7. The Tonal Language of Deep Purple Mk2: Riffs, Modes, Chords, and Progressions
Who Do We Think They Are? - Deep Purple and Metal Studies - Andy R. Brown
Esa Lilja [+]
University of Stavanger
Description
Part two begins with a chapter by Esa Lilja that seeks to explore the tonal language of the Mk2 Deep Purple band in respect of their use of riffs, modes, chords and progressions. It does so in order to distinguish the melodic/harmonic idioms deployed by the band that constitute a seminal part of the musical vocabulary of hard rock and heavy metal. This is important because, as we have noted, Deep Purple’s significance in the formation of heavy metal as a musical genre is often downplayed or overshadowed, especially in relation to Black Sabbath. Lilja seeks to address this lack of musical acknowledgement by means of a corpus analysis of their classic 1970s albums employing a dualistic ‘modal/functional framework’ which aims to demonstrate how tonal characteristics are structured in Deep Purple’s music and to point out key similarities and differences between Purple’s tonal language and other styles of music. For example, according to a popular belief, the band contributed a mixture of baroque-classical and R&B idioms to the vocabulary of heavy metal, stemming from the compositional work and musical collaboration of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord. Lilja’s analysis demonstrates this to be an overstatement but finds other original combinations of musical styles in Deep Purple’s music. To explore this further Lilja pays attention to the tonal characteristics stated above but also seeks to isolate and discuss other tonal idioms, such as the use of church modes, plagal cadences, cross relations, as well as the almost complete absence of minor triads. As Lilja notes, these characteristics are common not only to blues rock but to renaissance polyphony. For Deep Purple, these characteristics result from stylistic borrowings, but also from the distortion effect applied to the guitar and the organ parts. To illustrate this, the chapter includes twenty-nine musical examples, tables and figures, including: ‘Highway Star,’ ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Speed King,’ ‘Fireball,’ ‘Maybe I’m a Leo’ and ‘Child in Time.’