What Key is Hey Joe in? 

jazz musicians: spend days figuring out what key hey joe is in guitarist: haha Eminor penatonic go weeew

"What key is it in?" "It's on guitar"

Music Theorists: It's a little more complicated than that Any guitarist: It's way less complicated than that

I imagine if Jimi were alive watching this, he would be enjoying this and also having a laff sayng"Oh so thats what I did there "

Discussing the physicality of an instrument is such an essential and overlooked element of analysis.

The real purpose of this video is so that Adam can flex on how many books he have

The Blues: Exists Tonal Harmony: 😤

I like how he says that a little music theory knowledge can be a dangerous thing more than once, because repetition legitimizes.

The fact that you didn't quote repetition legitimizes when speaking about the repeated E chord deslegitimized repetition legitimizes due to lack of repetition

Girls: Like dangerous guys Me who knows a little bit of music theory: 😏😏😏

I never thought about it beyond "It's a bluesy song, we can use both major and minor chords and notes". Glad to see my deep harmonic analysis affirmed. :)

I like how Adam is not even trying to look educational anymore, he just humiliates you with terminology while looking through pages of his thick clever books and then casually quotes some random guy on the internet like yeah whatever. Absolute madman.

"A little bit of music theory can be a dangerous thing." I will be forwarding this quote immediately to the person that tried to tell me that "Just the Two of Us" is in the key of C#.

Theory me: Interesting Guitarist me: Fuck it, Em pentatonic it is!

This guy have some balls smashing music theory books on a table with a cup of coffee and a piano beneath it. Respect.

I was thinking that, as a guitarist, I literally just play whatever chord kinda sounds cool in the progression im trying to make. Guitars are specifically really good at randomly creating complex key changing progressions because of this.

So *that's* where the term "guitar lick" comes from...

I actually did laugh at the “ease” joke.

"... Uses the sophisticated, melodic, vocabulary that he does on his renditions of Hey Joe and the harmonies unique relationship-" Hendrix: *its like a muff, om nom nom nom nom!*

“We’re just going to pretend that it’s in E for the sake of EASE.” SUBSCRIBED.

He squeezed my hand and whispered his final breath, "A little bit of music theory can be a dangerous thing."

"What key are we going to play this in?" Jimi: E "Major or minor?" Jimi: Yes

I’m catching references to 12 tone, paul davids, twoset in 1 video... this Adam guy’s love for the music community on youtube really shines through

"What Key is Hey Joe in" -Adam Neely "JOE MAMA" - My brain

"What key is it in?" "It's the blues" I feel like this perfectly explains why despite having played the guitar for 20 years music theory still sounds a little like it's in an alien language to me.

The fact that guitarists can just easily intuit this answer but musicians from other practices labor over it speaks to how applying musical frameworks out of context can be super misleading. You have to examine the work within the practice it was made.

There's been a joke going around my musician friends of "it's not wrong, it's jazz!" Now I'm going to introduce "It's not in a key, it's blues!"

I've been binge-watching theory videos by Adam, 12tone, and David Bennett, and I'm fascinated by everything I'm learning, but this is the first time someone has spoken to me in my native guitar language. It feels validating to me to hear a theory person use my language. It never occurred to me that, while learning Western music theory is challenging for me, deciphering bar-band blues-rock basics could possibly be a challenge for the theory people. (Insert smug emoji) Adam makes me feel good sometimes :-)

Me: "Easy, it's just a quadruple plagal cadence" Adam: "Yeah, so it's a bunch of plagal cadences in a row" Me: *sweats seeing that it's only halfway through the video*

Jimi: “It’s in E, don’t think about it too much, just enjoy it.” Music Theorists: *hours of in-depth tonal analysis and research* Conclusion: If you don’t think too hard, it’s in E.

The same chord progression/chain can also be found in the songs "Crazy" by Seal and the middle section (the "ahh" part) in "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles

Can we just take a moment to applaud Adam on the foreshadowing of the fanfare that plays on the first time he says "It's in E"? The fanfare is exactly that cascading sequence of C-G-D-A-E he explains throughout the vid! It's small details like this one that puts this channel so up high!

"What key is Hey Joe in? Or how I learned to stop caring and love the song"

You always teach me so much! Great video.

As a bassist who never played guitar first, I so much appreciate your bass boosterism, Adam!

I love it when people say Hendrix didn't know theory. It makes it easy to ignore them going forward.

Damn, slide out keyboard and you even got Ben Shapiro to narrate the comments. Loving the production value.

"[...]uses the sophisticated melodic vocabulary[...]" meanwhile on screen is jimi hendrix licking his strings

Every time I watch Adam Neely videos, this Monty Python scetch plays in my head: "Did you understand that?" "No, didn't get a word of it" But still, I watch and is entertained every second of it.

Adam went straight through the bell curve of music theory knowledge, crossing from "knows just enough to be cool" to "knows way too much, is now an insufferable snob" to the uncharted territory of "please for the love of all that is good and holy don't stop talking about music, I need more of your secret knowledge, magic music man."

