Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz - Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Remix)

House and dance songs like these tend to focus more on atmosphere than directionality and due to this they have rather ambiguous chord progressions. This slightly hails back to the Impressionist period of the late 19th/early 20th Centuries where French composers Debussy and Ravel composed in this nature almost as a rebellion against the mainstream German Western music and also as a way of discovering individuality. Like in Impressionist paintings (see Monet), the idea of 'suggesting' something rather than actually showing it is demonstrated with ambiguity of tonal structure and the use of chords for sonority over functionality and hence the main focus is the atmosphere.

Songs in this once-emerging-now-ever-popular style of electronic/house/dance possess similar traits in the fact that their chord progressions are rather ambiguous. They don't provide a directional tonal structure like in typical pop songs, as evident in the very strong use of interrupted cadences (V-vi) and the favouring of Chords III/iii or even the extremely unconventional VII (see Don't You Worry Child). The effect this has makes the listener focus rather on the timbre of sounds and the atmosphere and evoked emotion is found from the actual production of the song.

This explains why they have been such a variety of popular dance songs. Sound production and technology has allowed an almost limitless of different types of sounds to be created and they each evoke something different to the listener. Examples include the robotic metallic basses of dubstep, the purer 'pingy' higher pitched tones of Avicii, the 'video-game-esque' electronic sounds of Calvin Harris, acoustic guitars embraced by Milky Chance (and this song), classical instruments or even a saxophone. With such a focus on actual sound and timbre over harmony and pitch, the chords therefore act almost as a place holder to allow these other musical elements to shine. This isn't to say that the chord progression is irrelevant though, they just hold a different purpose. And as demonstrated earlier, their 'indirectionality' gives dance song sense of timelessness and this again helps with the creation of atmosphere.

This leads to why many dance songs have a sense of being everlasting, continued continuity and 'unfinished-ness.' You may notice that dance songs never end on a perfect cadence - they never sound like they end on a proper chord - and that the song could be continued afterwards. This is due to such an ambiguous and undefined chord progression that dance songs never actually feel like ending and producers are forced to use sudden fade-outs to end radio edits of dance songs. There is a purpose for this though. Producers and DJs don't allow their songs to have a proper sense of conclusion because this gives them the freedom to mix into other songs and continue the momentum into the next track.

"Prayer In C" is no exception to these elements of dance music, but because of the way the chords are structured, I really question if this is in C Major. The continued use of imperfect cadences and the constant switching between C and A minor rather gives this song a sense of bitonality, 2 harmonic keys. The fact that it starts on an A minor chord has me more convinced that this should be called "Prayer in A" but once again, it could be debated either way and it is just too ambiguous.

This is where I am going to be told that the title is derived from an original that I am yet to hear and that my spiel is therefore completely irrelevant. I think that is once again debatable and I will finish that is a very solid dance song with a really cool vibe to it.