Chapter 3 Flashcards
The minor pop chords
How could the iii minor be used in a ‘I-vi-IV-V’ ?
Theory tells us that iii minor – being part of the tonic family – should be able to substitute for the ubiquitous vi chord within both our ‘I-vi-IV-V’ and also the Doo Wop version.
Can ii and V alternate on their own?
Yes. setting up gentle tension by delaying the cadence to I.
‘My Sweet Lord’ which features four repeats of ii-V before moving on to I.
Substitution summary – What is the concept of the diatonic ‘families’ ?
a songwriter can regard chords as not just being constructed from the parent diatonic scale but as belonging to smaller ‘families’ of chords within that harmonised scale. Indeed each of I, IV and V major triads can be seen as being ‘assigned’ minor chords to which they are related through either a major/relative minor relationship or just the sharing of common tones.
The Four-Chord Cycles revisited – ‘ii-V-I-vi’
If we now start the Doo Wop chord sequence a bar late, we arrive at an important variation: ‘ii-V-I-vi’
The sequence is used in ‘The Fool On The Hill’ (‘Nobody wants to know him they can see that he’s just a fool’ –
The ‘I-iii scale walk’ in the 12-bar blues
You can walk up for the I to the iii and then back down to the ii. Then end with a ii-V-I
-Heard in blues like Stormy Monday
What is the ‘I-iii’ move?
-should be seen as a dramatic departure from the now numbing predictability of the ‘I-vi’
-Its more slick sounding and is often used in the context of an opening change in a verse.
“I read the news today oh boy”
-Many of these songs then go on to the vi. “I-iii-vi”
What chords are in “The tonic family:” ?
I, vi and iii
What chords are in The dominant family ?
V and vii
What chords are in The subdominant family: ?
IV and ii
What is the iii chord called traditionally?
The iii chord is traditionally called the mediant, as it is the harmonic point mid-way between the tonic and the all important dominant. As a result, it represents root movement of a third interval from the tonic,
What is the diatonic Cycle Of Fifths ?
I-IV-VII-iii-vi-ii-V-I
a song can literally revolve around this cycle continuously or use it as a temporary stepping stone, a musical ‘merry-go-round’, jumping on and off at will.
Remember that the Cycle Of Fifths reflects root movement – not the quality of the chord built on that root.
Why should these ‘iii-vi’ moves ‘work’ ?
because of their root movement. For the iii lies a fifth above the vi and it therefore has a natural tendency to move to it, creating ‘stops’ along the Cycle Of Fifths,
What is The ‘I-vi-I-vi’ vamp?
This works because the vi is the relative minor of the I. In C, C major and A minor both have C and E notes. The I and vi are flipsides of the same coin
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
Used almost more then any other progression. Think “All I have to do is dream”
What is Diatonic substitution ?
when crafting a song, a writer will look for a chord that is different to the one that might have been expected – but which still enables the progression to function as he initially intended.
Can the ii minor be substituted for the IV chord?
yes. In any key, the ii minor is the relative minor of the IV chord and, as a result, the potential for substitution between the two chords exists.
What is the ‘ii-for-IV’ substitution (the Doo Wop cycle) ?
The four chord cliche but the formula is now spelt I-vi-ii-V
Think “Blue Moon”
What is the diatonic walk I-ii
The use of ii as the first step along the diatonic harmonized scale from the tonic
In the same way we saw I alternate with IV, we can do the same with ii. Think “Dont let me down”
You can also continue up. “Getting Better”
What does Ending a section with a prepared Perfect cadence do?
Simply by putting a ii minor chord ahead of the V, we are ‘priming’ the dominant and thereby encouraging the listener to hear the eventual movement to I from ‘further back’ in the sequence.
ii-V-I
Perfect Cadance ending a section
the ii-V-I here creates a feeling of a progression being self-contained, with a Perfect cadence taking us to a point of rest (this time with a melody that also homes in on the restful tonic). It creates a point of resolution, both musically, and semantically in terms of John’s sobering, soul-baring admission.