This video is basically the music theory equivalent of "Is Cereal Soup?"

Soooo, basically, Hey Joe is in the key of guitar.

Analyzing music harmony is like running in a wheel as a hamster. You feel exhausted afterwards and the benefit is smaller than you expected it to be, but somehow you keep doing it.

This is the kind of clickbait I support. It's so bluntly honest and to the point that I can't not see what it's about

Adam's sped up "reading internet comments voice" sounds exactly like Ben Shapiro

[C] LET'S [G] DO THE [D] TIME [A] WARP A-[E]-GAIN

In my opinion, people like you are the real reason RU-vid exists. I love how you curate the experience for your audience and present it like a light conversation and I end up learning things I would never have looked up to the point where I find them so interesting I do the unthinkable - additional research. You, sir, are an inspirational person who is brilliantly intelligent and talented at at communicating difficult concepts in a very friendly way. Hey Joe is a great song and Hendrix immortalised it with his rendition in a way only he could because his style was so unique.

The best description I ever heard of the blues is from harmonica legend Joe Filisko: "Blues is the tension between major and minor." Spot on.

this is my SECOND favorite video about the key of Hey Joe that I've seen today

I just always assumed it was in a vague bluesy version of E minor. So the chord roots all fall within E minor, but the chords themselves are just all major because that's how blues be sometimes... and blues plays pretty fast and loose with major and minor. And Hendrix was basically just as much a blues player as he was rock, so I figured it made sense.

A DeLorean busts in to existence and skids to a stop. Out jumps Jimi H in a purple jumpsuit and mirrored shades. "Where we're going, we don't need keys man!"

The first song I learned how to play bass to. Love that walking part.

The title/thumbnail combo made me laugh. And made me click. Well played 👏🏻

My god your production value has just gone off the charts. Wonderful to watch. :)

Adam: "It's In the key of E" Also Adam: "Well yes... but actually no"

You kind of only hinted at the main thing, which is why major plagal motions sound so "blues" or "rock": it's the most important part of the 12-bar blues chord progression. "Blues" becomes "psychedelic" when you extend that motion for so many iterations, encompassing a lot of pitches (I think 9 out of 12 if I counted correctly).

I'm the arsehole guitarist that doesn't know Theory and Hey joe was one of the first songs i learned on guitar. -The first chord I play is E... its in E.

Everyone says "Hey Joe" but no one asks "How's Joe"

You explained to me something that I sort of had trouble intellectualizing as a person who started out on piano and then learned guitar. I liked the way it made me think of chord progressions that I'd never play on a keyboard but which felt totally natural and I never really got why

The most elegant and correct explaination is that it's in the key of E minor with BORROWED Amaj and Emaj chords from the parallel E major. Normally the key of Emin/Gmaj contains the chords C, G, D, Am, and Em, but Hey Joe swaps Em and Am for their parallel major chords. You can take a minor chord progression and swap out the tonic for it's major counterpart, lots of songs do that such as Whipping Post by the Allman Brothers, You Keep Me Hanging On by the Supremes, Kiss From A Rose by Seal, Babooshka by Kate Bush, and White Room by Cream.

Jimi: “This is a blues riff in E, watch me for the changes, and uh...try to keep up.”

"Blues tonality is kind of like both major and minor at the same time." A lot packed into that statement!

I love that your Video titles are only click-baity because they're NOT Click Baity.

every time I return to this channel, I'm just blown away by the cool vibe of the videography and editing. So well produced. Good job Mr. Neely

actually, this is one of the songs Jimi did play in standard.

Me with excruciatingly limited music theory knowledge, and upcoming exams : i don't need sleep, i need a detailed analysis that i won't fully comprehend of a song i've never heard

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the imagery of Jimi eating out his guitar? I mean, that's the real masterpiece here, am I right?

what I took away from this video: A little bit of music theory can be a dangerous thing.

While Adam does a guitar video, Rhett Shull puts out a bass video. This is like some weird body swap movie.

It’s in E Adam: yes but no It’s in E? Adam: it’s a little more complicated It’s in E. Adam: It’s in E. Thanks, very cool

this is so great. thanks for really making sense of something I never really understood. We used to play this song in my band in highschool. When you play it, it just feels perfect and right. When trying to understand it, it's always been a bit baffling. You explained it perfectly.

Definitely agree. It’s in E. just applied this theory to a song I recorded, and the most prevalent chord tends to give the feeling of relief.

Adam Neely: What key is hey joe in? Jimi Hendrix: *yes*

When he put the capo on the tele my math rock senses started tingling

Hey Joe is one of the very first songs I ever learned when I was about 7 years old. I always said it was in E because the first note is E (the intro slide part) and when playing live he always resolves & ends on the Emaj chord. If Pride & Joy is in E, then so is Hey Joe. The first note says it all.

I've always loved how you can ask a question and answer it at the same time, yet still manage to make it an interesting 17 minute video that people actually want to watch.

