Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of songs with chromatic harmony (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. ignoring the single-purpose accounts Secret account 04:53, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

List of songs with chromatic harmony
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Not a thing has improved since this article was last put up for deletion. It is still totally unreferenced, and in fact there's no evidence that any of these songs has any chromaticism (for example, a secondary dominant is a perfectly ordinary progression). From what I can see these are all likely perfectly ordinary diatonic music with modulations, altered chords, passing tones, etc., but in any case beyond the likelihood that nothing here actually fits the article title, chromaticism in popular music stopped being notable around, oh, 1895 or so. Mangoe (talk) 22:39, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:09, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


 * In theory, there is a place for this, but this is not it. I'm leaning to delete as an unsourced list per WP:TNT. Bearian (talk) 17:28, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:29, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

 KEEP. And here is why:
 * 1) It IS possible to reference this page.  However, there is little precedence for referencing this type of information elsewhere on wikipedia; reference types vary quite a bit.  If one looks at the "Composition & Structure" section of a song entry (ex.  Hey Jude or  Hallelujah), references vary from published music notation (which would only implicitly identify chromatic structures) to newspaper articles and blogs (which again, rarely explicitly state this valuable information).  Therefore, in response to objections about referencing, it might be helpful to hear specific examples of what you are looking for (need it be a publish scholarly article in the journal of popular music studies? Does music notation or a chord chart suffice? Is a blog legitimate?).  Deleting this page might implicate that we should delete all "Composition and Structure" sections from "wiki song pages."
 * 2) A secondary dominant is not perfectly ordinary, and it ALWAYS involves chromaticism.  Review the  wiki entry or any music theory textbook on this topic and you'll see that this is true.  You cannot be borrowing from a "secondary" key unless you borrow the chromatic notes of that key.  Every structure on this page (with the possible exception of modulations or tonicizations of relative keys) WILL involve chromaticism, and almost definitely will involve chromatic harmony.  The title of the entry is accurate.
 * 3) The page still has issues, but deleting it is not the answer.  Developing a culture of proper referencing (and again, it would be helpful to have a few guidelines) could easily be established, both here and elsewhere for music theory related Wikipedia.  There may be another place for this list as well (perhaps the music theory wikibook?), but until a consensus is found for that location, why delete this substantial body of contributions?Jplazak (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 3) The page still has issues, but deleting it is not the answer.  Developing a culture of proper referencing (and again, it would be helpful to have a few guidelines) could easily be established, both here and elsewhere for music theory related Wikipedia.  There may be another place for this list as well (perhaps the music theory wikibook?), but until a consensus is found for that location, why delete this substantial body of contributions?Jplazak (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 3) The page still has issues, but deleting it is not the answer.  Developing a culture of proper referencing (and again, it would be helpful to have a few guidelines) could easily be established, both here and elsewhere for music theory related Wikipedia.  There may be another place for this list as well (perhaps the music theory wikibook?), but until a consensus is found for that location, why delete this substantial body of contributions?Jplazak (talk) 14:36, 20 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The published music is a primary source requiring interpretation and thus unacceptable; musical criticism would be acceptable, but if such sources don't exist, then we cannot make the claim. But in any case a secondary dominant is not chromaticism; it's a perfectly ordinary tonic progression (a very brief modulation, in fact) that goes back to the beginning of the common practice period. That is what our article says, after all. And the same is true for the rest of these figures; in fact, they have names because they are part of the language of tonal harmonic analysis. Mangoe (talk) 21:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Music criticism & Music Journalism are pretty generic terms; if references to peer-reviewed work by "experts" are welcome here (and in many cases, these references do exist), what about blogs and forums? I can understand why a lead sheet might be considered unacceptable as a primary reference, however, they're good enough for the US copyright office.  As for the secondary dominant not being chromaticism, we seem to be using different terminology.  Chromaticism (as defined on the wiki page) comes in three forms: "modulation, borrowed chords from secondary keys, and chromatic chords."  These are the same features that are cataloged on this page.  It is true that chromaticism has been around for a long time.  It is further true that chromaticism had a real heyday throughout the common practice period (which ended long ago).  What is not true is the assumption that chromatic harmony is perfectly ordinary in modern and contemporary songwriting (in the popular sense).  Yes, we have names for these structures.  Yes, these names are part of the language of tonal harmonic analysis.  But no, they are not perfectly ordinary when you listen to songs on the radio.  Perhaps the objection here is to the term "songs," in which case the page might be renamed (again). Jplazak (talk) 01:06, 23 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 23:01, 23 October 2014 (UTC)



