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Great Lennon chord changes - "Love"
19 Feb 2006 14:59:20 -0800
rec.music.beatles
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Chuck...
Chuck...
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Oops, let me correct myself before someone else does...
The chords for that particular sequence of "Imagine" go "(F) you may
(G) say I'm a (C) dreamer (E7)."
poisoned rose...
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I don't find anything uniquely "Lennon-esque" about that chord change in
"Love" but, yeah, if I was gonna attach any signature chord change to
Lennon, it would be the way he liked to use those major III chords as
transitions when he's trying to get from point A to point B. Someone out
there probably could post a list of examples.
Chuck...
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Which change in "Love" are you talking about? The first one I cited,
or the second?
brink...
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PR is referring to the C#7 chord in "Love." In the key of A major, the
major III chord is C# (or C#7 in this case).
Chuck...
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Hold on. I just now caught your error. "Love" is in the key of D.
C#7 is the VII7 of the key, not the III.
And the Lennonesque chord sequence is III m, VII 7, III m, I 7.
Which common songs have that sequence?
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It's found in a lot of rock/soul/blues/country songs. "If You Want Me To
Stay" by Sly Stone, "When Doves Cry" by Prince, "Stand By Your Man" by Tammy
Wynette, and "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack are all famous examples of
its use.
Do you think those songs sound Lennonesque?
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poisoned rose...
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The first one. The second one is barely distinctive enough to be worth
mentioning, as far as I'm concerned. A bridge which modulates to another
key? Old news.
Chuck...
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Where in pop music have you heard that before? Maybe I'm just naive.
Yes, modulation to other keys is common, esp. in classical music. It's
still an unusual sound.
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Chuck...
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Let's put it this way: most bridges that modulate to another key,
usually go from major to minor. For example: "Nowhere Man" goes from E
to G# minor for the bridge (G# being the major third of E).
brink...
Chuck...
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I don't know. Do those songs go from C#7 to D7? That's the Lennonesque
twist I was referring to.
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The bridge of "Nowhere Man" doesn't change keys, it always remains firmly
footed in E major.
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brink...
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The bridge of "Nowhere Man" doesn't change keys, it always remains firmly
footed in E major.
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"Love" modulates from major to major; and the one it modulates to is
not part of the key. It goes to the major chord of the flatted third.
(D major to F major). From what I've heard in most songs, it's not
common. Is it? And if so, can I have some examples?
brink...
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It's more or less the same thing as using a minor iv chord... D minor is
the minor iv in the key of A major and a D minor chord is the relative minor
of an F major chord. There are lots of examples of the use of the minor iv
chord: "Learn To Fly" by Foo Fighters, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" by
D'Angelo, "The Setting Sun" by Switchfoot for instance.
There are also examples of the strict equivalent of what you pointed out,
the bIII chord--"Strange Ones" by Supergrass and even the outro of "With A
Little Help From My Friends" use it.
I love the song but it's not a unique device or change...
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brink...
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It's more or less the same thing as using a minor iv chord... D minor is
the minor iv in the key of A major and a D minor chord is the relative minor
of an F major chord. There are lots of examples of the use of the minor iv
chord: "Learn To Fly" by Foo Fighters, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" by
D'Angelo, "The Setting Sun" by Switchfoot for instance.
There are also examples of the strict equivalent of what you pointed out,
the bIII chord--"Strange Ones" by Supergrass and even the outro of "With A
Little Help From My Friends" use it.
I love the song but it's not a unique device or change...
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John Gutglueck...
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I agree that Lennon's move in the bridge of Love is anything but old
news, but not for the reasons you cite. I don't think it's true that
modulating bridges usually go from major to minor keys. In the early
days of rock, the most typical bridge modulation from a major-key verse
was to IV, the subdominant major key (as, for instance, in This
Boy--from D major to G major). As Brink points out, the bridge of
Nowhere Man begins on the iii chord (mediant minor), but it doesn't
modulate at all. I don't think there's a clear case of a Beatles
bridge that does modulate to iii. The closest thing I can think of is
the bridge of And Your Bird Can Sing, which initially sounds as if
it's jumped into the mediant key (G# minor) but then drifts back
toward the home key of E major without ever firmly establishing a new
tonal center. Elvis Presley's I Can't Help Falling In Love With
You is a more clear-cut case, going from D major in the verse to a
well-established F# minor in the bridge.
You might be interested in a recent discussion of pop-music bridge
modulations on rec.music.theory:
I don't hear a modulation in the bridge of Lennon's Love either.
The F chord comes as something of a shock, but it doesn't establish a
new key. I disagree with Brink's suggestion that it's acting like
a minor subdominant (iv) chord there. A iv chord typically proceeds to
V (She Loves You) or (more often in Beatles songs) to I (In My Life).
The F chord in Love is a bIII (in the home key of D major) that goes to
IV, which goes in turn to I. That progression (bIII-IV-I) is akin to
the famous G-Bb-C-G progression in the chorus of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band--the song that established bIII-IV-I as a bluesy
substitute for the traditional IV-V-I. The progression is so striking
rforman61...
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A variation on that progression (same type of use of the "bIII" chord
as what I think Allan P. referred to as being like a
"sub-sub-dominant") also makes up the whole verse of "Back in the
USSR," right?
John Gutglueck...
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Yeah, in Back In The USSR you get the canonical I-bIII-IV-I (A-C-D-A)
preceded by a couple instances of a I-IV-bIII-IV variant (A-D-C-D).
"Sub-subdominant" is an apt term for the bIII, especially in the
latter progression, because it acts as a kind of lower neighbor to the
subdominant chord in much the same way that the subtonic chord (bVII)
often acts in relation to the tonic chord.
The I-IV-bIII-IV variant is such a natural rock and roll progression,
I'm surprised that it hasn't been endlessly cloned--I can't think
of another song that uses it. Can you? As for precedents, I'd been
wondering lately whether McCartney might not have gotten the idea from
the Four Tops' 1967 hit, You Keep Running Away, which repeats
I-IV-bIII-bVII (Bb-Eb-Db-Ab) at the beginning of its verse.
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in the bridge of Love because up until that point the song has given
little hint of veering off into a blues idiom.
A mastertroke, that F chord. Without changing keys, Lennon moves the
song onto a whole new plane.
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Condon...
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Most modulations I've heard were from major to major...E to F to G to A,
etc.
JohnB...
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Such modulations are common and go way back. Two that come into my
mind straight away are "To Know Know Know Him" and "A Nightingale Sang
In Berkeley Square".
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Some very distinctively Lennon chord changes can be found in the song,
"Love."
A couple of examples of what I'm talking about are:
1) Toward the beginning, when he goes from F#m to C#7, back to F#m to
D7. That little chromatic step from C#7 to the D7 the next time the
dlarsson...
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Note: John does a similar thing (but better) with "Ticket To Ride".
F#min => D7 She's got a ticket to ride
F#min => Gmaj7 She's got a ticket to riii--iiii--iiiiide
F#min => E7 She's got a ticket to riiiide and she don't
A care ......
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chord changes, creates a tension and dissonance that is uniquely
Lennon, and is brilliant.
2) The middle part, where he switches to an F major. ("Love is (F)you,
(G)you and (D)me.") The song is in the key of D, and F is not part of
that key. That's what accounts for the feeling of shifting into
another, ever-expanding universe.
poisoned rose...
Great songwriter, that JL.
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