Songs that use the Subtonic chord 

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RU-vid genuinely thought that I was intelligent enough to know what “subtonic” means!

Hi David, another classic chord progression you could cover is the James Bond chord progression, i-bVI-vi° or i-bVI-IV. It's kind of like the parallel minor version of the Augmented Climb progression you already made a video about. I've got some suggestions for songs that use it: • i-bVI-vi°: - James Bond theme - Monty Norman; John Barry - Caravan - Duke Ellington - Du côté de chez Swann - Dave - Sunny - Bobby Hebb - Surrender - Elvis Presley - Glass Onion - The Beatles • i-bVI-IV: - Skyfall - Adele (obviously that's based on the James Bond theme, so a lot of Bond songs feature this progression) - Heart-Shaped Box - Nirvana - In Bloom - Nirvana - The Avengers main theme - Alan Silvestri - Around the World in 80 Days main theme - Hans Zimmer - Atomic - Blondie - Sorry Angel - Serge Gainsbourg - Dieu que c'est beau - Daniel Balavoine - Seventeen - Ladytron - BABY SAID - Måneskin • This one starts it on the relative major so it goes I-vi-IV-II which is equivalent to bIII-i-bVI-IV, but I thought it was worth mentioning: - Monde Nouveau - Feu! Chatterton • These ones play the progression in the key of the ii chord instead of the i, also worth mentioning I think: - Help! - The Beatles - I Get Around - The Beach Boys - In My Room - The Beach Boys - Sunday Morning - The Velvet Underground; Nico - Femme Fatale - The Velvet Underground; Nico • An honorable mention, because it uses the relative major chord instead of the i, so bIII-bVI-vi°-bVI which is equivalent to I-IV-#iv°-IV: All Star - Smash Mouth Edit: Also probably worth noting how a lot of these songs use the 1st degree of the minor scale as a pedal tone under all three chords.

I'm from Chile, our national music or dance or something is Cueca, it frecuently uses, by example, C-Bdim-Am-G and then inmediatly G-Am-Bdim-C , all together as an intro for different songs and of course in different keys

I use to think of it like a little bit of mixolidian. In fact, every single mode has its own vibe. So I think subtonic chord bring this mixolidian vibe into chord pregressions

I think one of the things that makes Hey Jude so powerful is WHEN they use the bVII chord. The whole song, in the key of F, is completely diatonic, only using the triads of the F scale. But when they get to the outro, that's the first time we hear any chromaticism (the bVII chord) in the song, which contrasts so amazingly & so effectively with everything we've heard up to that point. And it's why the outro works so well.

I need to wait until the end of David's videos before commenting, because the way things are structured means that most of my 'wait a minute, what about x' thoughts tend to be resolved a few minutes later!

I have used the bdim - C progression instead of G7 - C as the contrast becomes stronger, the bdim does not share any notes with he tonic, while G7 share G with the tonic chord. Also, I saw an edim resolved to a F in end of the short Pianote commercial in the middle of this video!

How bizarre! I was trying to figure out how the chords in Mr Blue Sky worked in the song's key only very recently. I came to the conclusion that the Eb was borrowed from mixolydian. Wonderful to see it covered here and explained.

I love the fact that the guys you used for the Hey Jude example even replicated the infamous profanity in their version! :)

It's always a good day when David Bennett video drops.

"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon uses the vii° chord from both the G major and E minor scales (the song is in Em). In fact, it includes a D#° and an F#° adjacent to each other.

4:34 "Sea flat just means be natural." - ancient sailors' proverb

Your channel is absolutely useful. I can pick up a subject any time and focus on a scale, or any other detail I would like to get inspired by. Thank you so much for your work!

Thank you for another excellent video. I'm always indebted to your broadening my appreciation of music in general (as well as featuring some of my favourite artists - in this video, Fleetwood Mac and ELO)

David , Thank you 🙏🏼

David! In brazilian popular music (also known for the acronym MPB) the leading tone chord is actually widely used. There is even a common progression for this style, which is viiº > III > vi and it's very satisfying to listen it. Good examples of songs are Djavan's "Flor de Liz" and Tim Maia's "Me dê motivo". I love using this progression in my compositions, specially with viiº7 which sounds great and has a different "flavor" from V7 as a dominant chord!