What is accomplished by Ending a section with an Imperfect cadence?
ii-V………………I
This ends not with a ii-V-I resolution but with the ii-V chords on their own. The tonic does follow – but only as we start the next verse after a notable delay in which we are left ‘hanging on the dominant’. The cadence is said to be Imperfect because of this ‘hanging effect’,
Why does the diatonic cycle of 5ths work?
I-IV-VII-iii-vi-ii-V-I
The cycle invariably ‘works’ because of the ebb-and-flow of tension and resolution that is naturally built into it, with the penultimate dominant V consolidating this flow of fifths as it cadences to the tonic.
Can ii-V-I be used cyclically?
Yes. The Beatles choose a cyclical ii-V-I, this time with psychedelic minor 7th and 6th extensions, for their ethereal vamp on ‘Sun King’.
How does Golden Slumbers use the diatonic cycle of 5ths?
I-IV-VII-iii-vi-ii-V-I
look at the symmetry of the sequence as the line ‘Sleep pretty darling’ cues the run E7-Am7-Dm7-G7-C. four of the seven diatonic chords in the harmonised major scale can work their way inexorably towards the final tonic destination in
one seamless run.
What are some sub-cycles of the diatonic cycle of 5ths?
many songs will be seen to feature ‘sub-sequences’ of the cycle, such as ‘vi-ii-V-I’, ‘ii-V-I’ and (last but not least) plain old V-I.
diatonic cycle of 5ths
I-IV-VII-iii-vi-ii-V-I
Reversing direction – the ‘vi-iii’ minor drop
the potential for ‘anti-clockwise’ movement around the cycle and a quick introduction to the ‘descent of a fourth’ is useful here. The notion of the iii now being the target for vi – rather than the other way around, as we expect – can also be seen as an important trademark of Beatles music and another route to harmonic novelty.
How does McCartney use
Reversing direction – the ‘vi-iii’ minor drop in “I Will”
‘I Will’ is a great example of how McCartney avoided being stuck in the Doo Wop rut, by jettisoning the Cycle Of Fifths (after just one hearing) in favour of the mediant, thwarting the potentially clichéd movement. This idea can be used as a delaying device, with I-vi-iii, keeping us in the tonic family for longer but with a distinctive variation of the earlier I-iii-vi ‘prolongation of I’.
How does Lennon use ‘minor drops’ from vi to iii sandwiched between I and V, in a ‘ready-packed’ cycle neatly mixing seconds, fourths and fifths in ‘Across The Universe’ ?
‘Across The Universe’ is a great example, with Lennon alternates vi-with-iii for a similar delaying tactic , prolonging the tonic through I-vi-iii ( drop to iii on rain) before leading us effortlessly to the second strain with a ‘ii-V’.
Can the mediant (iii) substitute for the tonic directly?
Yes. ‘There’s A Place’ where the dominant moves not back to I for a second strain but to an emphatic iii on the lyric “mind”.
In this way a song can give the impression of radically changing direction
when it is merely exploiting the possibility of substitution within the tonic family. This ‘V-iii’ is just an alternative to either the standard ‘V-I’ or the ‘V-vi’
How is the mini-scale ‘walk’ from iii-IV a useful idea?
this mini-scale ‘walk’ from iii-IV is a useful idea on which to start a bridge, where
it gently prepares for the typical ii-V push to the dominant at the song’s climax. It happens on the lyric “man please listen”
and “know what your missing”
What is the purpose of the ‘iii-for-I’ substitution for the tonic in the song Ask Me Why ?
The Beatles deliver the ultimate ‘iii-for-I’ substitution on the very last chord of ‘Ask Me Why’. Headed resolutely for a finale on the tonic of E major (after alternating with the IV), the listener can only swoon at the delicately unfolding G#m7
The mediant and melody
How does the iii chord allow a songwriter to highlight the natural 7th of the parent key in contexts beyond a rising leading note (i.e. the 3rd of V7) ?
