Pedal Pointers

I'm not generally interested in music written to demonstrate technical principles, but a recent assignment to compose a piece making use of "pedal points" has been a lot of fun. There's a good, long explanation of pedals (sometimes also known as pivot tones) at Wiki, but a more rough definition might just be "a note held over from one chord to another." If we were to switch from a C-chord (C-E-G) to a G chord (G-B-D), say, the note G would be our pivot (or the only note that shows up in both chords).

When pedals are used frequently, they give music a sort of droning, static quality, and make transitions between chords fluid. (Power chords, used frequently by novice guitarists, can sound choppy because they don't make use of pedals. See "Iron Man.")

In any event, rather than bore you with theory, I figured I'd give you a few favorite examples. The first is "Everything in Its Right Place," from Radiohead's Kid A, released in 2000. You can hear the pedal in the keyboard introduction: it's the highest note repeated in each of the three-chord series.

The second piece is by Chopin: Prelude no. 15 from 1839. It's been nicknamed the "Raindrop" prelude because of a series of steadily repeated eighth notes, supposedly inspired by rain beating on the roof of the composer's home (with George Sand) in Majorca. It's these "raindrops" - gentle, then stormy, then gentle again - which are the pedal points here. Try to ignore the guy's facial expressions; they're pretty raunch.

Finally, there's "French Disko," a Stereolab single from 1993. The pedal here chimes out from the guitar during the step-wise moving chords of the verse. The back-up singer (the lovely Mary Hanson, who died in a bicycle accident in 2002) also reinforces it.

Hope that was reasonably clear. If not, just enjoy the music!