Is B? chord in C major related to Neapolitan chord?
I know what a Neapolitan chord is and know how to use it in some usual ways. But I want to talk about the B♭ chord in C major. I think B♭ here is very "Subordinate". And we can see it always appears like (in C major):
B♭-G-C
B♭-F-G-C
etc.
My question is: Is B♭ chord related to the Neapolitan chord in A minor (the related minor of C major)?
The reason why I come out with this question is that, in modern popular music, the mode always changes between related major and minor (for example: C major and A minor)). In classical music, Neapolitan in A minor appears like: B♭/D-E7-Am (N6-d-t). So I guess that in modern popular music, people use Neapolitan chord in A minor to connect G and C (in C major) to blur the mode. But, I didn't find any evidence about this, that means B♭ in C major is nothing related to Neapolitan chord in A minor?
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Technically, B♭ is the Neapolitan chord in A minor, but when it comes to classical music we are generally doing functional analysis, or labeling chords in a way that indicates their harmonic purpose.
Functional analysis can also be applied to many rock and pop songs, but the example at hand is an exception. Notice that in your song, the B♭ chord doesn't move to an Am/E or E(7) as we would expect in a classically functional context. Instead, this song is using what some loosely call the minor pentatonic–based pop/rock tonality. There is a great summary here, but the essence is that you build major triads (pr power chords) on each degree of the minor pentatonic scale. In C, these chords would be C, E♭, F, G, and B♭. Thus, using this analytical paradigm, the chord B♭ is the ♭VII chord in C major.
You will here this sound used widely in classic rock, e.g. Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze":
|: E7#9 | G A :|
which I would analyze as
|: I7?9 | ?III IV :|
in E major. As an exercise, you may wish to try analyzing the chords in your song in a similar fashion.
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