Is Karma Police in E minor or A minor? 

This video was made in collaboration with *Listening* *In* 😃 Do check out their new video on how Jonny Greenwood was influenced by Penderecki: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-EcibAL3vicY.html 🎼 Thanks!

Maybe the real key were the friends we made along the way

How to confuse your bandmates - tell them this one is in Em, then start in Am.

I learned most of the guitar chords I know from this song because it has all of them

Karma Police is the “that dress” of 90’s music. I can’t unhear this.

Radiohead: *Exists* David Bennet Piano: It’s free real estate

"Karma police arrest this man, he talks in modes..." To me E minor feels more comfortable. Although the song itself is not meant to feel "comfortable", so I'm probably wrong 😂

This is such a fascinating video - thank you so much for collaborating with me! I keep going back to Karma Police to see what key I feel it's in, and it does change every time. Sometimes it's A dorian, sometimes E minor. I think it depends on your mood... Needless to say, Radiohead are one of the biggest gifts to music.

I need to do a song tutorial for this, so thanks for the reminder - wicked video! I always thought it was in G personally 🤷‍♂️ 🙃

“My favourite thing about folk reviewing any Radiohead song is... they never actually ask us what key a song is in, or what it’s actually about, you know that stuff we know for a fact” Jonny Greenwood.

4:35 ka-a-rma po-lice *JEEZ*

Simple, it’s in the key of Radiohead.

im starting to think david likes radiohead...

I love when you added the A note and Thom sings “jeez”

4:35 "Karma Police...... cheese"

"If you've got this far you must be a Radiohead fan" You're goddamn right

Radiohead discovered the key off H

I think the music is written in E Aeolian/Phrygian but here's the TWIST: the vocal melody is written in C MAJOR. The C feels like the melodic centre of the vocals to me with a lot of the notes pulling from or to the C. That's why the first Em chord makes us anticipate a homeliness because the subdominant of the C major (b) in the vocal melody that it coincides with is telling us to expect a C. Instead of getting the C we expect we get an E (major third) which adds brightness and therefore emphasis to the 'arrest' lyric. Then we get the C on the word 'man' which is the resolution we had anticipated. This is why I think the song has such a bittersweet and fluid feeling. It's more-so an interaction between a minor mode and a major mode. Also viewing the verse as being in E Aeolian/Phrygian makes it a logical step that the chorus would be in it's relative major (G major). Forgot to mention the coda. It's in G Lydian. The vocals move between A Aeolian, A Ionian and A Dorian.

Thom Yorke is such a genius, so glad I got to live in the same time. Wish more people would experiment with keys.

I would describe the piece as in a Modal G Major. Am Em & Bm are all in G Major, which is the Chorus. The Chorus of this song feels like home base to me. Where the song comes back in and Comfortable. If I were teaching this song to bandmates, I would teach it as G. In my mind, that feels like the strongest structure. A breakaway first with Dorian, then a sense of Relative Minor, to Home, and finally a jump to the 3rd of G (Bm) and modal interplay.

I think most people have a “bias” towards major or natural minor, and are less aware or familiar with the other modes. A dorian is also a minor mode, but people expect the d minor in there, and are maybe thrown off by the D/F#, and perhaps that’s what make it seem e minor then. (A dorian camp here). Note, that this fits also the “stark” F# (8:43) would just be A dorian, too - or so how I hear it.

Thank you. Loved the cover at the end. Looking forword to the next Radiohead vid.

When the A was being played over it it seemed to want to drop down to G# for some reason. E sounded more resolved to me.

Because of the strength of the Em walking up to the G chord in the verse and then switching up to G in the chorus, I've always felt it was Em. Never actually thought about it before now though!

It's clearly using whatever the key of a buzzing fridge or detuned radio is

First time in my life I finished watching the patreon list. Well played, sir.

