Is this a modal progression? Edit, it isn't.

allen · July 2023

I have been dabbling with transcribing again.

I love this song...

So I sat down to transcribe it this evening.

I worked out that there's an F repeated a lot in the intro so I wrote down the chords from the key of F on my little piece of paper.

F Gm Am B C Dm

I then had a bit more of a listen and got about 80% of it. I must admit the harmony sounded a bit 'clever' to me, but not quite sure what is going on. I suspect some interesting inversions over each chord.

Anyhow, there was one chord that was flummoxing me and then I realised it was Bb so it's a flat 4 chord in the middle there in the chorus and pre-chorus.

Does this make it modal? and if so which mode would it be? Or perhaps it's just a flat 4 thrown in as you don't always have to follow rules right?

viz · July 2023

The Bb chord IS simply the 4 chord of F. It’s not a flat 4, it’s just a 4. Which is why F and Bb share a fret, the first fret.

So where you’ve wrfitten B in your chord list, there isn’t a B, there’s a Bb, which is perfectly normal.

Don’t know if this helps but if you were to put a capo on the first fret, you’d play the following shaped chords and it’d sound identical:

E F#m G#m A B C#m.

The A-shaped chord would be the 4 chord.

allen · July 2023

Oops!

viz · July 2023

Perfectly understandable, especially in the key of F where only one note has a flat sign, it definitely stands out and looks special.

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Is this a modal progression? Edit, it isn't.

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