Why did people back then look bored watching Jimi Hendrix? I'd lose my sh*t

THE WINK in the beginning. adam don't do me like this. ok i'm gonna watch the rest of the video now.

Im no wizard but before watching this video I noticed the opening phrase of this song uses the 2nd position of the pentatonic scale, so the 1st position starts at the nut which means the scale starts in open E therefore the key must be in E. Took me about 15 seconds to work out. But your 17 mins gave me reassurance, thank you.

I've been learning bass for about a year and a half and trying to keep up with some music theory stuff, and this is the first time any of this has made any sense whatsoever. Particularly, when you delve into how the song was written with the capo and the blues notes. You give language to things I've come to understand intuitively, and it's mind-blowing.

I'd love to see a whole video just on the idea of "blues tonality", super interesting stuff.

Ok, I decided, you are the Carl Sagan of music.

Genuis! enjoyed this so much, thank you. You are one of a handful of youtubers who continually reignite my deep passion for music

Can we just appreciate how this man put the answer in short in the thumbnail?

Can we get a video explaining why "Careless Whisper" is so uniformly considered ironically enjoyable?

But the real question is: Who's Joe?

This popular back-cycle was used by The Beatles twice on the Abbey Road album: “Here comes the sun” (sun sun sun...) and “A day in the life” (ahhhhh...ahhh..ahhh..ahhh)

Great video Adam, I love the way the way you use a seemingly simple question to bring together a lot of different and important musical ideas.

"Hey Jimmy, maybe not in front of the kids..." Lmao at Jimi Hendrix literally licking his guitar

I love the anti-clickbait thumbnails, and this takes it even one step further. Love that meta

Adam, you sneaky bastard. Early on in the video I thought, "Huh, those chord voicings on the piano made it sound so alien" and then you went on to explain how thinking of it piano- and euro-centrically made no sense... Amazing edutainment foreshadowing skills. Respect. You bastard.

I originally learned to play this song with an E7#9, which makes sense I guess given the not really major or minor thing.

jazz musicians: this is a very important topic that we need to define an answer for me: 7:03 haha brawl theme go brr

The ending made me laugh harder than anything in the past year! Thank you, Adam! It's a pleasure listening to you!

I love your analytical yet entertaining approach to music Adam. Not least because you are genuinely open-minded and funny and willing to see the value in the efforts of the self taught and the rule breakers that make popular music so interesting.

Hendrix's face as he re-tunes on the Lulu show is great.

"feels a little bit sacreligious" Well hope he has Ling Ling insurance. 11:41 here we go

I find the structure of this video intensely satisfying. You can't do the, "oh wait, there's more" trick too often, it gets old fast, but you nail it in this piece, in my opinion. Multiple call backs, ending with the first, doing the "peel the onion" thing... very very well done. Thank you. :)

"Blues is not just a genre of music... or genre of... sibling" you're killing me, Adam long-guitar-man!

Question for your next QnA: Adam have you ever drawn parallels between flamenco harmony and blues harmony? These two might seem distant, but let me explain: The most basic flamenco harmony comes in the form of the Andalusian cadence (Am G F E) and some people like to think of it as a minor progression resolving back to A minor, to which I call bs because a lot of flamenco starts on E and ends on E, so there's no way you can call the E chord a dominant chord. In flamenco there's often a use of secondary dominants for the G and F chord so the Andalusian cadence sounds like this: Am D7 G C7 F E (usually an E with a b9 btw) - also, Paco de Lucía really solidified this in his music, the example playing in my head right now is La Villa Vieja at 3:38. Since you have a video on Hey Joe I'll use the song as an example. Now this extended Andalusian cadence looks a lot like Hey Joe chords, but in reverse and with some changes so that it can resolve to the E (F chord is added for tension, and also we start on A minor, but this doesn't affect the resolution to the E). So we have different starting points: in Hey Joe we start on C, travel through the progression to A major, which serves as a IV to the I - E major chord and we lay there on the E for a bit to make sure we're home. Meanwhile in flamenco we start on A minor, travel through the progression to the F which is a point of tension in the ears of a flamenco musician (probably because it's a semitone above the E, and the Andalusian cadence is a descending progression), only for that F to resolve to the E with some of that extra flamenco spice (b9 added to the E chord), My point being, flamenco (if it's played por arriba - which means the top string is your tonal center - aka the low E) uses very similar chords to Hey Joe and resolves to E major in the end. Hey Joe uses C G D A E and flamenco uses Am D G C F E, so the common chords are C G D E and the scales are somewhat similar: E G A B D, E F G A B C D E, And both types of music are polymodal and tend to sharpen the 3rd in the appropriate place, usually to make that E chord into an E major, because the E major chord is your tonic chord and it seems to sit outside the scale unless you raise the 3rd of the scale. Of course there's a major difference (haha puns) between them but it seems like there are some striking similarities. Is that just because of how the guitar is tuned or is there more to it? Does my brain, like most other human brains, just like patterns and is looking too deep into this? Why is it all E? Much love from Croatia