Category: Music

I have a confession, I’d never knowingly heard the Manic Street Preachers until I picked up a set of headphones in an HMV back in the Spring of 1996 and listened to Everything Must Go, which had just that week been released. It grabbed me from the off, it was like post-Rush prog but with a gritty edge and shorter songs, but definitely lyrical depth. I recognised some of the intriguing chord voicings, the Hemispheres chord is definiely in there somewhere, although it was some years later that I head bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire discussing his love of Rush.

The classic chord, the standout chord, though is the Gadd4, arpeggiated in the intro to the song “A Design for Life”. It’s basically third position C major but instead of fretting the B string on the fifth fret, we have that string open (C,G,C,B), so that there’s a harmonic clash between the C played on the G string and that open B string, although by breaking the chord open it gives it a melodic feel. It’s definitely a Lifesonesque thing to do, although he more commonly would be fretting the G string on the B and letting that string beat against the open B string.

More Classic Guitar Chords here.

TL:DR – The opening chord of The Beatles’ song A Hard Day’s Night, is a bit more complicated than you might think. It’s a G9sus4 across several instruments.

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Perhaps the chord that is the most distinctive and yet the most difficult to pin down as a solo player is the opening thrash of The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”. Everybody who picks up a guitar tries to get that chord, whether classical player, rock guitarist, 12-string player, whatever. Now, I figured it was some kind of Gm11 but with something extra going on. Or perhaps an F/G but with an extra note here or there. First off, I think George Harrison is on record as saying that he was indeed playing an F/G on a 12-string, but McCartney was playing a D note on the bass. But, that still doesn’t sound right.

Now, it was guitarist Randy “You ain’t seen nothing yet” Bachman who dug out the details having had an invitation to Abbey Road Studios from Giles Martin (Beatles’ producer George’s son) who had all The Beatles’ masters on his computer in Pro Tools and asked Bachman what he wanted to hear… “A Hard Day’s Night”, obviously. So, track-by-track they listened, there’s that F/G on the 12-string from Harrison but with a G on the high E-string and a C on the A string, which makes it an Fsus2 in fact, and there’s that D note on the bass guitar from McCartney, but…and here’s the key to getting the sound, John Lennon was playing a Dsus4. That’s some mixed harmony and you could say it kickstarted rock!

“A Hard Day’s Night” was already in the queue for Classic Chords, but thanks to Sciencebase reader Darren Michaloski for bringing the Bachman video to my attention and so allowing me to fill in the Dsus4. I’ve had a go at rendering it but Bachman’s band do it so much better. Bottom line is that overall it’s basically Dm11, but you could call it F 6/9 or a G9sus4…

More Classic Chords here, including a “G aug” from The Beatles’ “Blackbird“.

As I mentioned, in Classic Chord #1 in my early teens I was chasing the dream of being the next Alex Lifeson, picking out the pseudo-classical intros to songs like “Panacea”, “A Farewell to Kings” and “The Trees”, later “Broon’s Bane” from Exit…stage left and rocking out (on a nylon string guitar!) to “Working Man”, “Bastille Day” and “Circumstances”.

One recurring theme in Lifeson’s playing is the chorused ringing sound of his big open chords where he leaves the B and high E strings open and chiming but roots the chord with the bottom strings. It adds an ethereal tone to the cleaner arpeggiated sounds, such as the big F-shaped chords in “Xanadu” and “Hemispheres”, and brightens up the likes of his E5 power chords adding harmonic timbre that isn’t present if you just play the E-B-E on the bottom strings or even just the E and B as you might in more traditional heavy rock riffage.

He used this to great effect in the classic “Limelight” from Moving Pictures where he descends through a B to the open A string and the E string, but keeps his pinkie on the G-string fretted at the B and lets the open B and E strings carry the harmonics. Playing an E5 like this cuts out the often dischordant G# that you’d expect in the E-major chord, and if the pitching of that open B string against the fretted B on the G-string isn’t perfect you get some degree of phasing and beating as you do with a 12-string.

