Golden Ticket: The Rising 5th (Ticket 32)

Here at long last is a full discussion of the rising 5th ticket in downloadable podcast form!

or download here.

Here's a full list of all the songs used in the podcast

Minor 

James Bond Theme from Dr No – intro – Monty Norman
Savoy Truffle - chorus - The Beatles
Besame Mucho (cover) – verse - The Beatles (Velázquez/Skylar)
Secret Agent Man – intro - Johnny Rivers
Blackberry Way – verse – The Move
The Mission - 1st verse and solo – Queensryche
Brian Wilson (Album Version) – coda - Barenaked Ladies
Love Me And Leave Me – intro - The Seahorses
White America – intro - Eminem
Chains – intro/verse - k.s. Rhoads
Hey Bulldog – chorus - The Beatles
The Fool On The Hill – end of chorus - The Beatles
Cry Me A River – verse – Arthur Hamilton
Hangar 18 - intro and verse - Megadeth
Glass Onion - instrumental break - The Beatles
Better For Me If I'd Never Been Born -end of chorus – Matt Blick
Ain't Misbehavin – mid 8 - Fats Waller

Major

I'll Be On My Way - intro – The Beatles
Don't Ever Change (cover) – intro/bridge - The Beatles (Goffin/King)

Take Good Care Of My Baby (cover) - intro – The Beatles (Goffin/King)

From Me To You – bridge into verse – The Beatles
Ask Me Why – bridge - The Beatles
All Or Nothing At All – mid 8 – Altman/Lawrence
Raining In My Heart – verse - Buddy Holly
The Rain Song – instrumental break - Led Zeppelin
Isolation – intro/verse - Plastic Ono Band
(Just Like) Starting Over – intro – John Lennon
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive – Bing Crosby And The Andrews Sisters
Because – intro, verse - Dave Clark Five
Kind of a Drag – intro/chorus - The Buckinghams
It's a Laugh – chorus - Hall & Oates
Old Before I Die - end of verse – Robbie Williams
It's All Been Done – pre chorus/bridge - Barenaked Ladies
Maybe This Time (from Cabaret) – verse – Kander/Ebb

Major and Minor

Losing My Mind (from Follies) verse/bridge – Stephen Sondheim
Mis-Shapes – Pulp

thanks to Nancy Rost, Cliff Middleton, Thomas Spademan, John Argentiero, Rick Amorphis, Rod 'Downburst' Johnson & The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles by Dominic Pedler

More tickets to write and golden ticket posts

Other versions -
UK The Songwriting Secrets ... (Kindle)
USA The Songwriting Secrets ... (Hardback)
USA The Songwriting Secrets... (Kindle)

The Minor 4 Chord (pt3)

The Beatles were masters of slipping chords that didn’t fit the key into their songs. Chord like the minor 4 (iv). Last time we were looking at progressions where they went from the major 4 (IV) to the minor 4 (iv) like this change from In My Life (the iv is Dm)

There are A places E I remember all my D life Dm though A some have changed

25 or 6 to 4

Now lets look at the second most common change – from the minor 6 to the minor 4 (vi to iv)

Ask Me Why (Verse) -  vi, iv, II7, V, I (Key of E)

That C#m I, I, I, I, I should Am never, never, never be F#7 blue B

She Loves You (verse) - I vi iv, V (in G)

She G loves you and you know that can’t be Em bad,

She Cm loves you & you know you should be D glad

Any Time At All (verse) -  I, iii/VII, vi, iv/bVI (in D)

D If you need some F#m/C# body to love,

Bm Just look into my Gm/Bb eyes

I Will (verse tag, as a weird passing chord) - I7, IV, V, vi, iv, I (in F)

F7 Sing it Bb loud so C7 I can Dm hear you Bbm F

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill (verse) - III, V, vi, iv (in C)

He’s the E all-American G bullet-headed Am Saxon mother’s Fm son

The Night Before (verse) - vi, iv, vi, iv, I (in D)

Bm Now today I Gm find,

Bm You have changed your Gm mind D treat me…

The iv resolves to the I chord in every song except Ask Me Why & You Won't See Me..

For a modern example check out If It Kills Me by Jason Mraz. The Chorus progression (in D) is I, iii, vi, iv

D Well all I really want to do is

F#m love you, a kind much closer than

Bm friends use, but I still can't say it after

Gm all we've been through

Once again your homework is simple. Try to get this chord progression into one of your songs!

Related Posts:

1: Introduction
2: Major 4 to minor 4
3: Minor 6 to minor 4
4: Minor 2 to minor 4
5: 1 to minor 4 

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Ask Me Why

Ask Me Why is a B - side and album track. There’s some interesting chord stuff going on in this song.

The verse starts after a (2 beat pick up) on the iii chord (G#m) and the song itself also finishes there rather than the root (E).

Whereas many songs are based around the I, IV, V chords here the V (B) isn’t heard till the end of the verse & the IV (A) doesn’t make an appearance till 0:50 - about a third of the way through (the song is 2:28). What you do get is lots of non-diatonic chords III (G#7), I+ (Eaug), iv (Am), II (F#).

The chord change from vi (C#m) to iv (Am) to I (E) is particularly nice (0:18).

Melody wise, the best part is that the lead-in melody to the tag


“Ask me why, I’ll say I love you” 


is the same as the lead into the verse


“I love you, ‘cause you tell me things…”
 
but the verse drops to a ii (F#m) chord and the tag rise to a IV (A).This is a nice little example of the Beatle ‘same but different’ approach.Once again this contributes to the overall sense of catchiness of a song.

Sadly the tag’s brilliant left turn doesn’t lead us anywhere interesting, the lyrics are poor & the overall structure is very odd – not an entirely bad thing, but they just don’t pull it off. A bunch of good ideas, rather than a great song.

Tickets To Write

T6 - try staying off the root for a change (especially as the first chord).

or

T7  - Try not to use all three major chords (I, IV, V) early in the song.

T8 - use the minor iv – either after a vi (as they do here) or after a IV (as they do in other songs – I’m sure I’ll find some!!!) then go back “to where you once belonged” – The root (I) chord.

T9  -  this is a close relation to T4 (creating new parts in a song out of existing parts) only a micro scale. Try creating new bits of melody out of the tune you've already got.