4 July 2004
Transcription: "Ritual" (coda) by Yes
In a previous entry, I transcribed the 1st bridge of Yes's song "Ritual" from Tales from Topographic Oceans. This entry contains a transcription for the coda lasting from 19:50 to 21:33, the end of the piece. I was interested in this section because of its freeform melodic development and harmonic structure similar in style to the bridge.
The full MP3 is here and an excerpt with only the coda is here.
The chord progression begins from a G chord bridge and continues as follows:
There is some repetition of chords, but no strong sense of key:
- Bmin occurs three times,
- Amin, Eb, Gmin occur two times,
- C#, F occur once in each of the two modes,
- F#min occurs once as the final chord
A pattern emerges when we look at the root relationships as descending intervals:
Ignoring enharmonic differences, we see a pattern of major 3rd and augmented 4th jumps until the penultimate and ultimate chords. Following the pattern, the Bmin should have moved to G and begun the cycle that started the coda (Bmin Gmin C# Amin, etc.). Instead, it drops to F# minor acting as a plagal cadence in the minor mode and closing the song cycle.
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Tales From Topographic Oceans, Yes
- The Revealing Science Of God - Dance Of The Dawn
- The Remembering - High The Memory
- 'The Ancient' - Giants Under The Sun
- Ritual - Nous Sommes Du Soleil
Transcription
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