In the descending run on the “and what you say about his company” sections of Tom Sawyer from the same album, he uses a B-major shape rather than the E-major in this position and lets the bass notes descend (B-A-F#-G) across those ringing B-B-E notes on the top three strings. An arpeggiated version of that shape but shifted up a semitone to the C is used by Manic Street Preaches in their song “A Design for Life”. More Classic Chords can be found in the series, here including The Hemispheres chord, the famous Hendrix Chord from Purple Haze and many more. Meanwhile, check out some of my own music influenced to no small degree by Rush, the Manics, and dozens of others over the years.

Here’s me playing a bit of the intro riff to “Limelight” that showcases this E5 chord followed my an undistorted chorused strum or two.

Composer John Cage (1912-1992) is perhaps most famous not for the music he wrote but the silence. In the piece known as “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds”, 4’33”, which is ostensibly in three movements Cage instructed musicians, with any instrument or any combination of instruments and presumably voice to not play their instrument(s) for the during of the piece.

When it was first performed in 1952 and ever since, the audience gets nothing but the ambient sounds of the environment in which they and the performers exist for those four minutes and thirty three seconds.

Needless to say, there has been a lot of discussion of the metaphysics of what it means to write a piece of music that is entirely silence. I was thinking of forming a death metal band and calling them Homeopathetik. They would have only 4’33” in their repertoire and would never play live. This is their chord. In fact, I recorded a demo of the song years ago…stick your fingers in your ears and have a listen. One wag has already suggested I do a 12″ remix at 9’06”.

Apparently, in 2016, a band did a cover of my arrangement of this piece. I was also hoping to somehow get Napalm Death to reform so that could do a version that lasted 4.33 nanoseconds.

I thought I’d lost my death metal demo of 4’33” but I found the file, here’s a 1’09” sample from my archives, best listened to on headphones, but don’t turn it up too loud…

More Classic Chords here.

There’s one chord every wannabe rock guitar hero has to figure out at some point…we all listen to Jimi Hendrix, we all marvel at what he’s doing with that Fender Stratocaster, whether plucking it with his teeth or setting it on fire. But, what is it he’s doing exactly to get that E-major power chord that is something like a dominant 7th instead of a no-third, but has a little bit of funky extra hidden behind all that disortion. Well, it’s the pinkie finger on the B-string at the 9th fret that gives it the unique Hendrix flavour. Anyone could play the dominant 7th, he adds a sharp-9th.

Here’s a little sample of me attempting to do something akin to Hendrix on Purple Haze where this proto-funk rock chord features prominently

These #9 (sharp 9) chords are all over the place. There’s one at the bridge between chorus and next verse in Pink Floyd’s “Breathe”, where the chords modulate from the G major back to an E minor via D#9 and Db9 (it’s also in “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”). The bridge in the Kula Shaker version of the Joe South song “Hush” first recorded by Billy Joe Royal, then Deep Purple and Gotthard has a C#9 (same shape but with secod finger on the C at the third fret on your A string. It’s also on The Beatles’ “Taxman”, Pixies “Here Comes Your Man”, and “Boogie Nights” by Heatwave.

Intriguingly, Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” also builds on the Hendrix chord in a funky way and easily segues into Purple Haze, viz:

More Classic Guitar Chords here.

We all have songs that stick with us, the ones to which we’re the most attached, emotionally perhaps. “Blackbird” by The Beatles has to be one of those for me. The words are important, of course, but it’s really those chords and specifically the style and that chord at the top as he jumps up in the “dead of night”.

I think we can call it a G-aug, although it’s really only got G and B notes in it, as far as I can tell. Nevertheless, in the context of the ascending progression and subsequent descent across the arc of the melody it seems to fit with that description. I am sure purist music theorists would correct me, but a chord by any other name would sound as sweet (to paraphrase The Bard).

Anyway, I can just about play this song. It’s a perennial favourite of mine when the sun is shining, ironically enough, I’ll grab a cold beer and take my acoustic into the garden to annoy the neighbours…at least I don’t do it in the dead of night. Meanwhile, you can listen to some of my original songs via the Dave Bradley BandCamp page.

