Songs that use Augmented Chords

Anyone who plays piano, guitar, or any other chord or instrument is probably familiar with all the major

chords

, all the minor

chords

, the four sus chords, the dominant seven, but one type of fundamental chord that is often overlooked are the

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 widening the chord, we are augmenting the chord, hence the name, now augmented chords will usually be labeled using a plus symbol like this or writing org next to them and occasionally you will also see them written as five sharps as that is effectively what a major chord is. with a sharp fifth.

Now, as you can hear augmented chords in isolation, they at least have a rather unpleasant quality, as they sound unresolved and slightly dissonant, but this certainly doesn't make them unusable, in fact the opposite is true, it's nature not resolved of the augmented chords which generates tension. That's exactly why everyone has used them in

songs

, from B tools to abbers and mutes. So today we'll look at some common ways augmented chords are used in

songs

. Probably the most common use of augmented chords is as a substitute for a dominant chord, for example at the beginning of O Darling by The Beatles we get this oh darling augmented e chord sets up the song nicely as it introduces some tension which then resolves clearly into the tonic major chord. perhaps more typical would have been to use my dominant 7, as this would also resolve perfectly to the A major chord, but the augmented chord has a slightly different flavour, as you can hear both E7s resolving to A major. and E augmented resolving to major have a very similar quality but with a slightly different sound, a slightly different flavor.

This is because both the augmented seventh and dominant chords want to resolve to the fourth chord above them, but they both do so. slightly different ways with my dominant 7th 7th, this D wants to resolve to the C sharp in the A major chord, however in E augmented, the augmented fifth, the C natural wants to resolve to the C Shar, both only travel a semitone to resolve, but they come from different directions. The Beatles were far from the first to use augmented chords in this way; In fact, the opening of O Darling was probably inspired by Chuck Barry's school-day openings and his eerily similar theme, No Particular Place to Go, which both begin with an augmented chord.

The chord was then resolved to the G tonic chord. In the morning and out, the Beatles were very fond of the augmented chord and used it in at least 20 of their classic songs. George Harrison supposedly even refers to the augmented chord as the naughty chord, another example. of The Beatles using their naughty chord is at the end of me to use the middle 8, initially we get a normal G major chord but then the Beatles raise the 5th making it an augmented G chord, this adds extra tension which gives us that . satisfying resolution when we return to the verse, but of course it's not just the Beatles who use augmented chords in this way, The Beach Boys' Sunshine Warmth also uses augmented chords to return to the tonic, as in from me to you . we get a normal G chord which is then upgraded to an augmented G chord and then this takes us back to the C major tonic chord and it's not just songs from the 1960s that use this technique either, for example blackout by Muse using an augmented F chord. chord to resolve back to the tonic B-flat chord Matt Bellamy also sings the augmented fifth of the C-sharp chord, which really brings out the tension of the augmented chord, so augmented chords are great for resolving the chord into a perfect lead-in.

However, so far we have only been looking at examples where the augmented chord is built to the fifth degree and then resolved to the tonic. Of course, nothing prevents us from using an augmented chord on any scale degree as a way to resolve ourselves upward or forward. Another common place to place an augmented chord is actually on the tonic, although it is now built on the tonic. Instead, the augmented chord still wants to resolve us into a fourth, so this time the resolution is on the fourth chord of the key, this is exactly what happens in Crying by Royal Orison when crying the augmented tonic string the augmented one takes us to the fourth string of the key G major alone and cry cry cry and a similar example is It's My Party by Leslie Gore which uses exactly the same chord progression as cry the unaltered tonic chord followed by an augmented tonic chord moving up to the fourth chord of the key the augmented chord does not have to resolve the upper fourth although there are other chords that we can move to to relieve the tension of an augmented chord it is the raised fifth of an augmented chord that gives it that tension because it wants to resolve to the sixth degree of the scale. the fourth chord above offers a great place to resolve because it contains that sixth degree, that point of resolution, but of course the fourth chord above is not the OWN place we could resolve to, for example, we could also resolve to The minor, since it also presents that sixth degree, that note of resolution is natural, this is actually exactly what happens in Let There Be Love by Oasis. so the heavens would weep for me, of course, we don't necessarily have to resolve our augmented chords upwards.

Alternatively, we could let the augmented fifth return to a normal perfect fifth. In fact, this is exactly what happens in the introduction to let there be I love this movement from C to C augmented and then back to C, it kind of bothers our ears by suggesting that we're going to get that satisfying resolution upwards, but instead it goes back down saving the proper resolution for later in the song. A similar example is the introduction. For Abba's mamamia, once again, the intro simply swings back and forth from the tonic string to the harmonic tonic string, giving us that sense of tension without really resolving it.

Another great application of augmented chords is the lead bill during Stairway to Heaven's iconic acoustic guitar intro. get this descending line in the progression where the bottom note of the chord descends by a semimit tone each time and as you can see the second chord is an augmented gshp because augmented gshp is exactly the same as an A minor chord but with the note fundamental lowered by a semitone moving from minor to raised G Shar gives us a super smooth movement between the two chords creating this cohesive and satisfying guitar part when a progression is expressed in such a way that a step by step line is created like this where each note moves only one semitone, we refer to it as a line cliché.

Line cliches don't have to go downwards, although as in Stairway to Heaven, a classic example of an ascending line cliche is David Bowie's Life on Mars and of course it features augmented sound. Chords The pre-chorus of Life on Mars begins with this inverted flat chord with the E flat at the bottom and then, with each subsequent measure, the notes of the chords remain the same, except for the lowest note which goes up a semitone each time. , so going from a flat over E flat to E augmented to F minor and then a flat 7 over G flat, this pattern then happens again during the second half of the pre-chorus, but this time starting on a D flat chord A Again, the notes of each chord stay the same, apart from that rising bass note that gives us this augmented chord here now with line cliches.

Actually, I don't think that's the composers' thought process. I'm going to use an augmented chord here in my cliché line. I think instead what they're probably doing is starting with a particular chord and then just moving one of the degrees one step at a time and the progression they're ending with gives them an augmented chord, a strange chord quirk. increased and something that is good to keep in mind. The point is that they cannot be invested. Inversion is when you take the notes of a chord but rearrange them so that there is now a different note at the bottom, so if I take the notes of C major but rearrange them so that G is at the bottom, it is now a C major chord. second inversion of C major or what we might label as C over G, but if we try to do the same thing with an augmented chord, we'll run into a strange problem if I take C augmented, for example, and invert it. so E is at the bottom.

Technically you could call this C first inversion augmented or C augmented over e. However, the chord we end up with here is actually just an augmented e chord, we invert an augmented c and end with e. augmented, the same thing will happen again if we put the gsh at the bottom, now we have G Shar augmented, this means that sometimes you will see disagreements in different transcriptions of the same song about which augmented chord is actually being played, for example if you look at different Life on Mars transcriptions, you will sometimes see this augmented e chord labeled as C augmented over e and this is technically correct because they are symmetrical.

Any augmented chord can be named in three ways, however, I think it is best to always go for the simplest option after all cable labels are intended to facilitate music playback, as we have seen in these different uses. of the augmented chords. Augmented chords work best when used in conjunction with regular major and minor chords. However, what if? We had a song that was completely made up of augmented chords, as you can imagine, a song with 100% augmented chords is a very rare Beast, so naturally I decided to compose my own piece using only augmented chords, so I hope that gives you some ideas on how to do it. and why use augmented chords in your own music, there are definitely many more examples of songs that use augmented chords, so if you can think of a good example, leave it in the comments below and if you've ever been interested in how I actually put together these videos.

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