The subtonic is also heavily featured in Tom Jobim's Aguas de Marco.

I like how they included Paul swearing in the Hey Jude recreation 😂

8:16 i love how the cover has the hidden F bomb

Thanks David! They fit together the pieces of a thousand songs played on guitar, finally understanding the connections between chords and their functions... those of us who don't know anything about harmony see the light with each video of yours!

Great video, in "Tiny Dancer" I think that adding the note G also makes a smoother transition from Am7 as it's also part of that chord. Bdim sounds too isolated to me.

Incredible video. Clears up so much for me. Thank you so much.

I always thought of this as modal interchange as you say. The Beatles use it a lot in their early songs. I feel like Help! would be an example, with the verse starting Aeolian and having a Mixolydian turnaround so that it doesn't feel too resolved and it can loop around again.

Excellent video, thank you, David.

Thank you sir, such a great channel. Cheers!

Dropping down a chord tone is so dreamy like , especially if the second chord is a Maj7th !

Thank you,David🌹🌹⭐🌹🌹

Superbly useful information. Nice one.

Excellent video. Love how simple you make it..

In Jazz music, the Maj7 scale allows for the vii°7 chord or the m7b5. I’ve seen it notated that way. It’s a better leading tone here than the G7 and has a totally different connotation. It’s usually used as substitution in face for the V7 in a lot of iii7 V7 Imaj7 turn around a to get to a repeat sometimes to go to the bridge of the song. I know this is a primarily pop/rock theory channel, but it bears mentioning.

Excellent video! I always think of Maroon 5 'This Love' as a good example of using a diminished chord, except that it is in a minor context therefore using C harmonic minor as parent scale - haven't heard many examples in a major key

Another excellent video. Thanks

I just want to say thanks. I really dig the way you teach.

Great share, awesome as usual...

Another wonderful theory video. Thank you!

i love videos like these because i end up applying a lot of what i learn into my songwriting. some videos like 'songs in 15/8' i end up skipping because theyre similar to your other videos about time signatures (though that might not be the case because i dont watch all of them)

One of the most helpful videos yet. Thanks

You Really Got Me with this one ; )

Excellent video! Probably my favorite major chord that can come up in a key (even though it's not even in the major key). Three examples of the bVII jump to mind for me... "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel, "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars, and "I Love You Always Forever" by Donna Lewis. Interestingly the iii chord presents itself in each of these too as it did in one of your examples here.

As a bassist jamming on chord progressions with classic rock guitarists, I've seen this, and played along without really seeing why. Thank you.

Great video as always David. I'm currently trying to write 100 songs and just recently wrote one with the chord built from the flattened seventh degree.

I think it's worth to mention that Lydian has a pretty satisfying leading tone chord but that's also not used that much because of the fact nobody uses lydian. I really liked the info in this video! It's so interesting to see that people instinctively don't use the leading tone because of the diminished chord. Another interesting substitution i hear all the time is a Major V chord in Aeolian songs which works but is in a similar spirit to this leading tone substitution. Great vid!

Love this channel!

Thanks for including Hey Jude, the first song I thought of when you mentioned the flat VII chord!

That nah nah nah part of hey Jude is used so often. "Freedom" George Michael and Scissor sisters "take your mama" come to mind

Probably my favourite chord to write songs with. Just something fantastic about it.

I've always thought of the subtonic chord as IV/IV but in most of the examples you give, it doesn't lead to a IV chord! Thanks for the two alternative explanations and a way to tell which is which! 😊

EXCELENT VIDEO!! ALWAS MAKES A GOOD WORK!!

Once again as always a Great Video, and this example of the song by Elton John was awesome, thank You very much 😊

David, have you ever considered making a video solely focusing on the harmonic series? It's honestly one of my favorite things about music technicality and the more alien topics of music. I would love to see that if you consider it!

Paul Simon uses it in 50 ways to leave your lover. It's also in I will Survive. In both cases because the song uses the circle of 4ths. Em is often swapped for Cmaj7 too.

Gold ❤

Laura Nyro's "And When I Die (One Child Born and a World to Carry On)" has a beautiful bVII to IV to I movement in every verse. She pairs the move each time with lyrics that contain (what linguists would call) a shift in intonation. The loveliest example is the first time she sings the line "but I pray there ain't no hell". Also, I'm pretty sure the chorus of Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" begins with a bVII.... THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL VIDEOS!

