Songs with a Downwards Key Change

the vast majority of key changes in pop music go up not downwards [Music] it's easy to see why the upwards key change is such a popular choice it's a fantastically reliable tool for injecting energy into a song the downwards key change doesn't have the same effect changing key downwards may not be a very good tool for injecting energy into a song but that doesn't mean it can't be useful so let's look at a few examples of when a downwards key change has been used in popular songs layla by derek and the dominoes features a downwards key change as we move from the intro section in d minor to the verse section in c sharp minor [Music] this modulation downwards here is a really odd choice the far more logical thing to do here would have been to just write the verse in the same key as the intro keep both in d minor like this [Applause] one of the reasons that this could have occurred is because the opening riff in d minor was written by dwayne allman whereas the verse section in c sharp minor was written by eric clapton so it's possible that the two sections were just stitched together and they didn't pay too much attention to bringing them into the same key the beach boys have also used a downwards key change they used it at the very beginning of wouldn't it be nice wouldn't it be nice starts out with a playful sounding line in a major but then when the vocal enters here we shift into f major [Music] so what's going on here well the first three bars are 100 diatonic in a major the fourth bar however gives us this f major chord now you could argue that this is where the key change to f occurs however i think because we've been hearing the first three bars in a major that our ears would perceive this f as modal interchange the chord of f major doesn't belong in the key of a major f major is drawn from a minor instead so f major's presence here is what we call modal interchange just because this f chord appears doesn't mean our ears are going to instantly accept f as the new root note of the key we've already grounded ourselves as being in a major over these three bars it's when we stay on f major that our ears will start to reorient themselves to see f as the center of our key [Music] i've talked about bohemian rhapsody in quite a great length before in my brief analysis video but i didn't spend an awful lot of time on this section here at this point in bohemian rhapsody we are very well established into the key of e flat major the thing is though the operatic section that's coming up in a few bars time is in the distant key of a major so we need some sort of way to move us from e flat major to a major freddie mercury has admitted before that the operatic section of bohemian rhapsody was written as a completely separate detached song bohemian rhapsody was basically i was writing three songs and they were going to be different and i just i just couldn't finish them and i just thought oh damn it i just put the three together and this explains why the two sections are not only in two different styles but in two very different keys in fact the two keys e flat major and a major are as far away from each other as they possibly could be they're a tritone apart and a tritone is the furthest you can go away from any given note before you start reapproaching that note in a different octave so how do queen modulate us between e flat major and a major well it all comes down to this chromatic dramatic bass line this line literally climbs down all of the notes between e flat and a major guiding us down and then we get this a major chord hit staccato on the piano a few times to establish us as being in a major now and this big descending line is what actually gives us the sense of moving down key not up because like i said e flat and a are as far away going up as they are going down so the only thing that dictates whether we perceive the key change as down rather than up is the context of the music one brilliant example of a downwards key change is penny lane by the beatles penny lane starts out in b major [Music] but when we enter the chorus here we modulate downwards to a major [Music] modulating down a key usually gives the song a sense of lament a drop in energy but penny lane's chorus is still bright and energetic this is because although the key might be shifting downwards the melody is climbing upwards so the two sort of balance each other out composer howard goodall suggests that penny lane's downward key change gives the song a wistful nostalgic sort of sound moving the key downwards has the subconscious effect of making us feel slightly wistful as if the joy isn't a total joy but a joy experienced at a slight remove from the events it portrays since the song is about mccartney's childhood memories of growing up in suburban liverpool this makes perfect emotional sense to us as we listen to get a real sense of the impact that this key change is making to penny lane this is what it would sound like if it didn't change key for the chorus [Music] it still works of course but it hasn't got the same character as the key change did a bonus to modulating down key for the chorus is that penny lane then gets to modulate back up again as it enters the next verse we modulate from a major into the versus key of b major this kicks the verse off with a real burst of energy [Music] now you'd be forgiven for not having realized that penny lane modulates from its verse to its chorus it's a particularly subtle and clever modulation the clever trick that mccartney has employed here is although the verse starts out in b major here it actually shifts to the parallel minor b [Music] minor [Music] b minor may have the same