This page is Asleep in the Trunk — mode from the vocal. It is one of the projects Brandon built and put online. The grown-up details are below, tap Grown-up mode to read them the normal way.
The stem read of this opening is a Phrygian field, the b2 (Gb) sitting in the band and the b6 (Db) heavy on top. The bass runs an F engine that dips to its b7 (Eb) under a guitar that withholds a stated third, so the chord reads Fm7(no3), the i.
The mode is set from the top. The voice enters on Db, the b6, the flat-side color the record is built on, and works the upper degrees without landing on the tonic, Db (b6), C (5), Bb (4, a sus 11 over the F engine), then A natural. That A natural is the move. It raises the major third (3) over a band that states none, so the voice turns the field toward light, an F(add 3) lift over the Fm7(no3) bed, before the Eb (b7) pulls it back to the flat side. The vocal third here is the major 3, the third most common vocal degree in the section, so the lift keeps returning rather than passing once.
The drums are a near blank hat-only pulse, kick and snare dotted out. The voiced ratio across the window is 0.197, so the voice is present about a fifth of the time. The verse is mostly air, and the recurring A natural is the place the mode keeps almost turning bright.
In this verse window, 8.9 to 58.9 seconds, the band field reads minor (Aeolian) in the stem analysis, the flat-side floor the song lives on. The mode you hear is set from the vocal, which climbs onto its major third, A natural (3), the degree the analysis flags as raised over that minor field. The tension is A natural (3) in the voice against the abstract minor third, Ab (b3), that the Fm chord table spells. The singer holds the major third and does not move off it, and that holding is the IXI signature, the mode read from the voice rather than from the chord.
The guitar agrees with the voice here. The MIDI onsets show the rhythm part voicing A natural against the bass eight times, shapes the analyzer reads as [F,A] over F and [C,A] over Eb. So the brightness is the vocal major third doubled, the minor color coming from the field and the bass. The bass rocks between F (1) and Eb (b7) across the window, 27 onsets on F to 26 on Eb, a low oscillation that keeps the floor from settling as the voice keeps the third lit.
The chorus cycles Db5, Bb5, Ab5, F5, the bVI, iv, bIII, i of an F Aeolian field. Not one chord carries a leading tone, and the song contains no E natural at any onset, so the wheel rotates without touching the V (C). The chorus opens on the bVI (Db) instead of the tonic, so it reads as suspension rather than arrival.
The voice sits inside the loop as chord tones. Over Db5 it traces Db (root), Eb (9), F (the major third). Over Bb5 it climbs to a high Ab (b7), then holds C, which reads as the major third over Ab5 and the 5 over F5. The strongest measured vocal weight here is degree 5 (C), the note the line settles on, so the voice confirms chord tones one chord at a time as the wheel refuses to resolve. The lyric, 'I keep thinking that we're still in love, and believe you me, I tried,' rides that wheel.
The payoff audit confirms two real lifts, at 60 and 105 seconds, both with all five stems rising. The structural arrival on Fm (i) gets no authentic cadence before it, and the track ends by stopping rather than by arriving.
This is the one place the flat-side floor brightens. The section read of the band here is Dorian, the natural 6 (D) coming in where the rest of the song sat on b6 (Db). The mode is confirmed from the vocal, which reaches its natural 7 (E) as its most weighted degree and brushes a #4 (B natural), two bright upper degrees the Aeolian and Phrygian sections never allowed. The vocal third stays the major 3, so the voice pulls the whole field up for one short window.
The bass holds 1 and 5 (F and C) under it. The opening lasts twelve and a half seconds, 138.8 to 151.3 seconds, before the song closes back to its Aeolian floor, so the lift reads as a held breath rather than a key change. It is the clearest case on the track of the mode living in the vocal, the band follows the voice up and then back down.
After two minutes of the vocal lifting the major third over a flat-side floor, the outro lets it go. The section read of the vocal third here is the b3, the brightness surrendered, the mode falling fully into Aeolian as the track ends. The last bars move Bb5, the iv, into Csus4 and then plain C5, the V, and the track stops there. The dominant is stated and left hanging, with no V-i close.
The flat-side field holds the whole outro, Db5 (bVI), Bb5 (iv), then the bare C5 dyad (C and G, no third), so the final sound is the dominant with nothing underneath to pull toward home. The 164.9 second mark holds the longest vocal sustain on the track, about 1.67 seconds per note, twice anything else here. The song withheld release the whole way, and the outro keeps withholding it, ending by stopping on the V rather than by resolving.