For the blog assignment this time round, I'll be analysing on a duet called When God Made You by Newsong and Natalie Grant. A friend of mine introduced it to me last week and I was immediately attracted to the soothing introduction, albeit a bit short. Coupled with meaningful and touching lyrics, this is a wonderful song. I've posted the youtube video above, listen to it if you're free. :)
Analysis of song(duet) When God Made You (opening phrase)
The song started off in the key of D, but when it reaches the opening phrase in bar 5, there was an abrupt modulation(i hope i got this right!) to C Major. There are a lot of modulations in this song, most probably because it's a duet meant for a male and female, and as we know, there is quite a difference in our voice ranges. But anw, I'll just be analysing on the opening phrase, which is from bar 5 to 8.
Roman Numerals: I - V - vi7 - IV - I6 - IV - V
The literal Harmonic Function I get out of the roman numerals are actually:
T- D - (T) - PD - T - PD - D
However, I would like to treat the T - D - (T) (purple part) as a tonic expansion, and PD - T - PD (orange) as a predominant expansion, and this would result in a harmonic function of T - PD - D, and a T on the subsequent phrase, which isn't shown. This would be the 'classic' Harmonic Phrase Model that we have learnt during music class.
Highlighted in bar 7, the 1st inversion of chord I is used here. This is to smoothen out the bassline to form bass notes F-E-F-G (bars 7 & 8). Imagine if the root position of chord I was used, the bass notes would form F-C-F-G, which really isn't very smooth.
For this first phrase, there is one non-harmonic tone which can be found in bar 6. The highlighted note (B) in the right hand part is a Neighbour Tone (NT), which is approached by step from the note C and proceeded by step to a C.
That's all for now, I really hope i can get a full music sheet for this then I can finish analysing the song because it's nice! :)
Analysis of song(duet) When God Made You (opening phrase)
The song started off in the key of D, but when it reaches the opening phrase in bar 5, there was an abrupt modulation(i hope i got this right!) to C Major. There are a lot of modulations in this song, most probably because it's a duet meant for a male and female, and as we know, there is quite a difference in our voice ranges. But anw, I'll just be analysing on the opening phrase, which is from bar 5 to 8.
Roman Numerals: I - V - vi7 - IV - I6 - IV - V
The literal Harmonic Function I get out of the roman numerals are actually:
T- D - (T) - PD - T - PD - D
However, I would like to treat the T - D - (T) (purple part) as a tonic expansion, and PD - T - PD (orange) as a predominant expansion, and this would result in a harmonic function of T - PD - D, and a T on the subsequent phrase, which isn't shown. This would be the 'classic' Harmonic Phrase Model that we have learnt during music class.
Highlighted in bar 7, the 1st inversion of chord I is used here. This is to smoothen out the bassline to form bass notes F-E-F-G (bars 7 & 8). Imagine if the root position of chord I was used, the bass notes would form F-C-F-G, which really isn't very smooth.
For this first phrase, there is one non-harmonic tone which can be found in bar 6. The highlighted note (B) in the right hand part is a Neighbour Tone (NT), which is approached by step from the note C and proceeded by step to a C.
That's all for now, I really hope i can get a full music sheet for this then I can finish analysing the song because it's nice! :)
3 comments:
Hey! I'm glad you mentioned about the modulation due to it being a duet. I never noticed it before, but when I recently listened to another male-female duet (The Gift by Jim Brickman and Martina McBride, if you're interested) I actually did notice the same thing.
Just want to comment also I think he does some pretty interesting things in the vocal line for this piece ;)
Dorcas, can you figure out if there is some kind of pivot into C major?
Your desire to hear IV-I6-IV is possible, but you would have to modify your roman numeral analysis since on surface it would seem strange to argue that a PD-T-PD is a PD expansion.
Hi Dorcas,
On second consideration, I realize I actually missed the 2-3 bass suspension in b. 7 (which gives rise to the F2 chord). Hence the progression is actually
I - V -vi7 , I6 - IV - V
T D (T) T PD D
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