Thanks to modern technology, one can do things that one could formerly only dream about, such as taking a pop song and changing it from a major to a minor key and vice versa. Major keys tend to be used for upbeat songs while minor keys are favored if you are trying to achieve a more melancholy sound.
Via Rob Beschizza, I came across what such a transformation sounds like when you do it to one of the best known John Denver songs, Country Roads.
For those not familiar with it, here is the song in its original major key.
Here it is after the sound technology wizards have transformed it into a minor key. The result is … interesting.
I prefer the original version.
That’s awful -- it’s not an example of successfully changing keys. The song actually played in the minor key would not sound like that.
It’s full of hideous artefacts created by their butchering
Ehhh… the technology is altering a recording. People have been doing it the old-fashioned way for centuries…. I don’t even want to guess, but a safe bet is over 600 years. (Way before tonality was a thing, but not the church modes.)
In pop songs, maybe it’s sort of roughly okay to say that this is how some songwriters try to get certain effects. Beyond that …. it really just doesn’t work that way.
Well, it may be awful. But it is in A natural minor (aeolian) instead of A major (ionian).
The progression for the first section of the tune was originally this:
| A | A | fs- | fs- | E | E | D | A |
When all you do is lower the Fs/Cs/Gs everywhere to make them F/C/G, you get this:
| a- | a- | F | F | e- | e- | d- | a- |
That’s easy to do with software like auto-tune, because you can just take every instance of those pitch classes and “move” them down a semitone. So that’s what they did.
I bet it would be more satisfying in melodic minor. You could probably still have minor vi and major V chords (as in the major mode), but use the i and iv chords. The melody would be a little odd at times — both F and Fs, depending on the context. One nice thing about the major version is that the melody is just pulled from a pentatonic scale (E Fs A B Cs — A major pentatonic) and it’s very easy to sing. When you turn that into (E F A B C), it seems more like phrygian I guess. But anyway, it didn’t really get a different type of chord progression that fits comfortably with that new melody — it’s just “the same” progression with more clunkiness because the voice-leading is all messed up.
The Greater Western Sydney Giants’ theme song is the only one in the AFL that is written in a minor key. It got the meme treatment during Grand Final week, just search “#BigBigSound” on Twitter. GWS lost the Grand Final, though.
John’s Long-EZ is rolling over…
If you say it is ‘butchered’ so be it. My technical knowledge of music is nonexistent and my sensibilities are perhaps not so sensitive or refined. That said … I like it. Seems to fit the bittersweet and perilous times.