By supporting the 7th as a chord tone (the 5th) of the more stable mediant, they achieved melodic colour. ‘She’s A Woman’ is a case in point. The melody starts by making use of the 7th in the repeated verse motif, only for the bridge to kick off with a highly rare, ear-catching jump of a major seventh interval to the natural 7th. Here The Beatles were using the mediant to distance themselves conclusively from the familiar strains of R ’n’ B.
How can the iii affect the listener?
With the iii, the key scale’s natural 7th dissonance is heard as the inoffensive 5th within a mellow minor construction (in subtle contrast to the bolder dominant). We need only listen to the opening change of Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ to hear it add instant substance to a song (‘Guess who just got back today’, I-iii).
What is the vii-‘V of vi’-vi idea?
the viim75 appearing as a straight m7,
better still, ‘V of vi’, an abbreviation that attempts to capture the fact that the chord is the dominant V chord of the vi chord to which it is headed. A vii chord acts in conjunction with a III7 headed for vi.
The listener is being gently programmed to expect a return to the G tonic chord, or at least a mild variation of it. But the F#m7-B7 move stops us in our tracks. with the F#m7 to B7 change, we have jumped on the Cycle Of Fifths and are feeling an inexorable pull towards the darker territory of E minor. More specifically, the aural effect results from the fact that the underpinning of the solid, stable G major tonality is being undermined.
How does the song Yesterday use vii-‘V of vi’-vi constitute what is arguably the single most famous songwriting move of McCartney’s career?
The message for now is merely that astute songwriters know that the chord built on the vii, followed by a dominant chord down a fifth, takes us to a vi chord in a far stronger way than if we’d just jumped to it directly from the home tonic, or ‘walked’ to it via a brief bass note on vii.
What does moon river have in common with Yesterday?
also hinges on the same ‘minute harmonic shift’, vii-‘V of vi’-vi the word ‘someday’
Alongside the Three-Chord Trick itself, the steady alternation between the tonic and its relative minor (which we can abbreviate as ‘I-vi-I-vi’) was perhaps the single most common premise of the songs of The Beatles’ early career,
Am C Am C Am
oh oh in mi-se-ry Woo My mi-se-ry la la la
vi I vi I vi
We’re in the key of C, with the I-vi relationship represented here by C major and A minor.
another ‘I-vi-I-vi’ is ‘Anna (Go To Him)’
The Beatles play the same cycle (now D-Bm) for the intro and much of the verse on one of their favourite Arthur Alexander covers. The song even shares the same coda as ‘Misery’ – this time three hearings of the two-bar phrase before coming to rest on the D tonic chord.
D Bm D Bm
I vi I vi
D Bm D
An-n-a you come and ask me girl
I vi I
Bm
to set you
vi
it’s déjà vu as track 10 delivers another unmistakable ‘I-vi-I-vi’ intro and faded outro on the cover of Bacharach/Williams’ ‘Baby It’s You’.
G Em G Em
Sha la la la la la la Sha la la la la la la
I vi I vi
G Em
Sha la la la la la la Sha la la la la
I vi
Still in 1963, and The Beatles opened ‘From Me To You’ with yet another ‘I-vi-I-vi’ intro:
Intro
C Am
Da da da da da da da da
I vi
C Am Da da da da da da da da if there's
I vi
Rest assured that before the year was out, the Fab Four’s follow-up album, With The Beatles, saw songs as seemingly diverse as ‘All I’ve Got To Do’, ‘All My Loving’ and ‘Not A Second Time’ all joining the party with a ‘I-vi-I-vi’ coda.
Lennon admits to exploiting good ideas methodically and thoroughly. For when reminiscing about the writing of two other songs, ‘Any Time At All’ and ‘It Won’t Be Long’ (the latter also on With The Beatles), he described them as: ‘C to A minor, C to A minor – with me shouting’. Confirmation, once again, that pop music ‘formulae’ aren’t merely in the mind of the indulgent academic.