This is my favorite song by Radiohead, and I appreciate the analysis. Verse definitely seems A Dorian with the vocals refusing to touch F or F# and that gives it the uncertainty or transient feel that's it's neither here nor there, maybe somewhere in between. I'd really say that alone explains why this song always makes me feel so lost, in terms of music alone, or vibe in general. The bridge then goes on to say he thought he lost himself, so was able to exert that feeling to me musically, then explain it. Certainly a progressive masterpiece.

“usually what key something is in is a relatively easy questions to answer, but sometimes it’s not as clear cut” *Kate Bush Wuthering Heights has entered the chat*

I understand everything what you are saying rationally, but I feel this song so strongly as being in Am key that it's hard to imagine other people feel it differently! So interesting

0:29 I think it's more like a bridge than a chorus. The structure is similar to Fake Plastic Trees.

Gorgeous video, David

I'll check out Listening In- thank you for the new channel to watch!

Loved the fantastic analysis, as usual. Thanks for some clarity on the key signatures of modes. Keep up the great work!

So glad I found your channel! This type of content is priceless.

Great collab, I love these channels that dissect songs and music in general.

So cool, I asked this on your comment section a few days ago, but I didn't knew you were already working on it

I've always thought of D Maj. as the key for the outro. I love hearing your thoughts on the entire song, but really enjoyed your explanation of the out. One thing that has helped me understand the music of Radiohead in a new way is the arrangements and the songbook Josh Cohen put out. His takes on their music have been so compelling.

Such a beautiful song. I think the verse is in A minor with a cut of Dorian. The chorus is in G major with that F#7 out of the tonality and finally the outro is in B minor getting into some Dorian with that E major

Thank you for making this video. You got me into Radiohead!

Absolutely love the content produced on this channel. Amzing work as always

These comprehensive modal analysis videos are S U P E R B! They have been so helpful, enlightening and interesting! Thanks again David!

It makes my day everytime I see a new video of yours David, amazing work 😁

Your videos keep getting better and better, I learn a lot on this channel!

I'm actually understanding what you're talking about! I still need to learn more theory because it's not crystal clear but I'm getting there!

"Modal Goodness" I love it.

So glad to see this video. When I first tried to learn some guitar theory after years of self-taught guitar I had a notebook where I would write down songs I found interesting structurally and try to figure out why I liked them or what was going on with the chord structure for example. Karma Police was one of the first songs that really interested me. I think I found it interesting because of the F# and F in the chord sequence; it feels like it is switching between A minor and A Dorian and that subtle cycle just makes the chords jump out a little to me. Thanks for the great videos, David!

Radiohead? You had my interest, but now you have my attention.

1 billion % thrilled that you made this with Listening In

I just LOVE smooth use of modes, I'd definitely watch a series about interesting mode combinations. One of my favorite things to do is pick any mode and then transpose that a tritone (, inverting that into a different mode, Aeolian a whole step below Lydian, for example, sounds amazing. You're immediately covering all 12 notes, can be really interesting and limitless ways of using it. Even when involving concepts other than modes, like in a 5-4-1 in harmonic minor, for example, Lydian from the 5th, Aeolian from the 4th, and then maybe phrygian chromatically walking back up to the 5 through Dorian on the 1. I listen to this progression and bet melody writers could do crazy things if some of the defining notes are left out of the harmony section, that 5 can easily sound like the 1 to me, it seems in large part due to the 2nds, 6ths and to a lesser extent the 4th and 7th in what was supposed to be the 1 chord, they just wanna pull me back to that 5. Leave those out in the Dorian at the end for a blander extended minor sound, and it sounds like the phrygian resolves to it.

This video is truly a banger. Love your channel, David, thank you! Godspeed

This is one of the best chord progressions ever.

thanks for reminding me of this song's existence and that I need to add it to my playlist

Awesome video, awesome song! Great job and thank you a lot for breaking this one down! Love your content! Greetings from Austria.

Another really nice piece David.

Brilliant, thank you,David.

I've always heard verse in em, chorus in g and ending bm. Cool video!

Very interresting, clear and clever ! Great work, as usual :D

So interesting!!!! I love your channel so much. After 27 years performing - I still feel new to music theory. I hear E minor - and D major! That’s always what I felt when listening to this song. One of my all time favourites.