root as b major but whereas b major has five out of seven notes in common with the choruses key of a major b minor has six out of seven notes in common so b minor is closer to a major than b major this turns what would have been a fairly obvious modulation into a far smoother subtler the last example of a downwards key change that i'll talk about today comes from a musician that i've wanted to talk about for a very long time you are the sunshine of my life by stevie wonder it's predominantly in the key of c major however in the b section we briefly modulate to the key of a major [Music] the modulation down to a major here is executed in a fairly textbook manner with a 251 perfect cadence into the new key but the clever bit is how stevie then travels back to the original key of c major once we enter the key of a major here stevie establishes that we're definitely in a major by giving us this one four five progression but just here when you expect the e to resolve to a major we actually then resolve to a minor [Music] so we're basically shifting key here from a major to a minor you could even argue that the key change happened a little bit earlier here where stevie sang a c natural instead of a c sharp now the thing that's really clever about this shift from a major to a minor is whereas a major is quite a far removed key from c major a minor is just the relative minor to c major they're basically the same key so the bulk of the journey back from a major to c major is achieved in just as one move from e to a minor so all that's left to do now that we've shifted into a minor is to establish c as our root rather than a and stevie goes about this once again in a fairly textbook manner we modulate back to c major using what are called dominant chords the dominant chord is just the fifth chord of the key and it functions to send you back to the root the one this is called a perfect cadence moving from five to one now what we get here is actually two perfect cadences in a row d7 moving to g and g7 moving to c the d7 here is what you call a secondary dominant because it's a dominant chord but not of the root it's a dominant chord of one of the other chords in the key in this case the g chord so the d7 guides you to g and the g7 guides you back to c taking us back smoothly and efficiently from the key of a minor back to the key of c and if i thought our love was [Music] so that's all of the examples i have time to look at today in detail but here are a few honorable mentions that i wanted to throw in at the end always by bon jovi shifts down a tone from e flat major to d flat major for its bridge under the bridge by the red hot chili peppers starts out in f sharp major with some modal interchange but then shifts down into e major for the verse uptown girl by billy joel features a really interesting key change from e down to c i've actually analyzed it before in my inventive key changes video so go check that out if you're interested so that's all of the downwards key changes that i could find they're certainly a lot less common than the classic upwards key change but that said i'm sure you guys in the comments will provide plenty examples of songs that key change down so i'm excited to see which ones i missed and in case you missed it my last video was taken down by copyright strike it appears that wendy carlos doesn't like people talking about her music but now i've cut out the wendy carlos section and actually added a new section at the end and got it re-uploaded so if you haven't seen that yet go and check it out and a massive thank you as always goes to my patreons who not only make this channel possible but actually voted for this video topic so thanks for getting involved in that if you're interested in influencing future video topics or talking to me direct or even seeing behind the scenes vlogs then maybe have a look at my patreon and see if you can lend just a few dollars a month to secure the future of this channel thank you so much to everybody who supports me but a particularly big thank you goes to andre science diagra andrew brown andy deacon austin barrett bob mckinstry chris cabal christopher ryan daniel long daryl darren harvey david m berry s ben hansen fd hodor george taylor golf house james ko j.a joe vassan jonas soderstrom jonathan banks justin vigger meg fellowes melody composer squared nancy gillard nicolas orlando bernard paul muller paul hazel peter dunphy roger clay summer rae t newport tim beaker and vladimir kodakov [Music] mccartney in particular became intrigued by modulation as a device but he seemed instinctively to know that the best modulations occur by stealth it may surprise you to learn for example that in the cheerful happy-go-lucky song penny lane he pulls off clever immensely satisfying key changes no less than seven times almost without you noticing this is the work of a composer who really knows what he's doing

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 1,481,110

Keywords: the beatles, the beach boys, key changes, analysis, pop songs, songs that change key, change down key, down, downwards, bohemian rhapsody, queen, freddie mercury, brian wilson, paul mccartney, stevie wonder, music theory, explained, lesson, sheet music, layla, eric clapton, duane allman, derek and the dominos, modulation, bon jovi always, something the beatles, under the bridge red hot chili peppers, billy joel uptown girl, key signature

Id: zc7MImrsCbo

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/scardie]

The chromatic key changes at the beginning stressed me out so much as a musician, haha.

[u/aspirations27]

I honestly never even knew Penny Lane was in 2 keys. Paulie, you magnificent bastard.