Chika's "High Rises" and the Transformation of a Popular Form of Part Writing

"High Rises," the 2019 single by hip-hop artist Chika, enlists a vamp throughout the song. Here is my transcription of only the top line of this vamp.

This line receives consistent homorhythmic triadic accompaniment. In my first hearing of this music, I defaulted to an incorrect assumption about its accompaniment. I will introduce this incorrect assumption with a relevant but somewhat lengthy excursus. This line has six different pitches: D-E-F#-G-A-B. Removing either the F sharp or the G yields some pentatonic scale. Adding a C or a C sharp yields some diatonic scale. It is well understood that both the pentatonic and the diatonic scales play an important role in popular music. However, the same might be said for the kind of six-note scale -- what is sometimes called the Guidonean hexachord -- to which the six pitches in this line belong, or at least one particular employment of this kind of scale.

The number of pitches in a Guidoniean scale -- six -- is not a prime number, unlike the pentatonic and diatonic scales. A scale with a non-prime number of pitches -- let us say it has XY pitches, where X and Y are integers -- permits a certain kind of procedure: one can 1) find a smaller pitch set of X pitches within this scale that is evenly distributed within the scale, 2) transpose this smaller set up or down by step through the scale, and, thus, 3) generate a cycle of Y elements. It might be helpful to think of this cycle as analogous to a ring of blinking holiday lights; in the 96-light example below, X = 16 and Y = 6.

For example, in the four-pitch (XY = 4) scale on the left below, this procedure can generate a two-member (Y = 2) cycle of consonant dyads (X = 2) on the right below, a progression, or parts of it, commonly referred to as "horn fifths."

One place where this cycle occurs in the repertoire is from near the end of Smetana's Die Moldau.

For another example, in the two-pitch (XY = 2) scale on the left below, this procedure can generate a one-member (Y = 1) cycle of tritones (X = 2) on the right below.

For a third example, in the more familiar and scale-like twelve-pitch (XY = 12) scale on the left below, this procedure can generate, among many cycles, a three-member (Y = 3) cycle of fully-diminished four-note tetrads (X = 4) on the right below.

During a portion of Chopin's E-major Etude, these two previous cycles are woven together: mostly just  the right hand unfolds the smaller cycle mostly with every other sixteenth note, and the two hands together unfold the larger cycle mostly with every sixteenth note, although downwards instead of upwards as shown above.

For a fourth example, in the six-pitch (XY = 6) Guidonean hexachord on the left below, this procedure can generate a two-member (Y = 2) cycle of consonant triads (X = 3) on the right below. The half-note noteheads reveal how the '''horn fifths" cycle mentioned earlier is embedded within this cycle.

This cycle alternates between two of the four consonant triads available in the Guidonean hexachord: the only pair of triads whose roots are a step apart, one major, one minor. Above, those triads are D major and E minor. In most cases, one of these two triads is clearly treated as tonic, and the other triad serves as either supertonic or subtonic harmony.

This cycle plays a role in various forms of popular music that is frequent enough to warrant a name. It probably has already been given a name, but I do not know it. I speculate that one of its first uses was in gospel music, so I will provisionally call the employment of this cycle "gospel part writing."

Here are three examples of gospel part writing from popular music where the major triad is treated as tonic:

Here are three examples of gospel part writing from popular music where the minor triad is treated as tonic:

If the "High Rises" melody were harmonized throughout with gospel part writing, it would sound like this, with D-major tonic triads alternating with E-minor supertonic triads:

This is close, but not completely right; rather, this is the aforementioned incorrect assumption I made. Instead, this is how the line is harmonized:

Although the top line can be said to move stepwise through a six-note Guidonean hexachord, the bottom voices initially step through a seven-note D-major scale, generating the new triads of B minor and A major, foregoing the use of an E-minor and D-major triads for the lowest two notes of the melody. However, the gospel part writing cycle does apply at the end of the vamp to the highest two notes of the melody.

This interpretation of the harmonization of this melody as having some, but also lacking some, of the components of a gospel part writing cycle can make interesting what happens in the bass, which I have yet to show but do so now:

The bass primarily arpeggiates an E-minor triad, which is the "same" triad that the upper parts first entertained but then sidestepped when the harmonization slipped out of the Guidonean scale and into the D-major scale. This choice of bass makes more simultaneous and tonally balanced the two triads of gospel part writing that are typically only successive and tonally imbalanced. Through this mash-up of D-centered music up top and E-centered music down low, I relish the sound of not one but two different "soul dominant" chords (to use Mark Spicer's term): DM above E (dominant of A?) and AM above B (dominant of E!). But I also hear a remarkable struggle between two triads whose pecking order in the hierarchy of tonal status in gospel part writing is usually unequivocal -- I think this struggle resonates quite well with the autobiographical "origin story" Chika tells in the song.