I think you glossed over the coda. If you hear it in B, you're hearing i > III > IV > III > IV > III > V/ii back to i. None of those progression patterns represent how the melody interacts with the chords, and it would be an uphill battle to identify the cadences. In D you have vi > I > IV > I > IV > I > V/V > vi. This progression starts with a minor plagal cadence (as used similarly in Creep) followed by two plagal cadences that are accented by the 4-3 voicing in the melody. The last chord being notated in D as a V/V was a very clever way to both give a dominant sound for the last chord of the coda, as well as acting as the predominant before restarting the progression that begins on the minor plagal cadence. Not to mention the instrument that oscillates in the outro plays a D.

I always thought that Am to F at the intro sounded so perfect

I can hear that there is some subjectivity here with the cyclical chord progressions, but the confusion over the key largely results from theoreticians’ intense focus on 18th century European conventions. If there were not such a bias toward Ionian and Aeolian, people would almost all hear it as A Dorian (ask a traditional Celtic musician). Thanks for continuing to raise awareness about modes, David!

Great content and examples as usual, but I agree with some of the other commenters that "tonic" should be used instead of "root" unless specifically talking about the root note of a chord. 12 Tone does this as well, to be more accessible, but it seems unnecessary if the term is quickly explained. RU-vid theory viewers ought to know what the difference is.

Verse is in A, no question for me. There's a bit of bass movement, with e-e/F#-G-a which is far too strong to let the tonic be anything else.

The verse in Em for me, all day.

1K likes and 0 dislikes. This is beautiful. DBP is amazing.

I agree, I hear a different tonal center at different points of the verse. But if I had to choose one for the verse, I would probably choose A. The phrases start on that chord, and the last phrase also ends on that chord. There's just too much emphasis on A to make E sound like the tonal center to my ears. Originally, I heard it in E, but after listening to it a couple of times, my ears settled on A. The beginning sounds like Em, but after that I hear it in A. So, I would say it's in A, but tonicizes E in the beginning - A is the "main tonal center", E is a "secondary" tonic. When it comes to the outro, I would say B is the main tonal center, D is a secondary tonic. It gets tonicized, but doesn't sound like the actual tonic to my ear. I want to hear it return to B. But in modern music, the relative keys are treated as basically the same, and there's this "tonal fluidity" because there are no strong cadences.

A true masterpiece

Very nice video :) I've always "heard" this song in a minor key (E minor) except for the coda which I've always heard as being in a major key (D major) :)

Wow, really nice analysis. I really hear it in E. To me, the ends of frazes ending on B feel really resolves and the F resolves nicely to Em as a Frygian chord.

I know this is an old video, but wanted to share my thought on the Coda... I'm feeling it in D, big-time. The warbling tone at the end is solidly D, until it devolves at the very end. Great video!

this video is such a good introduction to modes.

This is a perfect example of a situation where feeling rather than analysing works better. In which case the verse key feels like Am. As thats what I would end on.

12tone mentions this hearing the same song or part of the song in 2 modes in his video on What key is Hallelujah in and he mentions what's called a double tonic complex, which is kind of like polytonality(2 keys at once) and kind of like modulation(changing keys), but not really either. Both tonics feel stable and like they could equally be the tonic and there is this swinging back and forth between the 2 tonics that makes them both stable, both equally good to analyze in if you are to analyze it in a single key. Polytonality, even of closely related keys tends to sound more rough and agressive. With modulation, yes you have 2 keys, but at any given point, you are only in one key, not 2 keys at the same time. I think the double tonic complex thing that 12tone mentions is going on here with the verse, it can be analyzed perfectly well in both tonics, both tonics are stable, and there is a swinging back and forth between the 2 tonics, so why not say that both are the tonic simultaneously?

Eminor is the relative minor key of G. Since chorus is unequivocally G I would guess it makes sense to call the verse E minor. Btw I love how you explain your thoughts!

For a similar effect, check out Beach Boys “God Only Knows”. And then try to tell me if it is in A or E...