On Live At The BBC, listen to the close of ‘Soldier Of Love’
The Beatles cycle again repeatedly around I and vi (now E and C#m) – it’s clearly the same musical idea.
Surely we need more than ‘I-vi-I-vi’ (not forgetting the ‘shouting’) to make a pop song?
Apparently not. By coincidence, the very song ‘Shout!’, by the Isley Brothers, repeats the cycle from start to finish:
where they thrash through E and C#m.
The ‘I-vi-I-vi’ is our first songwriting device. Hardly a ‘secret’, admittedly, but neither should it be seen as just a novice trick in use around 1963.
- The Beatles regularly composed with this idea in mind. Anthology I confirms it in action as early as June 1961, when it opened ‘Cry For A Shadow’
the same ‘I-vi-I-vi’ idea accounts for the entire verse of ‘Run For Your Life’ on Rubber Soul.
vocal
D
(I’d) rather see you dead little girl then to
I
Bm D
be with another man you better keep
vi I
Bm
your head little girl or I wont know where
vi
I am. You better
Fast-forward a few decades and contemporary pop maestro Dave Stewart sums up the ‘I-vi-I-vi’ in a nutshell;
‘The sound of the major chord followed by its relative minor is the archetypal sound of fifties pop, but musicians never seem to tire of its effect. The theme music of Twin Peaks features this major-to-minor, happy-to-sad movement, no doubt with all sorts of post-modern, iconic and ironic intentions – it’s still the same old chord change, though!’
After all, the ‘I-vi-I-vi’ has proved ubiquitous in popular music since rock ‘n’ roll began.
We hear it equally in the bridge to Del Shannon’s 1961 classic, ‘Runaway’; in the dreamy outro of The Eagles’ ‘New Kid In Town’ on the mega-selling Hotel California; and repeatedly in The Jam’s ‘That’s Entertainment’ and Oasis’s ‘Songbird’, to pick just four songs from diverse genres, spanning five decades of pop.
Some novelty can be achieved with the I-vi by splitting the device in half, following the opening I-vi with another from a different key – rather like The Beach Boys had done back in 1964 on ‘The Warmth Of The Sun’.
Verse
C Am
The love of my life
Eb Cm Dm7 G G+
She left me one day
C Am
I cried when she said
Eb Cm Dm7 G
I don’t feel the same way
Major and relative minor – making the connection
If we look at the construction of the chords themselves we see that the chords I and vi share two common notes. For example, in the key of C, C major and A minor both contain a C note and an E note, making the sound of the two chords related to each other. A minor is said to be the relative minor of C major; and vice versa, with C being the relative major of A minor.
How are a major chord and its relative minor heard as different sides of the same musical coin
It is through these shared tones that a major chord and its relative minor are heard as different sides of the same musical coin – their individual characters can be explained by a crucial difference. The ‘bright’ side of the major triad is down to its major 3rd interval (C-E); while the ‘dark’ side, A minor, is courtesy of that more dissonant minor 3rd (A-C).
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’ Rather than a repeated vamp between I and vi, arguably the single most famous chord sequence of the century features these two chords joined by those other two triads, IV and V, to create a Three-Chord Trick with a difference – a Four-Chord Trick.
[Verse 1]
C Am F G
Heart and soul, I fell in love with you,
C Am F G
Heart and soul, the way a fool would do,
C Am F
Madly…
The original blueprint for this (and various other similar four-chord cycles we’ll see in action) is often claimed to be Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Heart And Soul’, dating from 1938
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’m
G Em
Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
C D
Bah-bah-bah-bah. bah-bah-bah-bah,
G
at the hop!
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
(A) D
Come on, let’s twist again, like we did
Bm
last summer
G
Yeah, let’s twist again, like we did last
A
year
D
Do you remember when, things were
Bm
really hummin’
G
Yeah, let’s twist again, twistin’ time is
A
here
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
F
Well-A well-A well-A heavenly angel
Dm
I want you for my girl
Bb
When I kissed your sweet, sweet lips
C
I knew you were out of this world
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
[Verse 1]
G/B C Am F G
When I want you …in my arms,
G/B C Am F G
When I want you, …n all your charms,
G/B C Am F G
When - ever I want you, I have to do…
G/B C Am F G
…Is dream—–, dream, dream, dream
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
1.