DELETE. if this is indeed a thing, then it should be a category (which does not need to be exhaustive), or set of categories instead of a list, which tries to be exhaustive. Bogger (talk) 12:51, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Delete. I am not convinced that this concept is notable. In any case, the qualification requirements contradict the article title. When that happens, then I have to think it is a non notable concept. The lack of references shows that no one is really writing about this concept. In fact the article seems to consider normal modulation to be chromatic. In that case, the notalbe list would be songs without chromatic harmony. Op47 (talk) 20:29, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

KEEP. If this page is to be deleted, it shouldn't be because the concept isn't 'notable' or doesn't exist. A few minutes research will reveal that chromatic harmony does exist, and the concept does include Secondary Dominants. 'Secondary Dominant' is also misunderstood here by some. A secondary dominant is by very definition, a chromatic harmony. It is a chord borrowed from another key / tonality used to perform a change of key to that secondary key. It is a chromatic harmony because it contains notes which are chromatic with respect to the key that the music is in up to the appearance of the secondary dominant chord. In order for it to be a secondary dominant it MUST be a chromatic harmony. It is one of a relatively few 'devices' or techniques that are frequently used to modulate the key of music. It is a staple in many genres (jazz, blues, etc).

It would be good if further details were included in the examples regarding which measure / bar the chromatic chord appears in, so they can be verified more quickly.

I personally found this page useful and very interesting when I stumbled upon it (I was looking for lists of songs with chromatic chords for ear training purposes) and I imagine many other musicians would find it useful or interesting.

Dale Newton (talk) 23:16, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mjaITr2NdkEC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=chromatic+harmony+secondary+dominant&source=bl&ots=4JWB1zyGxD&sig=OYLF1-QlvdY_VablU1yj4UhJskI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ncJOVLDuN8feaID3gYAF&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=chromatic%20harmony%20secondary%20dominant&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dale Newton (talk • contribs) 23:21, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Dale, it would make much more sense to have an article which listed examples of PD music showing the passage in question and providing the harmonic analysis. I mean, I can figure out where the modulation is in "Piano Man" if only because the the amount of melodic material in it is so scanty; in "Bohemian Rhapsody" there are so many modulations and altered chords that picking just one out is a little difficult. The sheer size of the list is a daunting thing, and it's only because almost all the examples are from the 1960s onward that it's as small as it is. Adding in the jazz age would make the list explode, as would the late Vicky and Edwardian stuff; it's largely limited in size (I'm guessing) because of the limits of people's music taste. And we're still at the problem that there are next to no citations (at least we have any now), and I remind editors that analyzing the sheet music or the chords is original research. Mangoe (talk) 12:42, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Mangoe. I agree that they all need to be referenced. In my opinion all examples of chromatic harmonies should be taken from works published by musicians/musicologists etc. As you say, it's easy to pick out modulation sometimes in music, but there are plenty of occasions where chromatic harmonies would would be considered 'tonization', so differentiation would need to be made. Also, 'borrowed' chords can take the same form but aren't considered 'modulations' if they don't lead to a key change. Can the page not be limited to music which has been analysed and for which the analyses of the harmonies are referenced? A list of this sort is potentially useful to musicians because in ear training we learn chord types by the sound, and a list like this acts kind of like a library of (musically relevant and often famous) examples. Also, using such examples is a great way to teach music theory. It's very engaging for learners when they have real examples. I'm constantly looking for widely known music with illustrative examples of theory in it. It would be great if Wikipedia had such information, not just regarding chromatic harmonies.

I'm not an expert on how wikipedia works, but I can't see why the page needs to be deleted. I sometimes see 'stub' pages on wikipedia. Could this page not just be edited/stripped down as necessary until it meets Wikipedia's standards (if necessary just to a poor stub) thus at least keeping it alive for people to add to it?

I don't think the list is so short because of the range of genres it includes. The examples could go on for 100 pages just using Top 40 chart pop music. One reason would definitely be that it takes most people a long time to check the chords and determine if they are really chromatic harmonies (not just diatonic harmonies with chromatic notes in the melody etc).

By PD music do you mean public domain music? Do you mean that it would be better to exclude commercial music from analysis? There are several reasons(some I mention) that taking examples from commercial music is advantageous. Why would it be advantageous to use Public Domain music and exclude commercial music?

Dale Newton (talk) 00:46, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I note Jplazak is effectively a single purpose account for the purpose of editing List of songs with chromatic harmony. Dale Newton, is effectively a single purpose account for the purpose of editing this nomination for deletion. I would hope that the closer would take that into account. I am more than half minded to report this to the sockpuppet notice board. Op47 (talk) 20:01, 31 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.