“Can’t Buy Me Love,” a song by The Beatles, exhibits a style that’s emblematic of their earlier work, with a clear, upbeat tonality and an elegant yet straightforward chord progression. The tune is predominantly centred in the key of C major, but it utilizes both major and dominant 7th chords to create tension and resolution, modulating away from the home key. The particular progression you’ve given, ‘C7’, ‘F7’, ‘C’, isn’t rare and demonstrates the Beatles’ precision and understanding of pop and rock music’s creative possibilities.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” by The Beatles is a track that showcases the band’s fondness for creating complex and textured compositions by combining multiple melody lines with innovative chord sequences in a pop rock context. It features numerous musical styles, including pop, rock, and music hall, which reflects the band’s eclectic musical influences. The Coda of the song takes place in the key of D major.
The progression is in the key of C major. The use of the Bb major is known as modal interchange, where a chord that is not in the key is borrowed from a parallel key, which in this case is C minor. This contributes an interesting tone color to the overall sound. The chord progression does consist a use of slash chords (C/B, C/G) which adds a more complex bassline creating a more harmonically active feeling, and yielding more tension and release.
The song “3 Libras Acoustic Live” by A Perfect Circle oscillates between an A major and a C# minor structure, with a D major introduced at the end of the progression. The dominant chords are A (represented as Asus2) and C# (represented as C#m). The final D chord can be seen as a modulation, adding a somewhat unexpected resolution that doesn’t adhere to the traditional rules of tonic-dominant resolution in either major or minor keys.
“A Star is Born – Shallow” is primarily in the key of G major and has a fairly simple and straightforward chord progression with an intriguing twist toward the end. The song features a common I-V-vi-IV chord progression with an occasional ii-chord (Am) substituting for the vi-chord (Em). Then, it introducess a borrowed chord (Bm) which creates an interesting, unexpected color in the harmony.
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The song, ‘Across the Universe’ by The Beatles is uniquely complex in its melody and chord progression. The song modulates or shifts key but is rooted mainly in D major. The song utilizes the standard rock/pop song structure of Verse, Chorus, and Outro. The unusual facet of this song’s composition is the use of borrowed chords (non-diatonic chords) that add unexpected twists to an otherwise typical chord progression.
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“Across The Universe” by The Beatles, written mostly by John Lennon, is known for its rich and complex harmonic structures that added new dimensions to pop music. The song is predominately in the key of D major, with occasional borrowings from the parallel minor (D minor) and the closely-related key of B minor. The verse 1 progression – D, Bm, F#m, Em7, A, A7, D, Bm, F#m, Em7, Gm – creates an affectingly melancholic mood through its mix of major, minor and borrowed chords, producing a unique ambience that evokes a sense of cosmic contemplation, matching with the philosophical lyrics of the song.
Across the Universe by The Beatles is a melancholic, introspective piece set in the key of D major, imbuing an overall sound spectrum that’s somber with a hint of hopeful resolution. The chord progression utilizes both diatonic and borrowed chords, making it both unusual and interesting.
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