The example that springs to mind for me is Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's in the key of F but uses an Eb in the third line of the verse. I always wondered about the music-theory behind this. Another interesting one is the Stereophonics I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio: I would argue that it modulates into the key of D for the bridge (that sounds like the key centre to me, anyway) but then moves to a C major chord. Another really interesting video - thank you.

Jazz musicians often talk about back door progressions in tunes like Stella By Starlight, where a dominant on the flat 7 degree of the scale is prepared by a minor chord a fourth below, and followed by a major chord a whole step above. Stella uses this same pattern to modulate to the perfect fifth.

The triad built from the 7th degree is used in diatonic chord progressions, mostly in classical music, making that chord effectively the 2nd degree of another minor key, while keeping the tritone interval

Native Lexingtonian here: Great to see you using LLB's cover of Sweet Child O' Mine.

Brilliant. I thought the Diminished Chords were not used in Rock was because they were guitar unfriendly for changing between chords. Yet another great video. Thanks

vii7 chord is used to lead into parallel minor tonic vi via III7. E.g. in "what a wonderful world" after "I see them bloom" which ends on I chord, we get vii7-III7-vi "for me and you"

The second bar of a Bird Blues (e.g. Blues for Alice) starts with viiø7 as it starts cycling through a ii-V sequence.

Yes, ivs often thought of that natural 7th as sort of an inversion of the dominant 5th

Excellent explanation. I’ve always wondered how to use this chord and learned it was hiding as a V7

I’m pretty much addicted to the Mixolidian vamp. It makes every song better.

An example of the leading tone chord usage is Oh Such A Spring by Fontaines DC, the song is in the key of F# the first chord of the bridge is Fm7b5. You’re quite right in that it is rarely used in practice that was the only example I could think of! Great video once again :)

Just noticed that "30 minute boyfriend" by Julian Casablancas follows a similar chord progression to "It's only love"

Brilliant. You have such a talent for making things clear. If there were more teachers like you, then there'd be fewer middle-aged rock guitarists like me playing catch-up!

Great information!…and well presented.

Whether vii-dim is used or not actually has more to do with the fact that when it IS used, we would typically analyze it as V7 on first inversion. I do encounter a dominant vii in music (secondary or diatonically) but it is more often than note an half-diminished (aka, with a m7 interval) or a first-inversion dominant 7th ( a 65 chord in classical analysis).

DAVID - please do a video on pet sounds! Love your work.

This is great, I thought I knew a lot of theory. Turns out i need to keep learning a lot more. I realized that the 7th chord was rarely used for being diminished, but I didn’t realized that a solution is to use the subtonic. I thought people just used the 5 dominant 7 to get that diminished feel and keep it sounding good. I’d never heard of the subtonic till now.

That's the first time I have heard that explained, thanks alot, you could have added that the B dim chord is made up of two minor third intervals, whereas all the other chords have both a major and a minor third interval, and that is why it doesn't work very well, and the flat 7th note as the root of that 7th chord creates a more typical major chord with a major third followed by a minor third interval.

I wrote a song called "Dead Inside" which has a bridge that has these chords: G / D / G / D / Em F#m G A7 Bm C#dim7 A / in the key of D major. I think it works because the vii° chord goes to V dominant and adds harmonic interest. There are no bvii chords.

There’s probably quite a few uses of the vii°, but they’re all notated as V7a because most people treat the dominant as implied. It’s probably also possible to find a song that has a V7a without the dominant in one place but with it in another.

I love your series of videos they have helped me so much in listening to songs rather than hearing them if that makes sense. I thought the Eb in Hey Jude was a Secondary Dominant. Is it the same thing or have I got it completely wrong?

