How THE BEATLES wrote the PERFECT chord progression

so i was trying to clean out this storage space when i stumbled upon this little piece of paper over here and believe it or not this was the start to my massive appreciation to the beatles it was quite the epiphany you see this is what i got on my first piano lesson at the conservatory while studying guitar and it did two things for me it made me realize i suck at piano come on b major what kind of key is that five sharps who puts who even does that but maybe more so it made me realize how interesting and lovely the compositions of the beatles songs actually are so we all know these songs they are in our collective memory ingrained in our collective memory we take them for granted but then when looking closer at the pieces the arrangements the compositions it makes us realize there is so much more going on in the songs so today i'd love for us to take a look at the tune bunny lane written by paul mccartney so as we said the song is in the key of b major and let's see how just playing the chords how far that can take us penny laner is above [Music] okay well at least one whole bar but then we definitely need something different right so in part two we find a two five one often called a turn around as well because it brings us back to the beginning chord which results to c sharp minor to f sharp major and back to b and indeed it has a familiar ring to it right [Music] sounds great right but we need to get a step further to get closer to what ended up on the record because in the basis of the very song lies not the two five one but another very commonly seen jazz progression one six two five and back to one no it doesn't mean anything to you well we all know the progression it's for example this [Music] always look on the bright side of life [Music] anyway as we'll hear it sounds great with the song benny lane [Music] sounds lovely so now we can turn all the chords apart from the first chord into seventh chords because apparently that's what they do in jazz and it sounds fancy and i'm a fancy man paul mccartney is a fancy man so let's see how that sounds [Music] sweet but hey aren't we talking about paul mccartney he's the bass dude right the bass player and so far there isn't anything going on in that lower region so let's enter a walking bass the most obvious thing is to see if we can walk from chord to chord and yeah we can follow the b major scale down and we see that we can lovely but now paul does something great because he extends that descending b major scale down all the way to e where we where we actually shoot here the c sharp minor chord and why not because the e note is found in the c sharp minor chord already it's the minor third so it sounds great so he keeps on walking to e and then he plays the root note of the c sharp minor chord after it getting this [Music] and of course if you want to get back to the b major eventually we need to play the v chord it just works so well so after the c sharp minor the two we play the five the f sharp seventh and there we are benny laner all right so this is the first round and if you think that so far it isn't that special or unique just wait one second because there is something coming where paul introduces us to his sheer brilliance so where everyone would expect the same thing happening over again he suddenly creeps up on us with maybe the most unexpected court out there let's have a listen penny laner is above and showing photographs of every head he's had [Music] it's a b minor chord in the key of b major and it really comes out of nowhere doesn't it so this is something we call a borrowed chord we land the chord from the relative key the relative keys b minor so we call this modal mixture modal interchange and it doesn't happen that often on the tonic on the one chord so if this chord doesn't sound that strange or spicy to you that is simply because you just heard it so often you take it for granted but it is a very odd chord choice out there just listen to the original mix not the 2015 remaster the original sounds better anyway when that b minor chord comes along the entire orchestration changes it's highly emphasized so the snare drum goes away there's a new instrument that plucks the chord along with the piano so they really want you to hear that b minor chord they put it out there so it's the one to the six and then to the one minor seven and paul sings that minor seven note by the way [Music] which is very cool so now let's see how he continues in that b minor world all of a sudden we know he goes back to b major eventually but how well probably if i had f sharp seven but let's see what happens showing photographs if every head had a pleasure to know and all the people that come and go stop and say hello [Music] all right there is some spicy stuff going on so after that b minor chord he goes to a g sharp in the bass he keeps that b minor on top and then he puts the g sharp in the bass note creating a g sharp minor 7 flat 5 or half diminished or just b minor over g sharp whatever you wish but it is really unexpected to be honest i would expect the bass in that b minor realm going down via the b minor scale creating sort of an andalusian cadence b minor over a over g and then f sharp and all the people that come and go stop and say hello so that works but no paul chooses to play a g-sharp sound he's had a pleasure to know and all the people that come and go stop and say hello [Music] and that sounds really awesome there's just a little bit more weight to that g sharp right it is sort of again a modal mixture but now the other way around because now we're in the b minor realm we play a g sharp coming from the g major or g minor dorian ah anyway it sounds great so after that g sharp we go down one semitone in the bass to a g major seventh or a b minor over g and then again we go down one more semitone to f sharp creating that f sharp 7 sus4 to f sharp 7 going down and back to b major the first chord of the verse again so when we hit that b major chord again we just do the same thing the little children left him behind his back and the banker never [Music] but this wouldn't be a beatles song if there wasn't some sort of modulation craziness going on in there and yes we do change keys so in the chorus we go from b major that we just played in the verses to a major [Music] so where does that come from well apparently from paul's brain but how do we get there how do we get to that a major chord so we need a chord that pushes us in the right direction and we call that a pivot chord a chord it can be found in both keys so a chord found in b major and a chord found in a major that works well all the time so we know that the v chord really begs us to go someplace so what is the v chord of a the new key that would be e major hmm and e is also in the key of b major it is the iv chord so now we get something very cool after that f7 s4 [Music] we play so we use the e as a pivot chord going from the key of b major to a major and it is very strange [Music] that is how you modulate to a major so now there's just three basic chords nothing too fancy going on [Music] so nothing too fancy going on here apart from it being super catchy and memorable a major a over c sharp and a d major chord but there is a problem so how do we get back to the verses being in b major again i guess we need another pivot chord right or we could use something called secondary dominant for these two i guess because that second time round we cut the d major in half where i just stopped playing and we follow that with again three cheesy not cheesy it's just f sharp sevens again bringing us back to b major alright so how does that sound in the context [Music] and that is how it's done it sounds awesome right but we're not there yet because at the end of every song remember there's always two courses right everyone wants to sing along and be happy and they do something so clever which adds even another modulation to or are we going anyway there's something cool going on so in the chorus we always throw you back to the key of the verse right so in the chorus we are in a major and at d major brings us back to the key of the verse of b but in the second to last chorus the same thing happens again but no we don't go to a verse but we go to the chorus played in the key of the verse so instead of a major we play the chorus in b major and it just sounds so awesome [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] how cool does that sound it sounds so super bright right really milking that whole looking that whole modulation game such a lovely display of what we can do with a secondary dominant pivot chords modal mixture modulating it's just really interesting to to see how paul mccartney writes these songs anyway i made a whole video about the secondary dominant 2 by the way if you want to learn even more about it you can check it out over here and if you're just as much into playing acoustic guitar as i am i would love for you to check out my guitar course acoustic adventure this is made for everyone that wants to play awesome fingerstyle or blues guitar different playing styles like john mayer and tommy emmanuel going from timeless blues to a modern day pop sound it's all there to be found in the different venues there's an interactive map you can explore finding your own challenges as you go along it's loads of fun and goes over everything the modern day acoustic guitarist needs check it out at acousticadventure.com and i wish you a lovely day and please leave your thumbs up if you enjoyed this video of course and subscribe and leave your comment about maybe another song we can take a look at in a new video see you soon i'm going to penny lane in england bye

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 1,543,201

Keywords: paul davids, beatles, penny lane, chord progression, song, music, song writing, brilliant, paul simon, perfect chord progression, chords, turn around, paul mccartney, video, lesson, tuturial, acoustic, guitar, pivot chord, secondary dominant, why the beatles, the beatles, music theory, did the beatles know music theory

Id: v1rlPl5trG8

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021