Famous Chords, And Why You Know Them

Some chords are so distinct - either in their timbre, instrumentation, or originality - that they are immediately evocative of a song, movie, or TV show. Here are some of my favorites, many of which I believe you will find familiar:

1. Minor Major 9 - This is a minor chord with a Major 7 and a Major 9, seen here:

Why You Know It - I call this the "James Bond" chord as it has a distinct ominous spy movie quality to it. You can hear it at the very end of this clip from Dr. No (1:39):

Since the first Bond movie, lazy composers have used this single chord for an easy scene transition.

2. D9 Chord - this is a dominant 7 chord with a natural 9 on top. I call it the "I Feel Good Chord" because my first guitar teacher taught me to play the James Brown song with this exact voicing:

How You Know It - 90s kids can relate; this is the chord played on guitar, combined with a whammy-bar bend, when Clarissa's friend Sam puts his stepladder up to the window in the Nickelodeon show Clarissa Explains It All (it's in the first 10 seconds):

3. The Augurs of Spring Chord - From Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, it's one of those "how the heck did he ever dream up that combination of notes?" chords:

This is a famous chord, well known to music students. It is a classic polychord, with E (or F-flat) on bottom and Eb7 on top.

Why You Know It - I'd like to think that people know The Rite of Spring from itself, but failing that the next-best thing is from Disney's Fantasia! Check out the chord at 3:54:

4. E7(#9) - Sharp 9 chords are unique in that they are not really major or minor, they are kind of both, having both a natural and a flatted third. This one has both G and G# (or F## if you want to be nitpicky):

Why You Know It - Most young guitarists learn this chord from Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, which uses this as its primary tonic chord. Hear it start around 00:23:

5. Dm7(add4)/G Chord - There are a lot of different names you could call this chord, but that would be missing the point. This is one of those chords where it is not the notes, but the exact instrumentation and arrangement of those notes that makes it so distinct:

It is the unique tuning and slight out-of-tunedness of the 12 string that makes this chord so memorable.

How You Know It - This is the opening chord to Hard Day's Night.

Besides being cleverly arranged, it is also a bit unusual to open a major key pop song with a minor v7 chord. Now it is impossible to think of it any other way. Can you imagine Hard Day's Night starting with a regular dominant 7 chord? Quelle horreur!

6. C Phrygian Chord - Now we finish with my favorite. This chord is the final crunchy climax of "Mars" from Gustav Holst's The Planets. Skip to 6:55 to bask in its glory:

Why You Know It - John Williams almost exactly borrowed this chord in Star Wars. It is no secret that Williams' score is heavily inspired by The Planets. In this case he uses almost exactly the same notes and rhythms. Check it out at 1:41:

 I looked at the original scores to both and condensed the notes of every instrument to the grand staff for easy comparison:

At a glance they don't look too similar, but in practice they sound nearly identical. The first has the notes C, G, Ab, Db, and the second has the same plus an F. I suppose you could call it a Db(#4)/C, but I don't think that label really shows its purpose. In this case I prefer to describe how the chord sounds and feels. It is like a modified Neapolitan chord over the pedal tonic, crunchingly begging to resolve to a clean I chord. That phrygian sound is key, and sometimes the mode is the best way to describe a chord; if someone gave me a lead sheet with a "C Phrygian" chord on it, I would probably voice it similarly.

There are some differences; Holst's chord does not include any woodwinds, so it is lower and brassier. Williams opens it up and adds the F. In practice, however - because most of what you hear is the brass, tympani, rough strings, and the mix of straight punchy rhythms and triplets - both sound nearly identical.

I'm sure its been mimicked repeatedly since. Check out 1:44 in this clip from Rocky III as Rocky is getting pounded by Clubber Lang:

Variations on the chord can be heard throughout the fight. I can't blame Bill Conti or John Williams for wanting to use it. Sometimes a particular voicing or instrumentation just has a magic to it. Something about that orchestral chord just says "WAR!" It really speaks to the art of music that you can't just have a formula to use a particular collection of notes to evoke a certain emotional response. The context, instrumentation, voicing are all part of the puzzle. In practice the art of the chord is much more abstract, interesting and beautiful than a dry theory book might lead you to believe.

Frozen - Let It Go

Now that the Frozen hype is starting to abate (it is, right?) I thought I'd take a look at the ubiquitous hit song and see what makes it interesting. I recently played the piece for a middle school chorus, and was able to dissect it a bit. No matter how tired you are of this song, I promise there is some interesting musical nerdery to be had!

There is no mystery as to why the song is popular: it is featured in a hit movie, is paired with a beautifully animated sequence, and has a super catchy powerful chest-voice chorus sung by Idina Menzel. The chorus follows the never-fail I-V-vi-IV chord progression, which you might remember from Cryin' and Hide and Seek. I swear you could put those four chords in any order, any key, and you are halfway to having a hit song.

While the chords might not be especially inspired, there is a lot to chew on, musically. Here are my favorite parts:

1. The Band Is Excellent - It is easy these days (and cost-effective) to synthesize all your parts and quantize them to a tight click track. Upon listening with good headphones it is clear that this song has a core rhythm section of studio musicians - bass, drums, piano. I would love to hear a stripped down version with just those parts and the vocals! I appreciate how ad-hoc their parts are, especially the bass and piano. It really breathes life into the piece. The orchestration is excellent as well. There really is no substitute for live musicians.