The vii° chord is used in jazz to tonicize the submediant chord along with the III7. Take a listen to: Love is here to stay (at 0:32): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iZKHgUkYYZY.html I'm In The Mood For Love (at 0:05): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--mO9Rq6a43k.html This chord is also used in the circle of fifths progression (Autumn Leaves, Fly me to the moon)

Paul Simon lands in a subtonic 7th in the 4th bar of the verses in "Still crazy after all these years". Very nice tension. The same is being used by ELO all over the "Out of the blue" album (Mr blue sky - 4.18)

Another example of the subtonic chord that I've found is in the song "1-2-3", by Len Barry. It goes: I-bIV-IV-iv-I-bVII C-Bb-F-Fm-C-Bb

The bVII-V-I resolution is probably the most wide-open sounding progression I've heard! I even call it the 'Wondrous Cadence'. It appears prominently in High Sierra (by The Trio), Rocky Mountain High (by John Denver),and Someday, Little Children (from the Sesame Street soundtrack), to name a few. Another song that uses the subdominant chord is George Strait's 'Heartland', where it appears in a bVII-IV-I sequence (essentially replacing the V with a IV).

"Sinead O'conner - Nothing Compares to you" - Very dominant "subtonic chord" in the chorus. Whilst In the key of F, the song falls back to D# m/Cb m

Masterclass

I just asked this few days ago in the comments of one of your vids ❤

“Never My Love” by the Association has a prominent bVII chord. It’s the third chord in the verses I-V-bVII-IV-I i.e. (I)You ask me if(V) there’ll come a (bVII)*time*…

As I recall, "Seaside Rendezvous" uses a B diminished at the end of the verse before the hook.

A song that sort of uses the leading tone chord is Lover You Should Have Come Over by Jeff Buckley. But it’s a half-diminished (aka minor 7 flat 5 - much softer than a straight diminished) and doesn’t resolve to the tonic which goes to an augmented major 3 which is even more uncommon.

i've always thought of the bVII as a (IV)IV of the major scale, and I don't really know if this a stretch but i like how that feels

8:40 the piano intro to the song "Martha" by Tom Waits is going back and forth between the chord Eb and it's leading tone Ddim without the Bb bass note :)

Thanks for a very informative video. Another example would be the Allman Brothers Ramblin Man..

I've used a C Bdim Am Em Bdim C progression, when attempting to get a demo done I've gotten complaints from players about the Bdim, though I never liked what they tried to change it to (did not know what they tried at the time, and since most have reacted very positively to the song, I'm wondering if it may have been somewhat of a 'rules-based' objection). I can see possibly using the G7, the Bb definitely not in this case, although the Bdim seems to fit the melancholy of the song better. Good info, thanks.

"Autobahn" (Kraftwerk) is a good example - it has the slow descending melody on the mixolydian scale, and then the three major chords on the flat 6th, flat 7th (subdominant), then the root.

Hey, David. "Souvenir" by Billy Joel features different inversions of the D diminished chord in the key of Eb major in the introduction. It does feature a Bb in the bass, technically making it a dominant chord. However, I don't think calling it the dominant chord is an accurate description of it's function in the song. The bassline is somewhat independent to the right hand melody and the dominant chord doesn't resolve directly to the tonic chord. It plays around with the dimished chord before resolving back to the tonic.

9:23 - I think there’s a diminished chord in Heartbreaker by Dionne Warwick. The line ‘Feeling no pain, when will we meet again’ before it goes into the chorus

Casey Jones is interesting in that it is a I-IV progression for the choruses, until the outro chorus jam where the subtonic is added in to make a I-♭VII-IV progression with a much more rock feel than the quirky-folk feel of the song proper. And Lord knows the Grateful Dead love their Mixolydian scales.

I’m so glad you put this one out. I was composing a piece and tried to stay in the key but my ear wanted the major sound, not diminished so I kept it 😂 I have to remember music theory was made AFTER we made music to explain what our ears want ❤ beautiful video I always pick up something new from your content ❤

Tremendous video. This bVII has been driving me crazy. Why, why, why? Now I know. Thanks a zillion.

"Amici come prima", a country pop ballad by italian sisters duo Paola and Chiara Iezzi, has a chorus with a I - bVII(add9) - IV progression. The song itself is pure guilty pleasure! 🤣

The subtonic chord in your many examples is used as the so-called plagal cadence, bVII-IV, f.ex. in the "Hey Jude" coda (I-bVII-IV-I).

Classic Mexican Mariachi music uses the diminished seventh chord, in fact it is the standard way of ending these songs where they resolve from it back to the root.

Much of the Grateful Dead's repertoire is in Myxolydian: St.Stephen, the coda of Casey Jones, The Other One, Morning Dew ...

Thank you for including Ringo's "fucking hell" in the hey Jude remake