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 classic Deep Purple as a seminal part of the musical vocabulary of hard rock and heavy metal. This, argues Lilja, is important because Purple shared much of their tonal vocabulary with other pioneering heavy rock bands, such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep. But, as we have noted, Deep Purple’s importance for 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 comparative corpus analysis of the early 1970s albums by Deep Purple compared with those of the other three groups, employing a dualistic ‘modal/functional framework.’ Thus, Lilja notes, the main original contribution of Black Sabbath to heavy metal vocabulary was the use of dark modes, whereas Deep Purple contributed an original and highly influential mixture of baroque-classical and R&B idioms. To explore this Lilja plays close attention to the compositional work and musical collaboration of the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and the organist Jon Lord, as well as seeking to isolate and discuss other tonal idioms, such as the use of church modes, plagal cadences, cross relations, and 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 musical examples, tables and figures, including: ‘Highway Star,’ ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘The Mule,’ ‘Fireball,’ ‘No One Came’ and ‘Child in Time’ from Deep Purple; compared with ‘Black Sabbath,’ ‘Supernaut,’ ‘Symptom of the Universe’ and ‘A National Acrobat’ from Black Sabbath; ‘Whole Lotta Love, ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘No Quarter’ from Led Zeppelin; ‘Gypsy’ and ‘July Morning’ from Uriah Heep; selected renaissance/baroque/classical examples from composers such as William Byrd, Antonio Vivaldi and Ludwig van Beethoven; and later hard rock and heavy metal bands that are musically related to Deep Purple, such as Rainbow, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Dio and Metallica.