2. The Second Verse Makes No Sense - Musically, that is. It might seem obvious now that everyone knows the song cold, but the first time I heard the second verse I had no idea what was happening. When the strings come in at 1:28 it sounds like the beginning of a I-V-vi-IV, but then she starts singing two measures in, on the Fm chord. So I figured that was the start of the verse, just like in the first verse - very clever. It appears that way at first - Fm, Db, Eb, Bbm, but then the next four chords (Fm, Eb, Bbsus, Bb) are different from the first verse, for no apparent reason. It's very unusual, but one of those things that gives a song character!

3. It Has A Perfect Arch - Writing a good story arch, in music or otherwise, is no big mystery. Still, it is impressive how well it is done in this song, from the tentative beginning, as she builds confidence in the second verse, through the brooding bridge to the explosive last chorus and the ominous last IV chord - so well done.

4. It Sounds Icy - This is a little more subtle, but the use of bright percussion instruments and open fourth and fifth intervals gives the song a distinctly cold and icy sound/feel.

5. The Bridge - The middle of the song is where it really gets interesting. It starts on a long pedal Db (IV) but the mode is brilliantly ambiguous. See the first lick in the strings:

I love the way it drifts between major and minor thirds and sevens. Then in the next measure the percussion/piano/woodwinds take over the lick, but this time twice as fast, so it fits twice in the two measures. Makes sense, right?

Note the mix of C-flats, C-naturals, F-flats and F-naturals. The same thing happens when she sings; the melody has major and flatted sevenths in it. The orchestra does as well. This part of the song is clearly meant to reflect the heroine's tumult, and the orchestration does so brilliantly.

Bonus: Dat Bass - I mentioned the rhythm section earlier, but it is worth listening to the song on good speakers or headphones. I love the way the bassist plays the choruses. It's not particularly clever, it just drives hard. The best part of the song might be the perfectly-placed bass gliss at 3:02, right at the climax.


I've heard plenty of people roll their eyes and talk about how tired they are of Let It Go. Maybe I'm speaking from the advantaged perspective of someone with no preadolescent daughters (though my girlfriend's obsession with Frozen would rival any tween), but I always try to find something to like in any music. When I'm burned out on a jazz standard I like to find a recording of the Keith Jarrett Trio playing it. That almost always breathes new life into the song for me. Remember, the song didn't change, you did. There's no benefit in holding a grudge against a song. Just...let it go...

I'll show myself out...

Why It's (not) Great - Sorry, Axl Rose Is Not The Greatest Singer of All Time

A blog post comparing the vocal ranges of famous pop singers has been making the social media rounds, and I feel obliged to dig in and explain its shortcomings. The problem with articles like this is that, to an audience with little musical training, it can lead to news feeds like this:

Any collection of data or study really needs some context when presented for public consumption. And, to be fair, the source post is a little more nuanced in its discussion. I'd like to think that they would have fact checked it further had they known it would go viral. Here, in order, are my five major beefs with this one:

1. Range Means Nothing

This should be self-evident, but there is absolutely no reason why a large range should equate to great singing, and yet nearly every post on the Facebook feed made that ridiculous logical leap. Singing tastes are, of course, completely subjective. In practice, Otis Redding might make me feel more with a few mid-range notes than 1,000 virtuosic singers.

2. What Is A Note?

I took a little time to listen to some of the samples given and found them to be incredibly dubious. Can Axl Rose really sing an F1? The recording sounded like it had some rumblings in the backgrounds, but I heard nothing resembling a well-formed note. The same goes for David Bowie's supposed low G. Any supposedly sung note much below C2 should be met with great skepticism. Axl's very high Bb also sounded more like a harmonic squeak than anything he might be able to reliably reproduce in a melodic way. Prince's high notes are much more fully formed, but not particularly pleasant to listen to. For any list like this to be remotely informational there needs to be a stronger definition of what it means to produce a tone.

3. It Is Skewed Toward Male Singers Who Use Their Falsetto

Some men are capable of very squeaky high notes, well into soprano range, if their music calls for it. If comparisons were made on a chest-voice-only basis, AC/DC's Brian Johnson would have a strong showing as he belts out high F#s and Gs in Back in Black. Singers like Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen have actual shockingly low voices, but neither would be likely to sing in their falsetto so the range they use is purposely smaller.

4. It Is Inaccurate

I don't have time to factcheck all of the data, but at a glance I can already find some errors (besides the dubious definitions of what a note is, mentioned above). For one, Mariah gets up to an E7 in Emotions, not a G7. Steven Tyler's high E in Crazy is debatable; it sounds like the guitar is playing the note, but he might be there. It's certainly not anything he would repeat live. Almost every extreme note that I checked out on the list was highly debatable.

5. It Focuses On A Very Small Group Of Singers

If you're looking for the greatest singers (or those with the largest range), well-known pop singers represent a pretty small part of the human species. I once watched Ravi Shankar's cousin fill a concert hall singing a sustained low A2 with no microphone, but he'd never be on this list. If you opened this study up to the rest of the world, I bet the Tuvan Throat Singers would have a pretty strong showing.

A list like this is inherently flawed because it asks the wrong questions. If you wanted to make a case for which popular singers regularly use the largest part of their range in a musical way, I would probably throw out Prince, Mariah, and Bobby McFerrin as top contenders. But that would not be the reason I, or most others enjoy their singing.

When I was young, just getting interested in music, I loved the idea of "the greatest" anything. The more I learned and grew, the more I realized that there is no such thing as the greatest anything. Superlatives are an exciting, simple way to looking at things; but in the real world, especially in the arts - and especially when it comes to singing - real greatness usually lies in connecting with people, not in doing an impressive trick.