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.

Whitney Houston, I Have Nothing and Elton John, Yellow Brick Road

What do these two songs have in common? They both shift to a dramatically different key for the chorus, and both require the singer to pick a difficult note out of the air with very little preparation. Let's look at Yellow Brick Road first:

Most of the song is in F Major, but in the chorus it abruptly moves to Ab. Since most people know the song very well, it is no longer a jarring change. But I imagine someone hearing it for the first time would struck by how quickly it moves to a new key and from tenor to soprano range:

Not only is it a note in a completely different key, the leap from "the" to "blues" is an (extremely) unusual minor-9 interval. That's not easy to sing even when it fits in one key. To singers struggling with this leap, I would recommending singing the "blues" note down an octave at first, so it is only a half step, then move it up. The second pass of the chorus only jumps from E to Db, but is still a difficult note to hit with no setup.

The Whitney Houston power ballad Don't Walk Away has an almost identical structure. At the chorus it moves to a key a minor third up, starting on the IV chord, exactly like Yellow Brick Road:

This time there is some preparation, as the Bb in the pickup notes establishes the new key. It is also a comfortable whole step into the new key, and the "landing" pitch is a common note between both keys. It's still a big moment, but perhaps not as jarring and difficult to sing as Elton John's key change:

The big moment in this song comes at the end when the song moves up a half step, in one of the all-time great modulations. She sings the three pickup notes then takes the final pitch up a half step, making for an awkward augmented second leap into the new key (at 3:40 in the video):

Such an epic moment! Trying to land on the Major 7 of the chord while reaching over an augmented step feels like tossing a book onto the top shelf and hoping it lands upright. There were so many different ways they could have made this modulation happen, and I love that they chose one of the most difficult. Try singing it without accompaniment if you doubt me.

For singers struggling with landing the D#, I recommend thinking of it as "Fa" in the old key, rather than "Mi" in the new key. I'd practice without modulating, playing an Eb chord instead of the Emaj9 for a while. If there's one saving grace about the modulation it's that the top note is in both keys.

Both are great songs, and both excellent studies in modulation. I never thought I'd write about Whitney and Elton in the same post. It wasn't easy to find commonality between the two divas, but believe I found it.

The Augmented Chords - Pop Music's Loch Ness Monster

If diminished chords are rare in pop music, augmented chords are doubly so. The augmented chord is a triad with the fifth step raised. (hence the name - it becomes visually bigger) It has a very open sound, and has a certain urgency to resolve somewhere, while also feeling very "floaty."

Much more common in jazz, augmented chords typically serve one of two purposes: as a moving line to lead to a 6 chord, demonstrated here in It Never Entered My Mind:

and as an enhanced V7 chord, shown here in Blue Bossa:

I was unable to think of many well-known pop tunes that contain augmented chords, but the first to pop in my head was the second chord of the Stevie Wonder version of For Once in my Life:

This serves the first purpose mentioned above, as a moving 5 part in the harmony. The Ben Folds Five does the exact same thing in their song Underground (starting at :38):

The use of an augmented V chord is so blasé to jazz musicians that it doesn't really stick out too much when it shows up in a pop tune. Two that come to mind are the opening arpeggio in Billy Joel's Zanzibar, (although that song is half jazz and not well-known) and the opening chord of The Beatles' Oh! Darling:

I recently played a full show of Mariah Carey songs, and I really enjoyed some of the augmented chords in Vision of Love. There is an augmented III chord in the verse that inexplicably goes back to the I chord (:32) and then to a borrowed bIII chord (:47), one in the turnaround between verses (:57), and similarly for the ending at 3:08:

If I ever do a blog post on that song, I will probably spend it all talking about how great the bass is.

Last, my favorite augmented chord in a pop song might be the intro to Billy Joel's 1986 ballad Temptation:

It does everything that I love in a chord; that is, nothing it's supposed to do. We go from the I chord to an augmented bVI chord (or whatever the heck you want to call it) then back to I, and later to the IV chord to start the verses. That last move actually makes some sense, as it is basically an inverted V/VI chord. It is the bass movement that makes it somewhat jarring, but also unique.

If I think of other examples I will update this post, but for now I think Billy Joel wins the Augmented Chord Award, if there were such thing. For now, the best I can do is this:

I hope he likes it.

The Diminished Chord - Rare But Awesome!

I was listening to one of my favorite lesser-known Ben Folds Five songs, Eddie Walker, and was struck by all the diminished chords in the bridge. There is a particularly epic one at the end of the bridge, in multi-part harmony, leading to the final chorus. The bridge starts around 1:43 (pardon the weird video):

The big moment is at 2:08 and it might be my favorite diminished chord ever, both for the musical power and the unusual way it is used. (diminished iv chord leading to iii)

This got me wondering why diminished chords are so uncommon in pop music, and what well-known songs have them. I racked my brain to think of some that people would know and am highlighting a few of my favorites. But first:

What is a diminished chord?

The diminished chord is one of the four major types of triads that make up most of Western music. Here they are in C:

Major and minor chords, in one shape or another, constitute most western pop music. Diminished and augmented chords are much much less common. They are the libertarian and green parties of the music world.

The diminished chord has the 3rd and 5th steps flatted, and has a "tense" sound when taken out of context:

The chord is seen prominently in classical music and in Jazz and show tunes (particularly older ones). It is hard to imagine Bach or Joplin without it. In Baroque and Classical music, as well as in old standards it is typically used as a substitute for the V chord, often as a passing chord between two adjacent chords. See, for example, the first few measures of the Rodgers/Hart classic Bewitched:

The diminished 7th chord has an extra note, the double-flatted 7 (or six), but for aural purposes is almost always interchangeable with a regular diminished chord, so for this article I'm focusing on either one. I am not including its distant cousin, the half-diminished chord, which serves a different purpose and is a topic for another day.

