How THE BEATLES wrote the PERFECT chord progression

so I was trying to clean out this storage space when I came across this little piece of paper over here and believe it or not, this was the beginning of my enormous appreciation for the Beatles, it was quite an epiphany, you see, this is what that I got. my first piano lesson at the conservatory while studying guitar and it did two things for me, it made me realize that I'm a disaster at the piano, come on, B major, what kind of key are those five sharps, who puts it, who even does that, but maybe more, it made me realize how interesting and beautiful the Beatles song compositions really are, so we all know that these songs are in our collective memory, ingrained in our collective memory, We take them for granted, but then when we look more closely at the pieces, the arrangements, the compositions they make us.

I realize there is a lot more to songs so today I would love for us to take a look at the tune Bunny Lane written by paul mccartney. As we said, the song is in the key of B major and let's see how. playing the

chord

s how far that can take us Penny Lane is up, well, at least a full measure, but we definitely need something different, so in the second part we find a two five, one often also called a turn because it brings us back . to the initial

chord

that results from C sharp minor to F sharp major and back to B and it actually has a familiar sound, it sounds great, but we need to take one more step to get closer to what ended up on the record because At the base of The song does not contain the two five one, but another very common 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 is, for example, this, always look on the bright side of life anyway as we'll hear it sounds great with the song benny lane sounds lovely so now we can turn all the chords except the first chord into 7th chords because apparently that's what they do in jazz and it sounds elegant and I'm an elegant man, Paul McCartney is an elegant man, so let's see if that sounds good, but aren't we talking about Paul McCartney?

He's the bass player, the bass player and so far nothing is happening on that bass. region so let's go into a walking bass, the most obvious thing is to see if we can walk from one chord to another and yes, we can follow the B major scale down and we see that we can do it, but now Paul does something cool because he extends that scale falling. b major scale to e where we actually trigger the C sharp minor chord here and why not because the E note is in the C sharp minor chord it's already the minor third so it sounds great so keep walking. to e and then play the root note of the c sharp minor chord after you get this and of course if you want to go back to the b major eventually we need to play the v chord it just works great so after the c sharp minor the two we play the five the f sharp seventh and there we are benny laner okay so this is the first round and if you think so far it's not that special or unique just wait a second because something is coming where Paul presents us with his pure brilliance so where everyone would expect the same thing to happen again, suddenly it sneaks up on us with perhaps the most unexpected cut there is.

Let's Hear Penny Laner is above and shows pictures of every head she's ever had. It's a b. minor chord in the key of B major and it really comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? This is something we call a borrowed chord, we land the relative key chord, the relative keys of B minor, so we call this modal blend modal exchange and It doesn't happen that often in the tonic of a chord, so if this chord It doesn't sound so strange or spicy to you, it's simply because you hear it so often that you take it for granted, but it is a very strange chord. options available just listen to the original mix not the 2015 remaster the original sounds better anyway, when that b minor chord appears the whole orchestration changes it's heavily emphasized so the snare disappears there's a new instrument who plays the chord along with the piano. so they really want you to hear that B minor chord, they put it in there so it's the one through six and then the one minor seven and by the way, Paul sings that minor seven note, which is cool, so now let's see how it continues in that world of B minor, suddenly we know that eventually it will return to B major, but how good probably if it had F sharp seven, but let's see what happens by showing photographs if every head had the pleasure of meeting it and all the people who come . and stop and say hello, okay, there's some spicy stuff going on, so after that B minor chord, go to a G sharp on the bottom, keep that B minor on top and then put the G sharp on the note of the bass creating a sustained G. minor 7 flat 5 or half diminished or just b minor over g sharp whatever you want, but to be honest, it's really unexpected.

I would expect the bass in that B minor realm to come down through the B minor scale, creating a sort of Andalusian cadence in B minor. over an over G and then an F sharp and all the people coming and going stop and say hello, so it works, but no Paul chooses to play a G sharp sound that he's had a pleasure knowing and all the people coming and going are stop and say hello and that sounds really amazing, there's a little bit more weight to that G sharp, right, it's kind of a modal mix again, but now in reverse, because now we're in the realm of B minor, we play a G sharp coming from from G major or G minor dorian ah anyway it sounds great so after that G sharp we go down a semitone on the bass to G major seventh or 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 play that B major chord again we just do the same thing, the little kids left it behind their backs and the banker never, but this would not do it.

It wouldn't be a Beatles song if there wasn't some kind of modulation madness in there and yes we change key so in the chorus we go from B major that we just played in the verses to major so where does that come from ? Well, apparently from Paul's brain, but how do we get there? How do we get to that major chord? So we need a chord to push us in the right direction and we call it a pivot chord. A chord that can be found in both keys, so chord found in B major and a chord found in major that works well all the time, so we know that the v chord is really begging us to go somewhere, 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's the iv chord, so now we get something really nice after that f7 s4 that we played, so we use the E as a pivot chord that goes from the key from B major to A major and it is very strange. that's how it modulates to major, so now there's just three basic chords, nothing too fancy, so there's nothing too fancy here, other than being super catchy and memorable, a major chord, a over C sharp and D major, But there's a problem.

So how do we get the verses back to B major again? I guess we need another pivot chord, or we could use something called a secondary dominant for these two, I guess, because that second time we cut the D major in half, where we just stopped playing and went with it again with three cheesy, not cheesy, are just sharp sevens again, which brings us back to B major, so how does that sound in context and is that how to do it? It sounds incredible, right, but we're not there yet. because at the end of each song remember that there are always two courses, right, everyone wants to sing and be happy and they do something so clever that it adds even another modulation or come on anyway, something cool is happening, so in the chorus we always throw back to the key of the verse, so in the chorus we are in A major and in D major it takes us back to the key of the B verse, but in the penultimate chorus the same thing happens again, but no, we don't do it.

We don't go to a verse, but we go to the chorus played in the key of the verse, so instead of major we play the chorus in B major and it sounds so amazing, how cool does that sound, it sounds so super bright, right? Looking at all that modulation play, it's such a beautiful display of what we can do with a modal blend of modulating secondary dominant pivot chords. It's really interesting to see how paul mccartney writes these songs anyway. I made a whole video on secondary dominant 2 of This way, if you want to learn even more about this you can check it out here and if you love playing acoustic guitar as much as I do, I would love for you to check out my guitar course, acoustic adventure, this is made for everyone.

Whether you want to play amazing fingerstyle or blues guitar, different playing styles like John Mayer and Tommy Emmanuel, ranging from timeless blues to a modern pop sound, it's all there and can be found in the different places, There is an interactive map that you can explore to find your own challenges. It goes on, it's a lot of fun and goes over everything the modern acoustic guitarist needs. Take a look at acusticadventure.com and I wish you a beautiful day. Please leave a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video, of course, subscribe and leave your comment. about maybe another song that we can see in a new video see you soon.

I'm going to Penny Lane in England, goodbye.