More Classic Guitar Chords here.

TL:DR – The Hemispheres Chord, the Alex Lifeson chord. Used in lots of Rush songs is basically a barre F# major, but you lift your barre finger off the high E and B strings, makes it an F#11.

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One thing I noticed as a teen teaching myself to pick out the wondrous chords played by Rush’s Alex Lifeson by ear was that he used a lot of chords where the top two strings, the B and the E string were left to ring while a moveable chord shape, often a B major shape or more commonly an F major shape (but, not barre) was relocated up and down the neck. Occasionally, the first finger would be on the B string to make a more conventional Fmaj shape but still with that E string ringing, and the whole chord often arpeggiated intricately rather than strummed as a unit.

However, it is the Fmaj shape shifted up a fret (a semitone) to give us the rather weird, dissonant, and suspended F#11 chord (F#,C#,F#,A#,B,E) [you could call it an F#7(add11)]. It powers the opening of the Hemispheres album and was later revisited as the big power chord of “Far Cry” from the 2007 Snakes & Arrows album.

Apparently, it was producer Nick Raskulinecz who had wanted the band to put a modern twist on some of their classic musical motifs and the Lifeson Chord stood out for him. Interestingly, the way Lifeson plays the first position Emaj in the intro with his pinkie adding a B on the third string and there being no G# resembles the modified chords he uses on Moving Pictures track “Limelight”.

The “Hemispheres Chord” itself features a lot throughout Rush’s early albums in various positions up and down the neck, on The Fountain of Lamneth, in Xanadu, Hemispheres (obvs), later on The Spirit of Radio and Natural Science. Other players have used similar chords to thicken their sound and to give the six-string something of a 12-string sound. If I remember rightly, it features on some Manic Street Preachers songs too and given that bassist Nicky Wire is a massive Rush fan, that’s perhaps no surprise. And, speaking of the Manics, they also use one of those Bmaj shaped chords on the song Design for Life more on that later in my Classic Chords series. Meanwhile, check out some of my own music influenced to no small degree by Rush, the Manics, and dozens of others over the years.

The Classic Guitar Chords archive will grow from here.

I should add that there is some controversy about this chord. When you’re learning guitar, it’s a fairly obvious thing to do, lift your barre index finger from an F major and move it around the fretboard, Dream Theater’s John Petrucci reckons Lifeson invented it. Alex certainly did it on Caress of Steel (Fountain of Lamneth) with a B and an A type chord at 7th, 5th fret, respectively. But, have a listen to Journey’s mid-1970s instrumental Nickel and Dime; recorded May – October 1976. Remind you of anything?

Fundamentally, one of the two bands was perhaps massively inspired by the other’s motif. Journey supported Rush on the 2112 tour for one gig, at least. Could Alex Lifeson or Neal Schon have been more than a little inspired by the other, did they jam together and share some ideas backstage? Rush have been great assimilators of musical styles throughout their careers. The Nickel and Dime riffing in the middle is almost identical to the Xanadu rocking between E and the F#11 and arpeggiating the top edge of the chord too…and actually again in Hemispheres, Natural Science and then the ending of Tom Sawyer. Xanadu was previewed live in May 1977 by Rush.

They were probably both written at about the same time, by two guitarists who heard each other play live on the same stages. As I understand it, Schon has some beef with Lifeson with regards to the popular Tom Sawyer and not any of the earlier songs where Lifeson used this motif that pre-date Journey’s output. Bizarrely, Journey’s big hit Don’t Stop Believing is to my ear almost a straight clone of The Spirit of Radio, so who is fooling whom?

Probably also worth pointing out that Jimmy Page uses this kind of chord coupled with an Em7 chord in Achilles’ Last Stand from the 1976 Led Zeppelin album Presence, which was recorded late in 1975 some time after Rush released Caress of Steel, but, of course, Lifeson is a big fan of Page. Be interesting to know whether he thinks he invented this chord. There will be many others long before the 1970s prog rock scene that used it!