Gave it a listen—I'd call it G minor, which is the relative minor of B♭ major, so it has the same key signature of two flats (meaning you're not wrong in a sense!) except with G as the tonic ("home" note) instead of B♭. The way to suss it out is to figure out what note feels like "home" or "at rest." If you continuously play a B♭ over the chord progression, you'll hear that it's pulling down, and if you follow that tug down the scale to G, you'll hear that it feels at rest, so you can just keep playing G over and over and it won't need to move anywhere. Another hint that it might be G minor is that the opening chord is G minor and the opening melody note is G. That doesn't guarantee anything, but starting on the tonic chord is pretty common, and the most conventional notes to start a melody on are probably the first and fifth scale degrees.

One thing that might've led you to B♭ major is how in the middle ~third of the song a new motif is introduced which IS in B♭ major. I think it would be fair to call this section B♭ major; if you try that same trick again, you'll notice that G no longer feels like home, while B♭ does. In fact, returning to that hint about melody scale degrees, the melody starts out by walking up the B♭ major scale from the first degree (B♭) up to the fifth degree (F)—again, not a given, but something to listen for! After that motif goes away, it returns to G minor, which is why I'd feel confident in calling it G minor overall.

It's always fun to just vibe out and jam to a nice chord progression! A favorite of mine is the Grover Washington & Bill Withers classic "Just the Two of Us" (the recording is maddeningly a bit sharp from A=440 Hz, but thankfully you can usually compensate for that on an electric piano). Besides being a great progression in and of itself, it's also pretty handy to learn because it's a chord progression you hear all over the place; three examples off the top of my head are "My Boo" by Ghost Town DJs, "Moonlight Sunrise" by TWICE, and the main theme from Spirited Away, "One Summer's Day" by Joe Hisaishi (yes, seriously...if you focus on the bass line of the "chorus" it should help to hear it!).

[–] decaptcha@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply!

Confession time, I was going off the memory of playing early in the morning while half drunk, haha. And I was particularly fixated on the exact phrase you called out as being in Bb major... that F works too well and was really calling out to me there. I do remember thinking "maybe G minor?" but I was so wrapped up in that hook!

I haven't made time to revisit the song yet but I'm quite sure I'll find your analysis to be correct. I've always been good at playing by ear but lately I'm teaching myself music theory and while I still get things wrong I still enjoy learning through the mistakes! This is what I love about music.

Thanks for the other recommendations as well! Chord progressions are the latest thing I've come around to understanding, and yeah once you get familiar with one you start clocking it everywhere in popular music. The Doo Wop progression is one of my favorites to play around with. I'll check out your links next time I get to play, thanks again!

Oh yeah that "Just The Two Of Us" progression is lovely! Exciting

[–] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Somehow I kept meaning to reply to this and then having it slip my mind, but better late than never!

Confession time, I was going off the memory of playing early in the morning while half drunk, haha. And I was particularly fixated on the exact phrase you called out as being in Bb major... that F works too well and was really calling out to me there. I do remember thinking "maybe G minor?" but I was so wrapped up in that hook!

No worries! I myself only just got started on really focusing on music theory these past couple of years. I was always more of an ear/memory player—I'd either figure out the song by ear through trial and error, or I'd read the sheet music, but only for long enough to be able to memorize it and then never look at it again. In either case, if you were to stop me at any moment in a song and ask me what notes I just played, I honestly wouldn't know. And even if I had known, it wouldn't have meant much. I knew the basics: how to build major and minor scales, as well as how to build basic triads and seventh chords, but beyond V resolving to I (e.g. G7 to C), I didn't really understand what made songs flow. It's been really gratifying to do transcriptions and analysis of my favorite songs and figure out what makes them tick—and then recognizing those same patterns in other tunes.

while I still get things wrong I still enjoy learning through the mistakes!

This is so important! At first when I was doing analyses I would leave stuff blank when I wasn't sure about how to name a chord or what function a chord had, but I realized I was robbing myself of a learning experience. By committing to an answer and then having someone more experienced look over your work, you can figure out what error in thinking led you to a particular mistake and refine your mental model bit by bit.

One YouTube channel I heartily recommend is 8-Bit Music theory. He does some really great breakdowns of music and covers all kinds of theory topics. You're not going to come out of a video having mastered any particular topic (which is true of any YouTube video, I suppose), but by watching his videos and getting that first exposure to topics I was able to recognize things and go, "Oh yeah, I remember 8-Bit Music Theory talking about this!" and then being able rewatch the relevant video or search for more information since I had a label for the phenomenon. I think that's especially true of his series on the major modes which I keep coming back to and gleaning a bit more each time, although they might be less relevant for you depending on the kind of music you're playing. A great video to start with that covers a smattering of different topics is his breakdown of "Baka Mitai". Another top-notch one is his analysis of the Dolphin Shoals sax solo, which really changed how I listened to (and played) solos. And of course, you can just scroll through and see if there are any topics or games that catch your eyes.

The Doo Wop progression is one of my favorites to play around with

That's another great one! One unexpected place that it shows up is the classic Stage 1 song from Sonic Adventure 2: "Escape from the City". A YouTube creator I follow played off of that and did a doo-wop arrangement of it, which is how I found out about it.

Okay, I've really got to stop myself, but one more shared chord progression: the choruses of "This Love" by Maroon 5 and "Cruel Angel's Thesis" (the OP from Neon Genesis Evangelion) are both in the same key and have the same minor circle of fifths progression: i-iv-VII-III (so in C minor that'd be Cm-Fm-Bb-Eb).

(sorry for rambling—I don't really expect a reply, but I just wanted to acknowledge your comment and nerd out a bit more!)

[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

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[–] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago