@SilentPaaw @Quentin136 Sign In - Hooktheory
this guy insists that Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives) by Unknown Artist Chords, Melody, and Music Theory Analysis - Hooktheory is in d dorian. I personally think it is in A minor but I might be wrong.
can someone verify this thanks
The verse is definitely A Minor. Even if the other sections are more ambiguous, they should also be A Minor. Per the contributor guide, “Theorytabs should prioritize keeping the key consistent across sections of the same song, unless there is a clear modulation in the song that would suggest otherwise.”
Now if the other sections had a more obvious different tonic, then it’d make sense to change the key. But in my opinion, it should be A Minor all the way through.
I think that it’s in D Dorian, even though D Dorian and A minor have the same exact notes.
The simplest way to phrase it, I guess, is that you hear more D than A in the chorus, which is the main listening attraction of the song. I don’t know if that even makes sense, but that’s how I see it at least.
Dm starts the chord cycle in the chorus, and according to the tab, there is only one instance of Am in the chorus. The G provides a nice IV - I movement as well, provided that D is the tonic. The same occurs in the prechorus.
The verse is in A minor though. The Dm and Em provide the IV - V - I movement to prove this. Then, analytically, the Am verse is the V to the I of the chorus. The prechorus starts with Dm to anticipate the chorus, and even ends with a G, which is the V to the I to start the chorus.
I don’t agree that different sections of one song should all necessarily be assigned the same mode regardless of what they sound like, but for this song all sections definitely sound like they’re in A minor mode. The D minor chords in the sections that are supposedly in D Dorian don’t sound like the tonic at all, and the G major chords in every section sound like they want to resolve to an A minor chord very strongly.
Definitely resting in A minor
I do apologize for the edit warring on this song - I had no idea this thread was open. I think we’re mainly wrestling with the effects of tonal ambiguity due to the nearly equal balance of the D minor and A minor chords in the verse. In fact, I might argue that the verse is in both D minor (Dorian mode) and A minor (Aeolian mode) at the same time, a double-tonic complex where the feeling of home shifts frequently in the song. I like Philip Tagg’s explanation of this phenomenon in Everyday Tonality II, pg.426. However, even with Hooktheory’s best-laid plans to distance itself from common-practice tonality and move towards a more modern way to approach analysis of pop chord loops and neofunctional progressions, the framework of the Hookpad app suggests it’s not possible to be in two keys or two modes simultaneously. That’s why we arrive at discussions like this.
But even with the idea of the double-tonic complex, I still hear the D minor chord as a stronger resolution point than the A minor chord. The song sounds somewhat unresolved if you were to end it on the A minor chord in both the verse and the chorus. Everything sounds like it’s coming back full circle to D minor. The nat6 melody note over the Dm chord in the verse even further bathes our ears into that Dorian sound. That i-IV vamp in the chorus is unmistakably Dorian as well.
When the composer of Ulterior Motives warmed up his fingers on the keyboard during re-recording of the song, he is riffing on the D Dorian scale under a D drone. The D minor orchestral hits riddled throughout the song also further lock in that our home territory is D. Seems to me that this mode was an intentional choice by the composer and there’s more reason to consistently analyze this piece “in the key of D minor, using the D dorian mode”.
EDIT: Added ref to Everyday Tonality II
A few examples of some songs with similar tonal ambiguity:
Can’t Get You Out of My Head (verse) - Dm7-Am9 loop before pre-chorus, Dorian is strongly suggested here rather than Aeolian because the melody always lands on D.
Rock the Casbah - verse is definitely in A minor (Aeolian), but the chorus points towards D minor (Dorian), mainly because the A minor chord holds such a weak, transient position in the progression. This is an example where I’d say there is a clear modal transition between the verse and pre-chorus and the song shouldn’t be analyzed in only one mode.
A BGM track I composed for Samsung in 2012 - it’s a plagal vamp between Dm11 and Am9. When I wrote this song I had no particular tonality in mind, just two interesting chords from the diatonic pitch collection of no flats or sharps. But retrospectively A minor definitely feels like the stronger resolution here as it is the last chord heard in the song.
This is in A minor throughout, without a doubt.
Holy cow! Many thanks for turning me on to Everyday Tonality. That’s quite a tome but it looks well worth the effort (I’m old so I may not finish it in my lifetime LOL).