To me the outro is in D major because of this crescendo synth nearly at the end making a leap of a 4th from A to D

great video, sometimes I find that songs with ambiguous tonal centers are more common than we expect in pop music

thank you for mentionin listening in, that guy needs so much more exposure

Oh. I lean heavily towards the Am interpretation. I was convinced the "F#" was just the first inversion of a D major chord.

I haven't watched the video yet: It seems like it's in A dorian. The G major for the chorus, and B minor for the end. Edit: okay, good to see some people agree.

Thanks for this David interesting question. I play Karma Police on guitar and for me the verse is in Am. But as you say Am and Em are pretty much the same so it's kind of redundant argument. Love Listening In's stuff. Glad to see you giving him a shout out

Never been a big RadioHead fan, but I always was startled when I heard them songs at open mikes. Thanks to this video I start to understand why and maybe I should listen to more

Within the chorus I'm always drifting into Sexy Sadie. Can't help myself.

OK Computer is a freaking-awesome masterpiece...

Great content!

Great work!

Talking of the root note(s), Colin makes it even more confusing / interesting / ambiguous with his bass-lines, going from here to there, without a real center (at least, I hear it that way). His contribution to the song is brilliant, amazing tasteful bass-lines.

This is how I hear it. Intro and verses: A Dorian Chorus: G Major Coda: B Minor

Clearly the whole thing is in G, tut tut.

I wish I could go back and relive the feeling I got the first time I heard this song as a teenager. I couldn't believe what I was hearing!

Well, I think that the Coda is mode change as well, moving from G Major to a B Phrygian Awesome Channel

Love this- personally I think it’s | Verse- A Dorian (w/ quick flat 6th for chromatic/dramatic effect), chorus (G Lydian- same scale), and coda (b dorian)... so mode change at the end

Great vid! You should check out “When Winter Comes” from the latest McCartney III album. A similar thing happens. When the singing starts it sounds (to my inner ear) to be in an E blues mixolydian mode. With the flat 7 but major 3rd, but then it sounds (to my inner ear) like it modulates via a Bm to a new key of A Major. You get that feel of a chord 5 being made to be minor. And thus it modulates to Amajor. Yet, I saw the sheet music and the whole thing is written in total diatonic A major, with no sharps or flats (except for a jazzy incidental passing chord in the chorus). And i checked, and sure enough, all the notes used, even through the bits where it’s sounds bluesy or like it ls changing key; are all in the key of A major. It just struck me how clever that is to write a totally (on paper) diatonic song, and yet engineer the listeners ear so that it sounds in different key than the notes being used. Same thing going on in Karma Police. Very clever.

In my humble opinion this would be Am, because the first chord of a song is like an establishing shot in movies. It gives the reference for all following notes. I like this song example. It shows that music and maybe art itself is not math but can play with it.

Awesome video! Personally, I'm team A minor. I do have a theory why some people hear E minor as the key for the verses. When the D/F# chord comes in, the melody notes are D then C. That's (sort of) turning the chord in to a D7/F#. D7 would normally resolve to G, but I think it can just as easily resolve to the enharmonic minor of G, which is E minor. That is the next chord.

When you limit the notes used to a set that exists in multiple keys then the key sound can become ambiguous. Doing this allows ambiguous movement between keys. Might make a subject for another video : "Ambiguous key Movement "

It’s a fascinating topic. What’s actually strikes me as significant is your choice to briefly use the Mona Lisa as a visual equivalent for tonal unambiguity. Although indeed the subject of La Gioconda is pretty straight forward, Leonardo da Vince deliberately shifts the vanishing points left and right of the model. Consider the concept of the key of the verse melody being decided by the context. This is similar: the longer you look, the more confusing it gets, the shift in perspective makes the overall composition of the painting just as impossible to grasp as the rabbit/duck drawing or the Karma Police key. Doesn’t it enhance the mystery and suspense of the painting? And that is exactly what makes the song so captivating, I think

I always heard A Dorian for the verse and d major for the coda section

Really cool video ! Thanks...

Great stuff