Beatles songs to recognise chords by ear

Stay here to find out how you can practice your ear training with today's sponsor tone, Jim. A few weeks ago I made a couple of videos training you on how to recognize

chords

by ear, which is an incredibly valuable skill, and when I was writing that video I came up with

songs

that might be good examples of particular

chords

in context and maybe it's because I'm a big beetle fan, but I kept thinking of examples from the Beatles, it's like the Beatles seem to have an example of every chord. you might want to, so I thought I'd make a video dedicated to ear training recognizing chords, but based on Beetle

songs

, so what we're going to do here is go over each chord in the key, like chord one, chord four, the chord five, chord six.

Etc., giving examples of famous Beetle songs that you can use to help you identify those chords when you hear them in other songs, even non-Beetles songs, so let's start with chord one of the keys, the tonic chord , so if we had in the key of C, for example, the tonic chord is C and the distinguishing characteristic is that the sound of the tonic chord is completely at rest, completely resolved, so if I do a little chord progression here, what complete sounds, there's nowhere else I can go. that would sound more finished than a chord, so that's the sound you're looking for with a full resolution chord and it's very typical to end a song with a chord, so that's what you can imagine, of course, leave it. be here is a great example of a song that ends on a chord and sounds very done, so that was the only chord.

Now let's look at the five chord. The distinctive characteristic of the five chord is that it wants to resolve back to the single chord. Imagine we were in the key of G-flat, for example, this is the G-flat chord and the five chord is D-flat and we're in that D-flat, especially if there's a seven involved, we really want to go back to where it is. where it was resolved then, the characteristic of the fifth chord is that it really wants to go back to the single chord, which is what happens in the yellow tambourine, what do we want to happen now?

Another Paul McCartney song, um, that does that in a similar vein is the song All Together Now which was in the movie Yellow Submarine at the end, so this song is also based on a movement from 1 to 5 and even places the seven in the five, which makes the pull of the five back to one even stronger. 1 2 3 4 Can I have some more? The next chord we're looking at is the fourth chord of the key, so if we were in the treble clef, that's the chord, the fourth chord is the chord built on the fourth note of the scale which is C now the fourth chord of the key is like a watered down version of the fifth key chord remember that the fifth key chord really wanted to come home, well the fourth key chord wants to come home but it's not in such a hurry now, a good example from the BTO catalog is the song Love Me Do, where the verse is based on the step from G to C, which are one to four, love me too, you know, I love you, so next.

We're looking at the two chords of the key, the second chord of the key, so if we were in the key of E, for example, the second chord of the key would be based on fshp because FP is the second note of the scale of E major, so I would have the F Shar minor chord, the second chord in the key is always Minor by default because that's just the chord we get when we harmonize the notes of the major scale from the second degree and the Beatles song that I'm going to give. While you may have guessed it from the sound of the road, don't let me down, which starts on the E tonic chord and then goes up to the two F minor chords, don't let me down, so for the next chord we're looking at this A chord.

D minor in the context of a major, what is that is the minor version of the four chord? Typically, in the key of A major, the fourth note would be D major, the fourth chord is D major, but a fairly common change in the major key is to change the major four chord to the minor version of that D chord. minor, so of course what I have here is in my life, which is a great example of the minor four chord because we initially go to the major four chord, which is D major and then it goes to the minor four, so of course Suddenly we have that moment where the Sun hides behind the cloud and then we go back to one, so next we will see the sixth. chord of the key now then if we are in the key of C for example the sixth chord of the key 2 3 4 5 6 is minor now the characteristic of the sixth string of the key is that it offers an alternative place to rest Usually, we rest and settle on a chord, but on the sixth chord we still feel a sense of weight and resolution and we can just sit here if we want, can you imagine the song could end here or be with a kind of Dark Edge because it's a minor conclusion, now a good Beetle song to listen to this is a song that actually uses a very famous core progression known as doop shifts or the 50's shift core progression that goes from 1 to 6 then goes to four and five , so it's from the end of Happiness is a Warm Gun by BOS, let's go for that classic '50s chord change, going from a C to six in minor, ultimately the only way to improve the use of your ear to recognize things about music is by practicing. and a great way to practice ear training is with today's sponsor Tone Jim Tone Jim offers a wide range of ear training games to improve your listening skills, for example their Route 6 game shows you a brief core progression and you need to identify What are those chords? by ear or you can play the cordus game of it, which instead focuses on the type of chord, so you have to identify if the chord is major, minor or diminished, etc.