A D
Hey, little darlin’ …
(Bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-de-waddie-waddie.)
Bm
Oh, little darlin’
(Bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-de-waddie-waddie.)
G
Oh-oh-oh where,
(Bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-de-waddie-waddie.)
A
Ar-are you?
(Bomp-bomp-bomp, bomp-de-waddie-waddie.)
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
E A B E
Born too late for you to notice me.
E A B E C#m6
To you, I’m just a kid that you won’t date.
A B E A E B
Why was I born too late?
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
G Em C D
Take good care of my baby,
G Em C D
please don’t ever make her blue.
G Gaug
Just tell her that you love her
C Cm
make sure you’re thinking of her
G Em C D
in everything you say and do.
The Four-Chord Cliché – ‘I-vi-IV-V’
[Verse 1]
G G
When the night has come
Em Em
and the land is da- rk
C D
And the mo- on is the on- ly light we’ll
G G
see
G G Em
No, I wo - n’t be af- raid, no, I won’t
Em
be af- raid
C D
Just as long as you st- and, stand by
G G
me. So darlin’, darlin’
The mediant and the Cycle Of Fifths
If there is one winning formula in popular music, it is those progressions whose roots follow a predetermined movement descending in intervals of a fifth. If we said as much with the Doo Wop turnaround that’s because this, too, is nothing more than a particular excursion along the same cycle. the cycle is an unashamedly formulaic system for exploiting the natural
tendency of diatonic chords to follow this predetermined path. It provides a very simple way of appreciating how generations of classic pop songs actually work in practice, as we will demonstrate in a full range of Beatles songs.
Let’s focus on the fifths movement - a song can literally revolve around this cycle continuously or use it as a temporary stepping
stone, a musical ‘merry-go-round’, jumping on and off at will, enjoying its potential for perhaps a few bars before moving on.
Complete songs have been built around this idea in such vastly differing contexts, including evergreen jazz standards (Johnny
Mercer’s ‘Autumn Leaves’)
[Verse 1]
Am7 D7
The falling leaves drift by the
vi II
Gm7 Cm7 F B7
window, the autumn leaves
V I IV VII
Em Em
of red and gold.
iii iii
Let’s focus on the fifths movement - a song can literally revolve around this cycle continuously or use it as a temporary stepping
stone, a musical ‘merry-go-round’, jumping on and off at will, enjoying its potential for perhaps a few bars before moving on.
Complete songs have been built around this idea in such vastly differing contexts, including definitive rock ballads (Gary Moore’s ‘Parisienne Walkways’)
Am Dm7 Dm7/G
I remember Paris in forty-nine,
vi ii ii/V
Dm7/G Cmaj7
Champs-Elysee, San Michelle and old
ii/V I
Beaujolais wine.
Fmaj7 Bm7b5
And I recall that you were mine
IV VII
E7 A Bm/A A5
In those Parisienne days.
iii vi
Let’s focus on the fifths movement - a song can literally revolve around this cycle continuously or use it as a temporary stepping
stone, a musical ‘merry-go-round’, jumping on and off at will, enjoying its potential for perhaps a few bars before moving on.
Complete songs have been built around this idea in such vastly differing contexts, including perennial disco anthems (‘I Will Survive’)
[Verse 1]
Am Dm
At first I was afraid, I was petrified,
G
Kept thinking I could never live without
Cmaj7
you by my side.
Fmaj7
But then I spent so many nights, thinking
Bm765
how you did me wrong,
Esus4 E
And I grew strong; and I learned how to get along.
Let’s focus on the fifths movement - a song can literally revolve around this cycle continuously or use it as a temporary stepping
stone, a musical ‘merry-go-round’, jumping on and off at will, enjoying its potential for perhaps a few bars before moving on.
