Songs that use Augmented Chords

this video is sponsored by the piano learning app skoove anyone who plays piano or guitar or any other chordal instrument is most likely familiar with all of the major chords all of the minor chords the sus4 chords dominant sevens but a fundamental chord type which is often overlooked is augmented chords the easiest way to think about augmented chords is that they are exactly the same as major chords but the fifth has been raised so if we take c major and sharpen its fifth degree the g we get c augmented by sharpening the fifth we are making the chord wider we are augmenting the chord hence the name now augmented chords will usually be labeled either using a plus symbol like this or by writing org next to them and occasionally you also see them written down as sharp five as that is effectively what they are a major chord with a sharpened fifth now as you can hear augmented chords in isolation at least have a fairly unpleasant quality to them they sound unresolved and slightly dissonant but this certainly doesn't make them unusable in fact the opposite is true it's the tension building unresolved nature of augmented chords which is exactly why they've been used in songs by everyone from the beatles to abba to muse so today we're going to look at some common ways that augmented chords are put to use in songs probably the most common use of augmented chords is as a substitute for a dominant chord for example at the very beginning of o darling by the beatles we get this e augmented chord augmented sets the song up nicely as it presents some tension that then resolves neatly onto the tonic chord of a major perhaps the more typical thing to do here would have been to use e dominant 7 as this would also resolve neatly onto the a major chord [Music] but the augmented chord has a slightly different flavor to it as you can hear both e7 resolving to a major and e augmented resolving to a major have a very similar quality but with a slightly different sound a slightly different flavor this is because both augmented and dominant seventh chords want to resolve to the chord a fourth above them but both do so in slightly different ways with e dominant seven the seventh this d wants to resolve down to the c sharp in the a major chord however in e augmented the augmented fifth the c natural instead wants to resolve up to the c sharp both only travel a semitone to resolve but coming from different directions the beatles were far from the first though to use augmented chords in this way in fact the opening of o darling was probably inspired by the openings of chuck berry's school days and his oddly similar track no particular place to go which both start on a d augmented chord then resolving to the tonic chord of g [Music] up in the morning [Music] the beatles were quite fond of the augmented chord and used it in at least 20 of their classic songs allegedly george harrison even referred to the augmented chord as the naughty chord another example of the beatles putting their naughty chord to use is at the end from me to use middle eight we initially get a regular g major chord but then the beatles raised the fifth up turning it into a g augmented chord this adds extra tension that gives us that satisfying resolution when we then return to the verse but of course it's not just the beatles using augmented chords in this way the warmth of the sun by the beach boys also uses augmented chords to resolve back to the tonic just like in from me to you we get a regular g chord which is then upgraded to a g augmented chord and then this resolves us back to the tonic chord of c major [Music] and it's also not just songs from the 1960s that are using this technique for example blackout by muse uses an f-augmented chord to resolve us back to the tonic chord of b-flat matt bellamy also sings the augmented fifth of the chord the c sharp which really brings out the tension of the augmented chord [Music] so augmented chords are great for resolving the chord up a perfect fourth however so far we've only been looking at examples where the augmented chord is built on the fifth degree and then resolves up to the tonic there's nothing stopping us of course from using an augmented chord on any scale degree as a way of resolving us up a fourth another common place to put an augmented chord is actually on the tonic even though it's now built on the tonic instead the augmented chord still wants to resolve us up a fourth so this time the resolution is on the fourth chord of the key this is exactly what happens in crying by roy orbison in trying the augmented tonic chord the d augmented leads us up to the fourth chord of the key g major [Music] and a similar example is it's my party by leslie gore which uses the exact same chord progression as crying the unaltered tonic chord followed by an augmented tonic chord moving us up to the fourth chord of the key [Applause] if you're interested in learning to play the piano then you can get started right now with scoove scoove is an easy to follow online app that can guide you through learning classic songs by acts like the beatles abba and elton john use the link in the description to start your free trial today augmented chords don't have to resolve upper fourth though there are other chords we can move to to relieve the tension of an augmented chord it's the raised fifth of an augmented chord that gives it that tension because it wants to resolve up onto the sixth degree of the scale the chord a fourth above offers a great place to resolve to because it contains that sixth degree that point of resolution [Music] but of course the chord a fourth above isn't the only place we could resolve to for example we could also resolve to an a minor as it also features that sixth degree that resolution note the a natural this is actually exactly what happens in let there be love by oasis [Music] of course we don't necessarily have to resolve our augmented