Rock songs with awesome solos in a major key

fastonebaz

Splendid

DrCornelius

viz said:

sev112 said:

viz said:

sev112 said:

The person who can actually tell me a definitive reason by which any tune is minor or major wins today’s Gold Star.  
C major or A minor?
not interested in “feel”, “mood”, “unhappy” etc which are not definitive.

is it as simple as what chord you start and finish most phrases with?  If it is Am then it is minor, and if it is C then it’s major?  What if it’s half and half?

Once you've correctly identified the home note, the tonality depends on whether the 3rd is a major 3rd or minor 3rd (in most cases). That's it. Forget relatives, forget C major vs A minor, just think "home note", and then "third".

Play the first few notes of these tunes, in E, on the top E string:

- Frere Jacques

- Doe a Deer

- Postman Pat

- Vivaldi 4 seasons, 1st movement

The third is always a major 3rd (4th fret).

Now play:

- Bach double violin concerto

- Green sleeves

The third is always a minor 3rd (3rd fret)

Yes of course 
how do you determine a home note if there isn’t one

So for example Since you been gone as mentioned above
Gmajor or Eminor ?  Phrases start in G but end on various other chords including Em ?

Since you been gone absolutely, utterly, undeniably has G as its home note (well apart from the fact that it modulates to A at the end!) It's the note of repose. The key note. The note that the music is centred around. Like the subject of a sentence.

You have to be able to identify that - it's like knowing that 1 comes before 2 in counting. It's very difficult to describe, especially on a forum. So ultimately it comes with listening to lots of music. There are certain pointers:

- it's the first chord
- it's part of a 1564 progression, and the 4 is very unstable to end on, so at the end of the song, the G would be the "final" - it would go 1564/1
- there are various rhythmic devices that point to the first chord being the home. 
- Both the chorus and the verse have G as the home.
- it couldn't possibly be in E minor - the E minor chords are in the wrong place in the progression to act as home.  


If there's no home note, well the piece probably isn't in major or minor, because major / minor is predicated on the 3rd of the home note. That's the definition.

There are a few genuinely ambiguous songs (like sweet home alabama, which is in D but lots of people think it's in G ), and it's clear why these songs are ambiguous, but in the main it's immediately obvious, if you're musical.

Hurry up with that bloody book - you have no idea how useful it’s going to be for me !

Cols

Tons of Queen stuff - Brian May used the major scale a lot.  

Play With Me by Extreme if you’re up for a spot of finger mangling.

https://youtu.be/nDE667iYgBw

fastonebaz

Cols said:

Tons of Queen stuff - Brian May used the major scale a lot.  

Play With Me by Extreme if you’re up for a spot of finger mangling.

https://youtu.be/nDE667iYgBw

Not sure I could quite play that

Cols

fastonebaz said:

Cols said:

Tons of Queen stuff - Brian May used the major scale a lot.  

Play With Me by Extreme if you’re up for a spot of finger mangling.

https://youtu.be/nDE667iYgBw

Not sure I could quite play that

Many have died trying.

Whitecat

Rush has quite a few. 

Closer To The Heart

Lakeside Park
The Spirit Of Radio

Tom Sawyer
Kid Gloves

The Big Money

... loads more. Alex loves a major key solo...

Haych

Hardly face melting but Proud Mary by CCR is a major key and it’s easy enough for the likes of me to play too  

Teetonetal

viz said:

sev112 said:

viz said:

sev112 said:

The person who can actually tell me a definitive reason by which any tune is minor or major wins today’s Gold Star.  
C major or A minor?
not interested in “feel”, “mood”, “unhappy” etc which are not definitive.

is it as simple as what chord you start and finish most phrases with?  If it is Am then it is minor, and if it is C then it’s major?  What if it’s half and half?

Once you've correctly identified the home note, the tonality depends on whether the 3rd is a major 3rd or minor 3rd (in most cases). That's it. Forget relatives, forget C major vs A minor, just think "home note", and then "third".

Play the first few notes of these tunes, in E, on the top E string:

- Frere Jacques

- Doe a Deer

- Postman Pat

- Vivaldi 4 seasons, 1st movement

The third is always a major 3rd (4th fret).

Now play:

- Bach double violin concerto

- Green sleeves

The third is always a minor 3rd (3rd fret)

Yes of course 
how do you determine a home note if there isn’t one

So for example Since you been gone as mentioned above
Gmajor or Eminor ?  Phrases start in G but end on various other chords including Em ?

Since you been gone absolutely, utterly, undeniably has G as its home note (well apart from the fact that it modulates to A at the end!) It's the note of repose. The key note. The note that the music is centred around. Like the subject of a sentence.

You have to be able to identify that - it's like knowing that 1 comes before 2 in counting. It's very difficult to describe, especially on a forum. So ultimately it comes with listening to lots of music. There are certain pointers:

- it's the first chord
- it's part of a 1564 progression, and the 4 is very unstable to end on, so at the end of the song, the G would be the "final" - it would go 1564/1
- there are various rhythmic devices that point to the first chord being the home. 
- Both the chorus and the verse have G as the home.
- it couldn't possibly be in E minor - the E minor chords are in the wrong place in the progression to act as home.  


If there's no home note, well the piece probably isn't in major or minor, because major / minor is predicated on the 3rd of the home note. That's the definition.

There are a few genuinely ambiguous songs (like sweet home alabama, which is in D but lots of people think it's in G ), and it's clear why these songs are ambiguous, but in the main it's immediately obvious, if you're musical.