Complete songs have been built around this idea in such vastly differing contexts. Perhaps the most appropriate use of the circle was ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’ (the soundtrack to the film The Thomas Crown Affair), whose themes of ‘spirals’ and ‘windmills’ mirror the exact same hypnotic path of the music.
Round, like a circle in a spiral,
B7
like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
Em
on an ever spinning reel
E7
Like a snowball down a mountain
Am7
or a carnival balloon
D7
Like a carousel that's turning,
Gmaj7
running rings around the moon
The inevitability (and certainly cliched nature) of the pattern may seem like the very antithesis of The Beatles ‘novelty factor’ that we have been so keen to stress. But the cycle invariably ‘works because of the ebb-and-flow of tension and resolution that is naturally built into it, with the penultimate dominant V consolidating this flow of fifths as it cadences to the tonic.
The Beatles first transformed its use in pop in the chorus of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, where it created a stunning contrast alongside the unadulterated 12-bar blues of the verse. Here’s the intro, starting (for simplicity) on the second of the two opening Em-Am moves. Follow the arrows anticlockwise (from 7 o’clock!).
With its underlying almost perpetual motion, this stretch of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is a textbook example of how five of the seven diatonic chords in the harmonised major scale can work their way inexorably towards the final tonic destination in one seamless run.
Again, here is a songwriting truth that would resurface throughout The Beatles’ career. Abbey Rood’s ‘Golden Slumbers’ is another look at the symmetry of the sequence as the line ‘Sleep pretty darling’ cues the run E7-Am7-Dm7-G7-C.
While all these songs represent extreme examples, many songs feature ‘sub-sequences’ of the cycle, such as
‘vi-ii-V-I’, ‘ii-V-I’ and (last but not least) plain old V-I. While The Beatles would no doubt have heard the sound of the cycle on early jazz standards, another of their early inspirations, Bobby Vee, released ‘The Night Has A Thousand Eyes’. That song features a memorable jump of ‘iii-vi’ before cycling
repeatedly around ‘ii-V-I-vi’ for the title refrain (original in the key of B).
Remember that the Cycle Of Fifths reflects root movement - not the quality of the chord built on that root. Because of this we will be revisiting it regularly in connection with what are called secondary dominant chords: major triads built on these same roots, and
which often exist almost purely for this purpose. Similarly the cycle accommodates sequences with ‘mixed ‘n’ matched’ chords of both major and minor quality - just as long as their roots follow the predetermined pattern.
Later, in a minor key setting, we will
also see how The Beatles used the system to revolve through a mesmerising ‘super cycle’ of all seven dlatonic chords. We will also
see them use it in pioneering fashion, moving anti-clockwise (i.e., down a fourth) in settings where it extends the Plagal concept ‘backwards’ before finally culminating in IV-I. And we’ll be widening the cycle to take in not just dlatonic chords but also non-dlatonic, or chromatic, chords as we move into darker, rockier territory.
Reversing direction - the ‘vi-iii’ minor drop
We briefly mentioned the potential for ‘anti-clockwise’ movement around the cycle and a quick introduction to the ‘descent of a fourth’ is useful here. For the notion of the iii now being the target for vi - rather than the other way around, as we expect - can also be seen as an important trademark of Beatles music and another route to harmonic novelty.
‘I Will’ is a great example of how
McCartney avoided being stuck in the Doo Wop rut, by jettisoning the Cycle Of Fifths (after just one hearing) in favour of the mediant, thereby thwarting the potentially cliched movement.
This idea has particular application as a delaying device, with I-vi-iii, keeping us in the tonic family for longer but with a distinctive variation of the earlier I-iii-vi ‘prolongation of 1’. This was a subtle development back in the early sixties and The Beatles would have
encountered it in their cover of Bobby Vee’s ‘More Than I Can Say’, a song that appears to be a four-chord cliche but which unfolds delicately ‘-vi-iii-II7-V-I’ with the drop to iii ‘making’ the song at the climax of the line ‘I’ll love you twice as much tomorrow’. Meanwhile, as early as ‘Please Please Me’, The Beatles were showing their ability to ‘unfold’ a major chord (in this case IV) by
using this same idea. Think back to the dramatic ‘pre-chorus’ section that builds the pressure cooker effect.
