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From classical music to pop song

Introduction

Pop and rock songs often borrow some parts of melody, rhythm or harmony of classical songs. When listening to (pop) music I sometimes notice, but later almost always forget the connection between the song and the classical piece. Since knowing useless facts can be fun, I have decided to write these "classical covers" down. On this page you can find my (very incomplete) list.

By no means do I want to judge the quality of the songs. I also do not condemn reusing music; reviving old masterpieces should be done more. Sometimes the original is better, sometimes the cover, and sometimes both are equally awful or heaven-sent; these subjective decisions are left out of this page as much as (humanly) possible.

It is very difficult to exactly pinpoint when a song is a "cover". Therefore I decided not to maintain a bare list, but also write a few words about the connection between the songs, ranging from a small theme or chord progression to a literary transcription in the same key. I try to mention the oldest occurrence in written music, which is very often from the Renaissance or Baroque, simply because mankind started most annotating around this time.

Feel free to contact me if you find mistakes, want to add something or have a question.

Music theory

Because in music theory everyone uses different terms for the same things, here I try to give a brief explanation of the terms as I use them.

Melody

Harmony

Guitarist are trained in reading chord schemes, like C-F-G, appointed with letters. These are absolute keys (actually they are not, but in modern times we kind of standardized on a=440 Hz, so I consider them absolute..). In this notation a C-chord consist of the notes c, e and g. This is a major chord. A minor chord (like c es g) can be notated in a lot of ways (Cm, c, etc.). I don"t use absolute notation here, so I do not have to choose.

I will use relative notation with I II III IV V VI VII as major chords and i ii iii etc. as minor chords. With this notation the scheme is related to the actual key (if the piece is in C, then I is the C major chord). I is often called the tonic, V the dominant and IV the sub dominant. In music theory there are often a lot ways to look at things. For example relative minor/major pairs consist of the same notes, but considered major/minor, because we accept a certain root key in it. (a minor and c major both only have whole notes).

Most theory "deals" with three note chords (triachonic(?). Of course it is no problem to play 2 or more notes together. Two notes are Lots of rock/metal music uses power chords (quint), which is played instead of the expected (usually) major chord. With distortion a power chord just sounds better and our mind fills the missed noted in automatically, so I will consider the "expected" chord.

When dealing with more than three notes, there is usually an explanation possible about the extra note (kept from melody, key, chord sequence or just belongs to the chord). C major is c e g, so if the fourth note is also a c e g, the chord is still c major.

Rhythm

Terms

The cover list

     I > V > vi > iii > IV > I > V
     - Ralph McTell - Streets of Londen
     - Coolio - Gangsta"s Paradise 
     - Pet shop boys - Go West 
     - Demis Russos  - Rain and Tears 
     - Nocturnal Rites - Ring of Steel 
    

     - The Beatles - Because (?)
     - Depeche Mode - Moonlight Sonata
     - Alicia Keys - Piano and I
    

     - Procul Harum - Whiter shade of pale
     - Yngwie Malmsteen - Air
    

     - Beatles - Black bird (saw mcCartney telling this himself) 
     - Jethro Tull - Bouree (Barre says in an interview that he learned 
          it from a music student upstairs (he can"t read notes))
    

     - Toy Dolls - Tocatta
    

     - William Orbit - Adagio for strings
     - Skip Raiders  - Another day
    

     - Rank 1 - Sensation Anthem 
    

     - Gerard Joling - No more bolero"s
    

    - John Williams - The imperial march (Star Wars)
    

    - Vangelis - Conquest of paradise
    

    - Eric Carmen - All by myself
    

Feel free to contact me if you find mistakes, want to add something or have a question.

• The www.coversproject.com contains a huge database of pop/rock songs covered by other pop/rock bands. Very cool site!
• Lots of info on guitar playing and music theory on Olav Torvunds website.
• Of course wikipedia has a lot of informative pages, on chords, harmony, tonality and an index on musical techniques.

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