Brown/Who do we think they are, 7. The Tonal Language of Deep Purple Mk2: Riffs, Modes, Chords, and Progressions

Part two begins with a chapter by Esa Lilja that seeks to explore the tonal language of the Mk2 Deep Purple band in respect of their use of riffs, modes, chords and progressions. It does so in order to distinguish the melodic/harmonic idioms deployed by the band that constitute a seminal part of the musical vocabulary of hard rock and heavy metal. This is important because, as we have noted, Deep Purple’s significance in the formation of heavy metal as a musical genre is often downplayed or overshadowed, especially in relation to Black Sabbath. Lilja seeks to address this lack of musical acknowledgement by means of a corpus analysis of their classic 1970s albums employing a dualistic ‘modal/functional framework’ which aims to demonstrate how tonal characteristics are structured in Deep Purple’s music and to point out key similarities and differences between Purple’s tonal language and other styles of music.