While the song is in E major, this section is all about building tension within the IV chord (A). The F#m and C#m chords
themselves, which brilliantly help to harmonise the rising line in the backing vocals, can be seen as part of the family of A that’s
trying to assert itself as a tonality (the vi and iii of A, respectively) - just as Lennon is trying to impress himself on the subject of the song. It’s through this that the song winds itself up like a spring, exploding back to E for the chorus.
There are many other such ‘minor drops’ from vi to iii in The Beatles’ catalogue, including songs as emotionally wverse as ‘She
Loves You’ and ‘Julia’, where they appear as sandwiched between I and V, in a ‘ready-packed’ cycle neatly mixing seconds, fourths and fifths. ‘Across The Universe’ is a great example, with Lennon prolonging the tonic through I-vi-iii before leading us effortlessly
to the second strain with a ‘ii-V.
Finally, let’s not forget that not only can the mediant extend the tonic in this way, it can also substitute for it directly. In this way a song can give the impression of radically changing direction when it is merely exploiting the possibility of substitution within the
tonic family. The Beatles had grasped this concept completely as early as ‘There’s A Place’ on Please Please Me, where the dominant moves not back to I for a second strain but to an emphatic G#m.
This ‘V-iii’ is just an alternative to either the standard ‘V-I’ or the ‘V-vi’ we previewed in ‘Drive My Car’. Yet here the new harmony
mirrors perfectly the theme of the singer giving us a fleeting glimpse of that special ‘place’ - his mind.
Meanwhile, this mini-scale
‘walk’ from iii-IV is a useful idea on which to start a bridge, where it gently prepares for the typical ii-V push to the dominant at the song’s climax. As Lennon cleverly constructs on ‘Nowhere Man’.
The mediant and melody
For all the novel root movement and harmonic texture provided by the iii, it is the scope that the chord provides for the melody which The Beatles exploited most cleverly. Specifically, the chord allows a songwriter to highlight the natural 7th of the parent key in contexts beyond a rising leading note (i.e. the 3rd of V7). By supporting the 7th as a chord tone (the 5th) of the more stable medlant, The Beatles achieved melodle colour in ways that few rock on’ roll acts had attempted. This type of melodic premise was in stark contrast to most rock n’ roll melodies of the era which focused on the bluesey flattened 7th, leaving the leading note typically associated with the more melodic, soft pop ballads of the era.
But then again, one of The Beatles’ most striking contributions to songwriting was the way in which they would compose melodies with both these sevenths - sometimes juxtaposing them within a song to create startling new interest. ‘She’s A Woman’ is a case in point. The melody starts by making use of the flat 7th in the repeated verse motif, only for the bridge to kick off with a highly rare, ear-catching jump of a major seventh interval to the natural 7th. Here The Beatles were using the mediant to distance themselves conclusively from the familiar strains of R ‘n’ B.
The cyclical vii7
One of the most eloquent and perceptive insights into the subliminal effects of Beatles music was made by American music critic Ned Rorem back in 1968. And it concerned just a couple of very specific, delicate chord changes on the Revolver album. “Here, There And Everywhere” would seem at mid-hearing to be no more than a charming show ballad but once concluded it has grown immediately memorable. Why? Because of the minute harmonic shift on the words ‘wave of her hand’, as surprising and yet as satisfyingly right as that in a Monteverdl madrigal .. .
