How does G/B get to A/C#?
(Listen from 0:50)
The song is in F Major
if you see at bar 4 from [B] (Gm7 G/B A/C#)
I don't get the G/B, How could G/B get to A/C# ?
Is it actually E7/B without the G# ? I don't get it
and if you see the beginning of the [C] part,
is Bb/F not actually IV/5 chord (subdominant),
and just a "I" Hybrid chord ? to use the Bb note ? or a Isus4 ?
3 Comments
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If you look at just the scope of G/B - A/C# - Dm7, the notes in G/B actually spell out an E minor triad... first inversion, drop 2? (I'm out of practice with my Terminology :P).
But essentially you have Em - A?(Major) - Dm7.
You can view this as the typical "ii-V-I" jazz progression, without the 7ths in the chords (and in the context of Dm7 as your Tonic),
...or...
"ii-V to the relative minor of F(I)".
Gm7, G/B, A/C#, Dm. It's a IV, V, i cadence in D minor. The bass line uses the melodic form of the minor scale. The melody note F (the 7th of Gm7) resolves down to E as expected, but instead of a standard 'cycle of 5ths' C chord, the E is added to the G/B chord. Then back up to F (making it a G7 chord), another try at resolving down to E in an A7 chord, finally we rest on Dm. Nice!
In my reading, this excerpt is really best understood as D minor, F major's relative minor. (Although the piece does play around with jumping into F at [C] and 5 bars after [C].)
The G/B moving through A/C? to Dm7 is actually just stock melodic minor; it's IV6 through V6 to i. Normally in D minor we'd expect a B?, but the bass moving from B? to C? creates a somewhat harsh-sounding augmented second. As such, we often soften this interval to a major second by raising the sixth scale degree from, in this case, B? to B?. (In this case it's very similar to my recent answer in Functional analysis of chorale 'Wie wunderbarlich ist doch diese Strafe' BWV 244/46)
And yes, you're 100% correct that the chord at [C] is best understood as a tonic chord with some upper non-chord tones. We call this a "pedal six-four" chord—basically, instead of a root-position chord, the intervals a sixth and a fourth above the bass delay the "real" chord members of a third and a fifth above—and it's very common in popular music.
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