What are the Gloria chords?

OK I've come up with some experiments:

1) Play the tune but instead of Em play a guitar figure of G to G sharp. This is way better than making a chord. If it sounds good as a lick, but not as a voiced chord, then it’s ornamental and not a chord. Em as a voiced chord doesn’t sing in that song. Try it and see.

2) If you have downstrokes on 1 and 3 and up on 2 and 4 different strings may be hit, and sound like a change but actually not be.

3) It’s a rock and roll rhythm guitar song which involves a stuttering guitar, which is incidental sounding by design. Try playing the D A turnaround without percussive, non musical guitar. It wouldn’t be that song anymore. The E is not the only chord in the song to be treated this way, and yet no one is arguing that there is an implied derivative chord from D or A. Why not? I hear that on the record too.

 

Wow, all this over 3 chords. Can't wait for the discussion of "Roundabout."

 

I love this forum.

 

The answer depends on what question you're really asking ("you" in general, not @drad dog in particular). Are you trying to describe what's played, or to prescribe what the chords "really" are by making judgments about intentionality and importance?

Doing the former is a much safer bet, and there the answer is clear: the main sequence has E > Em, unmistakably, while later on it's only E, played higher on the neck.

If you're trying to decide whether the Em is decorative or structural, to my mind the answer is that it's both. If we had E > Em > E in succession, then the G#-G-G# would be a clear neighbor tone motion, but we get G#-G-G instead, which is unusual -- almost as if it's trying to conjure a "blue note" by taking the contradiction between the major and minor third and shoving it in our faces.

The G#-G-G thing defines this version of "Gloria", but it's not for nothing that so many bands have omitted it. But I also don't like the train of thought that says it's just a glitch in the guitar playing; it's way too prominent to say it's "just" anything.

In general saying "this is just X" is much too reductive -- it's the type of statement that papers over the most interesting features of the music, and throws out information to make the speaker's point sound more convincing and simpler.

 

I'm imagining Bob and Tommy Stinson's version. I bet it didn't have any minors then! (Except Tommy)

It's heterodox I'll give it that.

 

I get where you are coming from here and I respect it - BUT, whatever the opposite of reductive is, you're doing it.

 

I'm going to ask you to be specific because it's page 3 and you are the moving party, at this point anyway. The bolded part is where you just lost me. Where are you hearing the chord? What times in the recording?

I disagree that it doesn't need to be either a chord or an ornament. If it's a chord it has a gravity that motivates and directs the music around it.

 

LOL good point there. I'm pretty sure if I play it, I'll have those passing notes on the open strings. It's go to laziness in my case. For many of us, these things are part of our sound.
If tasked with not having those notes, I can pull it off, but why? It would change the character of this particular song in a bad way. It's not the type thing you wanna tighten up. That said, these are good things for players to consider.

 

Are you saying that I'm unwilling to call a spade a shovel (or a cigar a cigar)? I'm happy to do so when it applies. But the people who are saying, in effect, "C'mon, it's just E major" -- they're saying something that doesn't match my experience of the song.

Right from the start, I hear the moving line G#-G-G over and over again in the guitar, so that the chord changes from G#-B-E to G-B-E on the top 3 strings. No doubt about its presence. Right before the E major chord high on the neck at 1:07, it sounds like we get G#-G#-G a couple of times instead.

I understand why people want to reduce that, conceptually, to "just an E major chord with extra stuff/funny notes" and to say that the E major chord is what counts, so to speak. But -- if that's what's happening -- I personally think that's a case of letting a concept stand in the way of hearing what the music is actually doing, over and over again.

If we want a big-picture view of the song, I'd personally say that we're situated on E something, and the exact major/minor isn't so important and/or is in a state of flux throughout the song. And that goes back to a long tradition of major/minor ambiguity in the blues, which doesn't need to be resolved one way or the other. E-B is the stable part of the harmony, and the G/G# third is variable.

 

I believe you meant to say 4?

 

I'm only replying to this post so it shows up again cause this is the answer, this is what's going on, and it ain't cause anyone has better hearing than anyone else or anyone is confused about artistic intent.

 

It's more like you're inspecting a hole your dog dug in the yard and deducing that he must have used a shovel.

 

The point is there is never a minor in the song at all.

What we would be looking for to prove there was is not a series of notes. We need the E played with a down and up stroke and then the E minor played twice that way too. There has to be three notes in the chord, with a bass. This Em chord has to transition to the D directly. And sound musical too.

If you are hearing Gs and G #s that's well and good but we already know the lead gutarist was ornamenting the session. He was not playing E Em D A though. He was playing a lick which implied E Em E D A, a rhythmic lick within the progression. In my opinion this G to G# is a guitar lick and not an indication of a derivative chord.

 

Tim, I play guitar and understand perfectly well that an incompetent guitarist will do exactly what we hear in "Gloria". I know exactly what's physically involved and can visualize exactly what happens when I lift my hand to go from an E chord to a D chord.

Can you understand that I grasp all that, and appreciate varispeed's post -- and yet I still think that the E minor chord that results isn't just a "phantom", but is a meaningful part of the music?

 

There is no minor 3rd there in the guitar. Minor drops are as clear as day when they happen in the chords. Play a minor third there and it stands out like a sore thumb. However......Van is singing that blue note at times though. Probably the source of the confusion for those that think they hear the G note on the guitar. Common mistake. It's called blues singing.

 

Exhibit B from the original post in the other thread. I know it's just one interpretation, but still worth an upload, IMO:

 

Did you ever wonder what Van would say? I mean wouldn't it make sense to just go with whatever the writer was thinking? I mean if this what what van was thinking I don't know if I can understand this song well enough to listen to it anymore ;0

 

Except, there is.

 

There is no reason for the minor drop in the chords. Van is singing bluesy. His blue note would sound diluted if there was an E minor chord. Wrong. Common error when the singer is using the minor third appoggiatura. E-D-A.
However, does his singing the dropped third technically make it an E minor chord? Maybe so.

 

An aside: The Gloria Chords would be a great name for a garage/psych revival band.

 

My point, though, is that everything you've said above is a value judgment: you're already making decisions about which details in the music deserve to be considered, and which don't.

Now, that's a fine thing to do when you're trying to be prescriptive -- when you're trying to make an argument about what's important and what's not, and what the artist "really" meant to do. But I prefer to start out with pure description: what's actually present in the recording, regardless of intent?

...ha, just saw your second post. And I'd say no, I don't especially care what Van meant to do, or says he meant to do! That's already putting a barrier between us and the actual, empirical content of the music. It doesn't really matter whether that E minor triad was struck with compositional intent or by accident. The starting point has to be that it's there, over and over again. If you took it away, I'd immediately notice its absence. Doesn't that count for something?

 

This mistake happens a lot when people hear a Mixolydian chord progression. Oh I hear a minor tonic there. El wrongo.

 

I know the difference between a rhythm guitar part and a vocal part. The guitar is in the right channel. Try isolating it perhaps.

 

Nah. You are making a common mistake when a player hears a mixolydian chord progression.