Page 61
change at differing rates. Change halfway through a bar or after one-and-a-half bars, or write a sequence where
you're changing every two beats, or include a bar where there is a different chord on each beat.
If you use several turnarounds in an uptempo song, you run the risk of creating a feeling of bewilderment. You will
need to have a small stretch where the chords are not changing so frequently to allow the listener to grasp what's
going on. Think of the I-V changes in 'I Should Have Known Better' and the chord-change rate of one every two
beats in the chorus of 'Some Might Say'. 'Days' has rapid chord movement in its chorus. In a song with a lot of rapid
changes, there may be a need to cool out for a bit and hang on a single chord, as in 'I'm A Believer' and 'A Little Bit
Me, A Little Bit You'.
Unusual Chord Changes
In the January 1995 issue of Mojo, Noel Gallagher was quoted as saying, "There's 12 notes in a scale and there's 36
chords and that's the end of it. All the configurations have been done before." That's a revealing comment when you
consider Oasis's "borrowings" from various bands. Of course, there aren't just 36 chords. This is a view that does not
encourage innovation. And if you think all the "configurations'' have been done before, you aren't likely to go
looking for new ones. It's a recipe for laziness.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Oasis have not yet come up with a song like Radiohead's 'Just', which has
several innovative touches. The intro is I bIII IImaj IV (all majors, C Eb D F), and the verse is Am Ab Eb F / Am Ab
Eb Bb / Am Ab G F# F. The chord changes are unusual, and the melodic phrases fall into three bars each. The
chorus adds a C F# F to the C Eb D F change from the intro. 'Just' was probably the first song on a commercially
successful album to have these particular unusual chord movements.
One of the challenges is to find less common chord changes and make them work. Common chord changes are
popular because they sound pleasant and are self-reinforcing – that is to say, familiar. They have been heard so many
times they feel comfortable and seem to express familiar emotions. They are recognized faster (an important point
for commercial songwriting) on first listen. Unusual chord changes are by their nature disconcerting because they
have not been heard very often. They are not immediately recognized and make the emotion of the song seem less
familiar, too. They do, however, offer the songwriter a tantalising hope.
Rodgers & Hammerstein's Law: If you can make an unusual chord change accessible in a song, you have immediately distinguished your song from thousands of others, past and present, that use common changes.
There have been thousands of hit records based on I IV V. But there is only one I know of that bases its verse on the
haunting change of two minor chords three semitones (half-steps) apart. That is 'Light My Fire' by The Doors, in
which the verse moves Am to F#m and back again. This change is so rare that it conjures up only that one song.
Anyone else trying to use it has an immediate problem, whereas anybody can write a I IV V song and not have it
confused with anything else.
Consider what I call the "Songwriter's General Theory of Relativity": the weirdness of the change is relative to the
strength of the sense of key. Too many weird chords and you lose the sense of the original key, or the listener's ear
will decide you've changed key anyway – in which case it will orient the chords around a new key center and the
original "oddness" you were aiming at will disappear.