This week Robyn’s lecture2 had a focus on line progressions, which prompted me to consider songs that I liked which utilized them. As it happened, one of the first songs I had learnt to sing and play on piano contained a line progression – Step by Vampire Weekend3:
The chord progression follows the descending line pattern with Bb – Bb/A – Gm7 – Bb/F – Eb before turning around with a three chord pattern of Bb – Eb – F. The effectiveness of the descending bassline inspired me to incorporate one such progression into the bridge of my band song for this semester. In addition, I varied the progression so that the first time through it ended on F, but the second time added the secondary dominant E major and ended on Fm as shown here:
C – C/B – Am – G – F
C – C/B – Am – E – F – Fm
NB: Here is video from Forum of the song in action: https://youtu.be/w3L-YdOAOcI?t=1213 descending progression starts at 20:15
2 Habel, Robyn. “Line Progressions, Pedals and Ostinato”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1B, University of Adelaide, August 5, 2019.
3 Vampire Weekend. “Step”. Modern Vampires Of The City. By Rostam Batmanglij and Ezra Koenig. Produced by Rostam Batmanglij and Ariel Rechtstaig. March 19, 2013.
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