Although I am aware Vandross does sing in the key of D-Major, I believe Vandross did this on purpose, in order to create two different tonal centres. The first verse never once wants to rise to a D-Major chord for me on keyboard. When Vandross comes in and sings, I play an A-Major chord to accompany, and I eventually resolve back to the A. Although diatonically they both feature the same keys, A Mixolydian flattening the 7th, the tonal centre for me seems to resolve on an A-Major chord as appose to a D-Major chord. These Dominant chords are actually why I feel the Piano actually plays in A Mixolydian as appose to D Major.
Dominant 7th chords are greately assosciated with the Blues, and were used to add another element to the typical I-IV-V chord progression used in Blues. They use all 12 notes of the keyboard.įurthermore, Vandross solely uses dominant 7th chords to open the track. 1’ and you will see how him and dual quartet improvise using no specific key, mode or scale. This is an undeniable fact, and can be seen in countless songs even in modern music. But it was Jazz Musicians such as Ornette Coleman who took this idea of ‘Atonality’ and ’12 Tone Improvisation’ to a different level, and has changed the way composers and producers look at music forever. Experimenting with Chromatics dates all the way back to the Romantic Era, where composer such as Wagner tried to abandon the rigid Key Signatures of the Classical Era, and just experiment with chromatics. This means the section has little identity and can excite the listener, and sort of build up to the next part of the song. By playing chromatics, there is no significant note that leads onto the next, as every note is a half step apart. This again ties back to the point of having multiple or no distinguishable tonic. Chromatic scales completely abandoned all western conditioning that was previously expected at the time. The famous phrase “Learn the rules, and then break them” derives from this. Chromatic scales are fundamental part to Jazz improvisation, and symbolise what African-Americans were trying so desperatly to do in the early 20th century. Vandross descends from a G to an F#, before ascending back to an A playing every half step along the way. Just from this short opening snippet of the song (although these same chords repeat multiple times throughout the track) we can already see the large Jazz and Blues influence that will be present throughout this track.Īn integral part of this iconic intro is the use of chromaticism.
I put the key as being “A-Major” even though online it states it is is D-Major. You can evidently see the chromatics here.
I wrote this out on a program called Musescore. The intro starts with a quick succesion dominant 7th chords in a chromatic pattern, with a Major 9th in the bass. I would only look at someone elses interpretation when I wasn’t 100% sure on the chord I had picked, and wanted to see some reassurance that this was harmonically acceptable. When it came to learning this song I decided to go about it completly by ear, and use my own chords that I find to work with each part of the song. I also went into looking at what other influences could be behind the production of the Vandross hit. I have taken the time to distinguish as many individual techniques I could find that link to prior African-American genres, whether these be Jazz, Blues or R&B. The song is one of the most easily recognisable songs from an African-American to date, and stylistically takes inspiration from many sources which show the true black foundations behind the entire song. “Never Too Much” is a 1981 Soul / Post-Disco classic, written and produced by the late Luther Vandross.
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