---

Example 1 - Garth Brooks, Friends in Low Places

I choose Friends in Low Places because Garth Brooks spells it out so unambiguously on the guitar, only seconds into the song. It works just like the diminished chord in the first couple measures of Bewitched above, as a bridge between the I and ii chords. I like thinking that this song probably single-handedly made thousands of amateur guitarists everywhere have to learn a new, completely different chord from the open G, C, and D they were used to.

Example 2 - Michael Jackson, Thriller

The chord is at :33, right before the whole band kicks in. I love the way it adds to the tension and gives the song a gothic feel. It is also unusual in that it is not used as a leading tone chord. The diminished chord is based on the tonic, yet somehow feels like it's leading to the tonic at the same time.

Example 3 - Plush, Stone Temple Pilots

Every kid who owned a guitar in 1992 knew how to play this song. The second chord of the intro riff is diminished. This is another unusual use of the chord, as a diminished i6, leading up to a kind of ii65 chord. With out the distorted guitars this could sound very barber shop, and might work well in a mash-up with Moonglow.

Example 4 - We Are The Champions, Queen

It's not so difficult to find diminished chords in Queen songs. Bohemian Rhapsody has many, particularly in the neo-opratic parts of the songs. Champions has some great ones in the chorus, after "til the end" and the second "we are the champions!" after that. It's easy to imagine how the song could have been written without those chords, and it wouldn't sound nearly as triumphant.

---

I thought of many other songs while writing this post. Here is a short list; I'm sure many more will come to me in the future, now that I am listening for them.

Benny and the Jets, Elton John - there is a diminished chord in the verse, again bridging the I and ii chords.

God Only Knows, The Beach Boys - this is one of my favorites, because of the unusual way it is approached and the melody over it.

Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel - the chorus contains a couple diminished chords, which help give it a gospel feel.

Michelle, The Beatles - with the lyric "go together" in the verse, there is an ingenious diminished chord, outlined in the melody and supported by the backup vocals.

This Love, Maroon 5 - I love this one. The fourth chord in the verse sounds very Bach-esque and does not lead you directly back to i, as you would suspect, but to a V6 chord.

If I Ain't Got You, Alicia Keys - in the second stanza of the verse, she uses a diminished chord between I and ii instead of the vi that she plays in the first stanza.

Shed a Little Light, James Taylor - the opening chord and a couple during the moving part are diminished.

She's Out of my Life, Michael Jackson - this song has a very prominent and unusual diminished I (or inverted I) chord early in each verse.

Please let me know if you think of any other good ones!

Marc Cohn - Walking in Memphis. One Hit, But Not On One.

Marc Cohn came and went in the early 90s, a classic one-hit wonder. Winning the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1991, he's done very little since, other than releasing another album, a spattering of collections and live recordings, and getting shot in the head.

I have to give Cohn credit; in that narrow crevasse between the mohawks and acid-washed jeans of the 80s and the hammer pants and breakdancing ninja turtles of the early 90s he made some really nice folk rock music. His album Marc Cohn has the feel of really competent musicians who aren't trying too hard. For that, I feel like it's worth a revisit. The album credits include Don Alias, Steve Gadd, James Taylor and a host of other studio musicians who are probably amazing though not recognizable by name.

Walking in Memphis is beautifully recorded, as I listen to it for the first time in a while on good headphones. (incidentally, it was mastered by present Mainer Bob Ludwig, a couple years before he started his business in Portland) The rhythm instruments are layered beautifully, with piano, synth sounds, guitars, organs never really getting in the way of each other. There are many tasteful, nuanced choices like the way the bass lays out until halfway through the second verse, the piano part changing in the second verse, all sorts of colorful synth notes in the bridge and very careful dynamics throughout. Really, with good headphones it is striking how well-mixed this song is.

What gets me is the rhythm, because I am sure as a kid I heard it wrong. I'm a sucker for music that I realize I have been hearing incorrectly. There are many ways to botch the piano part; one is to add thirds to the chords. It is a IV, V, I, vi in C Major, but none of the chords have thirds in the piano part, just open fifths.

More likely, people tend to square up the rhythm. Especially since the time is nebulous when he plays the main piano part, it is easy to square it up in your head but the strongly accented root notes should actually all be anticipations. Here is exactly how it shouldn't be played:

People often square it up like this because it is easier to play and sing at the same time. Here it is done correctly:

(for those trying to play it on the piano, I recommend playing the first two notes of each chord in the left hand, the second two in the right hand)

Note that the first chord starts on the down beat, so there are only three notes (the high C is omitted). Besides being a pretty hip syncopation, the pattern played with the sustain pedal creates lingering color tones for each chord. The high D on the G chord carries into the C, and so forth. This makes the chords sound like this: FM7, Gsus, C2, Am7. It manages to be simple (easy pattern, no thirds) and elaborate (syncopated, color notes and suspensions implied) at the same time.

So "hats off" to Marc Cohn. You could probably make a strong case that Boyz II Men should have won the Best New Artist Grammy that year, but I really appreciate his musical competence and unpretentious roots-style songwriting. For those who enjoy Cohn, I recommend checking out his Silver Thunderbird, which was one of my favorite songs as a kid. One hit is more than I've ever had, and I think his praise was well-deserved. Here's hoping Marc Cohn has a long happy life and never gets shot in the head again.