Sweet homes chords are D C G aren't they, which looks like a classic V IV I progression.

So home come it's in D? Does it use F# in the melody?

Never analysed it.

In regards to the op... C and Am are related... Use the same base scale C major. For all intents and purposes they are the same. However if you treat am as a 1 chord and build chord progressions and cadences with that in mind, you piece emphasizes the Am and the whole thing sounds minor.

This for me is how all modes work.

When soloing, if you use Am pentatonic it works, but the tension of the minor sound makes it rock or bluesy. If you use Cmajor pentatonic then it fits and gives that classic country major sound.

It's simply the relationship between note choice and chords... But as pentatonics are so easy and fit well, for many players this note choice is a result of playing patterns rather than a conscious decision.

Now if you actually use a proper minor scale and write the key signature accordingly then use of Cmajor scale would sound odd.

Danny1969

sev112 said:

The person who can actually tell me a definitive reason by which any tune is minor or major wins today’s Gold Star.  
C major or A minor?
not interested in “feel”, “mood”, “unhappy” etc which are not definitive.

is it as simple as what chord you start and finish most phrases with?  If it is Am then it is minor, and if it is C then it’s major?  What if it’s half and half?

The chord the song wants to "go home to" or "rest on" is the key in my book. So Hey Joe is in E major, Since you've been gone is in G as those are the chords the song always wants to rest on

Oddly enough the song can be in a home key chord that never appears in the song. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac is in C but as far as I remember it never gets to C  ..... just F and G all the time but it wants to go to C and thus that's the key of the song

*All the above is how I look at keys so might need correcting by @viz *
  

Danny1969

Oh and  for a face melting major solo and a real challenge (to the point I've never seen anyone be able to do it properly) try Van Halens Ice cream man solo 

koss59

Rosanna

Haych

koss59 said:

Rosanna

Bollocks! Beat me to it!

fastonebaz

Eddie's finger stretch is huge in that solo! 

HAL9000

Haych said:

Hardly face melting but Proud Mary by CCR is a major key and it’s easy enough for the likes of me to play too  

Also Bad Moon Rising by CCR

springhead

mudslide73 said:

fastonebaz said:

Why was it called 2468 motorway,  what does that even mean? @mudslide73 ;

I think it's basically a song about stimulants disguised as a song about trucking. The chorus relies on 2468 then 3579 which is deffo super memorable.

I used to hate playing it until I saw the reaction of the punters. Can't explain why but they bloody love it generally. 

Tom Robinson says he doesn't really know what it's about.  He thinks 2468 might be from him going on gay pride marches "2468 is that copper really straight, 3579 lesbians are really fine" etc.  Other than that he says it's some words to fit the chords.

Jonathangus

Not sure if this is 'emotional' or 'face-melting' (or even 'rock'), but currently practising Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot for a one-off gig.  In E major with quite a fun solo.  Can't get my fingers round the opening lick, though.

gordiji

Only you can rock me. UFO

DulcetJones

While there are lots of examples of Major key face melting solos I just want to say the minor key lends is itself more freely to the face melting phenom. in my opinion.  To me, a solo in a Major key can contain as many 32nd and 64th notes as any solo and still not be face melting, maybe it's just me and my attraction to darker music, I don't know.  I do love a lot of the Major key songs mentioned so far.

Cirrus

sev112 said:

The person who can actually tell me a definitive reason by which any tune is minor or major wins today’s Gold Star.  
C major or A minor?
not interested in “feel”, “mood”, “unhappy” etc which are not definitive.

is it as simple as what chord you start and finish most phrases with?  If it is Am then it is minor, and if it is C then it’s major?  What if it’s half and half?

The key is either what you put at the start of notation so that the musicians can read and understand the music written down for them, or it's a shared understanding between the musician and the listener of how each note sits in relation to the other notes in the piece - where the tensions and releases are, what notes pull in what directions, what it means to linger on a particular part of the scale or eschew it altogether, how the melody progresses on an emotional journey...

The former is just a technical exercise in making the notation legible. You could pick any key, it's just a question of how many sharps, flats and accidentals you want to have to show.

The later is intrinsically based in feel, mood, emotional impact. To try to deny them in an answer is to fundamentally misunderstand what a song's key actually means in practice.

As a demonstration of this; scales aren't a definitive, objectively scientific that can be codified. We just get used to whatever scales are around us when we grow up, and there is variance in how scales are constructed and perceived that are cultural.

Sweet Home Alabama is a demonstration of this - it always comes up in these kind of threads. The issue is that in rock/blues music, the dominant 5th is often very heavily stressed, to the point that it feels more like a "home away from home", whereas the tonic becomes like your home town that you've not visited for so long it barely feels like home any more. The song's in G, but depending on how you hear it, I can totally understand why you'd feel like returning to D makes more sense at the end. And if someone feels that way, and the song has resonance and meaning to them when understood like that... who's anyone else to tell them they're wrong? If you believe with conviction that G is the home note, then the song becomes 500 perfect cadences in a row. If D and G both feel like they could be home, then it becomes a journey, rolling between both. I know which interpretation makes most sense to me.



Edit; Fuck, I've just realised that this is a perfect example of prosody! The song rolls between these two dominant chords, you could interpret G as figuratively being "sweet home Alabama" and D being wherever the protagonist of the song lives now.

fastonebaz

Ooh that UFO track is a good one.