A close look at the extract confirms that this moment indeed corresponds to a striking McCartney novelty. After a pleasant, walk up the diatonic scale, we reach Rorem’s ‘minute harmonic shift’ in bar 5. This turns out to involve the not-so-minute root movement of a descending augmented fourth - six semitones from C to F#m - which then moves neatly down a fifth to B7. This root movement makes for a striking variation from the simple, ‘close seconds’ that went before. More importantly, Norem is picking up on the emotional power of the new harmony that is tantalizingly suggesting a shift in the key center. After the gentle even bland - opening phrases in bars l- 4, vital musical tension indeed appears fleetingly on the lyric ‘wave of her hand’, in what is one of the finest instances of The Beatles playing on our expectations. The listener is being gently programmed to expect a return to the G tonic chord, or at least a mild variation of it (perhaps in descending seconds, as we hear in
‘If I Fell’). But the F#m7-B7 move stops us in our tracks.
The pull to vi
For the first time since the altered dominants of Chapter 1, we have moved beyond our cosy diatonic framework. Not only is the
viim765 appearing as a straight m7 thereby introducing a non-diatonic C# , but the following chord built on the mediant is a dominant 7th, complete with a major third rather than a minor third as our G scale would suggest. And this brings in a second ‘non-scale’ note, the D #. Technically, this is an early encounter with what will emerge as the vital principle of modulation: the process of moving to a new key centre.
Rorem’s ‘minute harmonic shift’ is precisely the fact that, with the F#m7 to B7 change, we have jumped on the Cycle Of Fifths and are feeling an inexorable pull towards the darker territory of E minor. More specifically, the aural effect results from the fact that the underpinning of the solid, stable G major tonality is being undermined. Indeed, the emotional intensity develops not just on arrival at E minor but from the anticipation created by the minor 7th chord as it alternates with the
dominant a fifth below. In this sense, the move can be seen as an isolated, new and fresh ‘ii-V-to-tonic’ resolution when viewed from the point of view of the impending E minor.
In the case of ‘Here, There And Everywhere’, clearly the context is a fleeting chord change in the middle of a verse sequence. When we do finally arrive at Em it is only for two brief beats, after which we are immediately headed back to G (from whence we came) by means of a conventional ii-V-I in the parent key. Some would argue that we don’t have time to feel established in a new key - and hence it’s not worth thinking of the chords in terms of a new tonality. It is in such situations that we can adopt a compromise approach recognizing the role of what is called a secondary dominant.
we can regard the role of that rogue B7 as being a powerful primer, taking
us inevitably to the relative minor. In this sense the appropriate Roman numeral moniker is not just III7 (reflecting the major triad) but, better still, ‘V of vi’, an abbreviation that attempts to capture the fact that the chord is the dominant V chord of the vi chord to which it is headed. This terminology will become clear when we see secondary dominants in a range of applications in Beatles songs. Our reason for introducing it here is to demonstrate how (on its very select appearances) a vii chord acts in conjunction with a III7 headed for vi. The secondary dominant itself is therefore a ‘partner in crime’ in producing this compelling cyclical harmony descending away from the tonic.
McCartney dldn’t just use this idea in ‘Here, There And Everywhere’. A certain ballad entitled ‘Yesterday’, recorded one year earlier (to the day), also featured a truncated version of this very same vii-‘V of vi’ -vi idea. Here it constitutes what is arguably the single most famous songwriting move of McCartney’s career. For pivotal to the songwriting novelty of ‘Yesterday’ is this disarming device, which is set in motion when we’re only one word into the song! Look at the very second bar of the verse.
Moon River hinges on the same ‘minute harmonic shift’, which succeeds in turning a pleasant ‘tune’ into a timeless classic. Here the chord is a bona fide vii765 , and we have similarly labelled the sequence according to both the key of E major and the key of C# minor purely to demonstrate that two interpretations can be applied depending on your point of view.
This dichotomy - and the ability to view such progressions in relation to two different tonics - may appear unduly academic. But it will soon emerge as the secret to appreciating the catalogue of Beatles songs that are compelling for the very sense of tonal ambiguity they create. It will also help in reconciling the seemingly contradictory interpretations offered by Beatles musos down the years over the same extracts of Beatles music.
