Classic Chords #10 – Mad Punk

My band C5 rehearsing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” last night and trying to get that Nile Style guitar part as close as possible to the original song. Basically, the chords are Bm, D, F#m, E, with the usual Chic cleverness of not playing whole chords and doing something neat with the transitions, so there’s a bit off hammering-on and almost certainly some 6ths when it comes to the D and the E chords, and that F#m can toggle between an F#m7 when it feels happy too.

Anyway, it occurred to me that a neat mashup would work between “Get Lucky” and Tears for Fears “Mad World” (made relatively recently famous again by Gary Jules). The verse for that song is in Am, so the sequence is Am, C, G, D…but if we transpose up a tone we get… Bm, D, A, E. Now, I know what you’re thinking that’s not the same as Get Lucky, there’s an A major chord where Daft Punk play an F#m…but…look at the chords Amaj is A, C#, E. F#m is A, C#, F#. Different! But, if we add the 7th to that chord that’s the not E, so F#m7 is A, C#, E, F# or think of it another way (see diagram) F#m7 is basically an Amaj with F# as a bass note. Let’s mash!

Here’s a short clip of me playing “Get Lucky” followed by “Mad World”

Oh, by the way, that background to the chords is a photo of the windfarm off Skegness I took with a big zoom at sunset from the campsite in Stiffkey, North Norfolk, a couple of summers ago. Shout out to Roger and Jo L!

Meanwhile, persuaded my daughter to join me on vocals for a new cover of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, which I was working on but couldn’t get as high as Pharell, here it is in all its mixed down mastered funked out technicolour glory on my Imaging Storm sound and vision site.