You can also practice other aspects of music, for example intervals with their exits. interval like a perfect fifth or a major sixth and you have to identify what it is by ear. Use the link in the description to start improving your hearing today with tonim, so the next chord we'll look at is the third chord of the key, so if we were in the key of A major, for example, as we are in the song. Help the c Shar minor chord would be the third chord of the key, a chord that is minor by default in the major scale built on the third degree of the scale.

Now this chord has a kind of middle quality, it doesn't necessarily sound at rest, but it doesn't necessarily sound that tense either, so the third chord in the key, what something calls the middle string, is kind of a middle point between the tension and resolution and of course the help of the bols is a great example of that when I was much more than up to it, so the next chord we're looking at is the flatted sixth chord, the chord built on the sixths. degrees of the scale but flattened to In the key of E major like this, normally we would have C sharp as the sixth degree of the scale, but here we are flattening it down to C natural, so it is a major chord built on the flatted sixth degree of the scale and a really good chord.

An example of that is the song It Won't Be Long by B Tools where the verse is built from a change from E major and then to C major and then back to E and another chord that is not in the key of another type. of the chromatic chord is that E flat in the bass clef. I'm sure you can guess what song I'm playing here, so in Jude we go from the F chord, which is the single chord, to the flat seven chord. you recognize that's Magical Mystery Tour by Bours, one of the middle sections, it's a little difficult to pin down the structure of that song, but in the middle we have this movement from the E chord, which is our only chord and then we go to this chord G major and then it goes to the four A chord so what is G in the context of E?

So we're in E, that's the key and then we go to G, well, that's the three flat chord, the lowered three, so now We're looking at the major variation of the two chords, so remember before, when we were talking about Don't let me down, we were talking about how the two chords are usually minor by default, but we could make it major and it changes the sound of the music, so here in the song, 8 Days a Week we are in the key of D, so normally in D you would have E minor as the second chord, but in 8 days a week we have E major and it really gives it a really bright and colorful sound, I think instead of the minor having the major it just adds an undeniable brightness to the music oh I need your love, so far we've only been talking about chords in the context of the major key, but the thing is that chords can have a slightly different quality, a slightly different sound in the context of the minor key , so now let's look at some examples of these chords in the minor key and the one I was playing while Guitar Gfully Weeps is a good example of the single chord in the minor key. minor key, the song is in the key of A minor and begins with a big, solid minor chord, so, just like in the major key, the chord has the same quality of sounding completely restful and resolved, not It's like there's another place we could go. that would sound more finished and full than that, but unlike the major key, we get this low, solemn, solemn tone from the slightly darker edge of the minor chord instead of the major chord, the brightness of the major chord is not there, it's minor , so next we're going to talk about the sixth chord of the minor key, so if we were in E minor, for example, the sixth note is C, then a C major triad is the sixth chord of E minor, now the sixth chord in the minor key makes sense. a kind of momentary glow because we are going to an important place but within the minor key and we also have a tendency to want to return to one, but we are not in a hurry, we can wait there for quite a while and then eventually.

I come home and a great example in the B Tools catalog of this minor key sixth chord chord is and a R, look at all the lone, so throughout this video we've been talking about the function of the chord, the degree to which the chord is built into the scale, but something I want to show you are some examples of songs that are great for identifying the type of chord, so not necessarily what degree of the scale that chord is built into, but the quality of that cord, is it important? minor, is it augmented or does it have a sixth or something?

So, for example, do you recognize that chord that's an augmented e triad and it's the chord that opens the song? O darling, what happens in O darling? e aled Triad which is actually on the fifth degree of the scale and then it goes to major, which is the one, but you don't necessarily have to worry about the fact that it's built on the fifth because we just get it at the beginning. of the song there in isolation is a great example of the characteristic of the augmented chord and the kind of dissonant sound of it, okay?

What's up with this chord? Do you recognize that it is the opening of the fall on the hill and that it is a sixth chord? What we have here, well, if we look at my hands, we actually have a B minor 7 over D, but that's just a different voicing of a D6 chord, so if I take my left hand off and put the B on top , we can see that I have a sixth, here is the usual triad, the D major triad and we have added the sixth degree of the scale becoming a sixth chord day after day, so that is the end for nobody where we get a g sus 4 resolving to G major, which is a great isolated example of the sound of a sas4 chord, not only do we hear a sort of prolonged suas chord on its own at the end of the song, but we also hear the resolution of that four SAS chord back to the normal Tri major, which is the context where you normally hear the four SAS chords because that's the beautiful function of this chord is that it has that suspended quality that then gives us that little bit of release when it resolves, so that's all the Beetles ear training I have for you today.

If you enjoyed this video let me know in the comments and if you can think of any other bands maybe that could be a good base for ear training maybe I could do a Radio Head Ear Training um video let me know in the comments comments on that too.