Three songs

I have lots of songs that have been with me for many, many years. Beatles stuff, Bacharach and David covers, Bowie, Queen, Chic, and on and on. But, three songs written and recorded in the late 70s are not only close to my heart, but feel like they are related. The first is Message in a Bottle by The Police. This song hangs on Andy Summer’s arpeggiated riff, which goes from a C#min9 to an Amaj9, B7, and finishes with an F#m. It’s a fairly standard chord progression, although Andy Summers plays it with an interesting, wide inversion of each chord, which I discussed in my Classic Chords series some time ago. Incidentally, the opening C#min9 is equivalent to a C#sus2. The D# note being the 2nd and not in the C# major scale and the ninth in C# minor. The second song is Martha and the Muffins’ Echo Beach. This tune also hangs on an arpeggiated guitar riff Am-D-C, Am D-Em. It doesn’t really sound like Message in a Bottle, but it shares an edgy guitar tone and the arpeggiation, you might say. The third song is part one of a bigger song, the Tide Pools movement from Rush’s Natural Science. Once the strummy acoustic of the intro has ended, an arpeggiated guitar riff builds to an edgy tone – Em-C(add9)-D-G-C(add9). This riff does resemble the Echo Beach riff, albeit in a different key. Both written and recorded around about the same time by two Canadian bands. However, if we simplify the chords and put this riff and The Police riff in the same key th...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Music Source Type: blogs