to do any math, we also magically figure out what the most important pitches are in a piece of music and which ones are not structurally significant but are most certainly welcome to the party. After all, as noted above, they create tension, mystery or, in other contexts, other feelings and associations.
It's also funny to talk about form when the intro-vamp feels like it takes up half the time of the song, without the voice-over.9 Function over form is the order of the day when it comes to theme songs for TV. Traditionally, we use the melody to guide how we parse the form. And certainly there are plenty of precedents before this where the melody isn't what is driving the piece,10 but this is a TV-show theme from the heyday of TV-show themes. At first the "melody" for the long vamp is actually a bunch of filter sweeps and space-age futuristic sound-effects. The melody is noise, which is pretty avant-garde, actually. Then there are some lovely call-and-response passages between a palm-muted guitar and mini-fanfares from a horn patch. But none of that really feels like a melody until the very obvious actual melody kicks in around 30 seconds in. That makes sense, of course, if there's just going to be an overly serious voice-over going on; you don't want your elements to compete.
When the melody comes in, the phrasing changes via the harmonic rhythm and the shape of the melody. It sounds like a meter change because the tonic chord lasts an extra two beats and those beats are accented in the bass line, yet everything evens out in the end to a standard four measures:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |It could be notated this way, with two measures of six microbeats:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / / / |/ / / / / / |A more Gordonian approach, showing how we have some unpaired macrobeats:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / |/ / / / |/ / |While I think most reading musicians would prefer the first example, it does obscure to some extent what is audible. One might question, if we have two sets of three macrobeats aren't they then paired? The answer is no, because it's the microbeats that classify things as duple or triple. If we have three macrobeats then they cannot by definition be paired. It took me a long time to wrap my head around this, but listening to this particular example makes it clear for me. Even more interesting is that the drum loop does not change — so that is still paired duple — but the shift in all the other parts seem to override this, to my ears, anyway. We have some basic polymeter going on.
When the melody comes back a second time (0:53), the harmonic rhythm shifts the other way, the Em coming two beats earlier than expected, and we cut off a whole measure:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |All of these shifts keep us unstable. We think we are going to have a simple, looped shuttle and that is far from what actually happens. Here's the full chord chart:
intro:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F# G
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
melody A:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F# Em C
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
melody A':
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F# Em C
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
outro:
F# Em
|/ / / / |/ / / / |/ / / / |
F#
|/ / / / |/ / / / |In a brief 120 seconds, Phillips and Larson combine an unusual tonality, a handful of non-diatonic pitches, and shifting harmonic rhythm to create a sense of intrigue and mystery.
Flex-band arrangements courtesy of me and Sheet Music Direct: Complete Set for all instruments C instruments Violas only (I got your back) Bb instruments Eb instruments F instruments bass clef instruments
We haven't really talked about incoming chords, because when you only have two chords the chord that isn't the tonic serves both the "counterpoise" — what I like to call "away" — and "incoming" functions. You have to go away in order for there to be a signal that we are returning home.
See Can I Kick It, and let's be real, it'll happen again, you'll see.
…which you may have already guessed by the way I talk about music theory…
Actually, it’d be even easier to just use the accompaniment parts to Knight-Rider-ify pretty much any klezmer tune in freygish, than it would be to make this melody sound like a klezmer melody. Get on it, mentschn…
…more than with my MS ones, we are busy enough, thank you…
Perhaps you've discerned the pattern of three posts with actual songs and then a post solely comprised of my blathering. Now you definitely have.
Let's be real, yet again: There is nothing exotic about Knight Rider, the car, David Hasselhoff, any of it.
Of course, now that we know what AI and self-driving cars are like, someone should do a comedy remake of Knight Rider but, you know, along the lines of the SNL skit about Alexa.
I had to listen to the TV recording here to realize, oh yeah, that's why the vamp goes on forever. Duh. Okay fine, twelve measures is hardly forever, but somehow it seems like a long vamp.
Minimalism comes to mind, but also the infamous four minutes of Eb arpeggios opening Wagner's opera Das Rheingold.