chords upwards we could alternatively let the augmented fifth revert back down to a regular perfect fifth in fact this is exactly what happens in the intro to let there be love this move from c to c augmented and then back to c sort of teases our ears by suggesting we're going to get that satisfying resolution upwards but instead falls back down saving the proper resolution for later in the song a similar example is the intro to mamma mia by abba once again the intro just pivots back and forth from the tonic chord to the augmented tonic chord giving us that sense of tension without really resolving it another great application of augmented chords is in voice leading during stairway to heaven's iconic acoustic guitar intro we get this descending line in the progression where the bottom note of the chord is descending by a semitone each time and as you can see the second chord is a g sharp augmented because g sharp augmented is exactly the same as an a minor chord but with the root note lowered by a semitone moving from a minor to g sharp augmented gives us a super smooth motion between the two chords creating this cohesive and satisfying guitar part when a chord progression is voiced in such a way to create a stepwise line like this where each note is moving by only a semitone we refer to it as a line cliche line cliches don't have to go downwards though like in stairway to heaven a classic example of an ascending line cliche is david bowie's life on mars and sure enough it features augmented chords the pre-chorus of life on mars begins on this inverted a flat chord with the e flat in the bass then with each subsequent bar the notes of the chords remain the same apart from the lowest note which rises by a semitone each time so we go from a flat over e flat to e augmented to f minor and then a flat seven over g flat this pattern then happens again for the second half of the pre-chorus but this time starting on a d flat chord once again the notes of each chord remain the same apart from that rising bass note that gives us this augmented chord here [Music] now with line cliches i don't actually think the thought process of composers is i'm going to use an augmented chord here in my line cliche i think instead what they're probably doing is starting with a particular chord and then just moving one of the degrees by a step each time and the progression they're winding up with gives them an augmented chord an odd quirk of augmented chords and something that's good to be aware of is that they can't be inverted inverting is when you take the notes of a chord but you reorder them so a different note is now at the bottom so if i take the notes of c major but reorder them so the g is at the bottom this is now a c major second inversion chord or what we could label as c over g but if we try to do the same thing with an augmented chord we'll run into a weird problem if i take c augmented for example and invert it so the e is at the bottom i could technically call this c augmented first inversion or c augmented over e however the chord that we've actually wound up with here is actually just an e augmented chord we inverted a c augmented and we wound up with e augmented the same will happen again if we put the g sharp at the bottom we've now got g sharp augmented this means that you'll actually sometimes see disagreement on different transcriptions of the same song about which augmented chord is actually being played for example if you look at different transcriptions of life on mars sometimes you'll actually see this e augmented chord labeled as c augmented over e and this is technically correct because they're symmetrical any given augmented chord can be named one of three ways however i think it's best to always go with the simplest option after all chord labels are meant to make playing music easier as we've seen from these different uses of augmented chords augmented chords are at their best when used in conjunction with regular major and minor chords however what if we had a song that was completely composed of augmented chords well as you can imagine a 100 augmented chord song is a very rare beast so naturally i decided to compose my very own piece purely using augmented chords [Music] so hopefully that's given you some ideas on how and why to use augmented chords in your own music there's definitely plenty more examples of songs out there that use augmented chords so if you can think of a good example then do leave it in the comments down below and if you've ever been interested in how i actually put these videos together i've just released an exclusive vlog on my patreon looking at the behind the scenes process and generally what i get up to in an average week so if that's something that interests you then do consider supporting me over on patreon thanks very much and thanks as always to everyone who supports me on patreon including all of the names you see on screen right now and andrei sanchez andy deacon andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry brittany parker cameron alvila colin aiken chris cabell christopher ryan david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko espen hansen eugene leroy fd hodor latona hamish brockelbank hugo miller james cao j.a kochensparger john dye josh sandolin justin vigger lee lauritzen mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer squared melanie schonet michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park paul muller paul paisle peter dunphy richard pride roger clay sam lin sean kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker toma aharoni trisha adams tim payne victor levy vidad flowers vladimir kodakov and volte [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 547,221

Keywords: augmented chords, chords, music theory, examples, explained, function, analysis, diminished, seventh chords, major, minor, sharp 5, #5

Id: Ys6SDpBgWzc

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021