Still Water (4 Tops)
“Walk with me.” Immediately we launch into a sauntering, unhurried rhythm kept going more with percussion in the treble register than with anything in the bass, other than a thoughtful, minimalistic bass guitar. The introductory four-note phrase promises a straight walk up to E flat, the presumed tonic, but stops on the subtonic, giving us a major seventh chord right away. For non-musicians, major sevenths are those guitar chords you discover by accident just when you’re getting bored with straight majors and minors with the odd minor seventh thrown in. One day you’re strumming a C chord and take your index finger off the fret and... hmm, interesting. Play again. Explore more. Find other major sevenths. String a few together. No matter how tonally far apart they are, they can be combined almost at random, and the more random the combination, the more you feel sucked into an unsuspected musical realm of mysticism and mystery and vague yearning. A musicologist will tell you that’s becaus...