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Posted by: piporz Mar 25 2012, 02:00 AM

Hi! I'm truly excited learning about music theory: at this point I'm looking at harmonizing major schales, chord substitutions and families.

I think I kind of understand it right now and I want to apply what I've learned. I want to analyze popular songs (by ear training) to find out the key and their progression. I want to start easy not to frustrate myself and this is why I'm asking for your help.

Could you name me some songs that follow a Diatonic Major Scale (sorry if i'm saying it wrong). I know there are quite a lot of them, but since I'm starting, I would like songs that do respect the harmonized scale and do not have chords outside this diatonic scale.

For example, I know Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl is a I - IV - I - V, (G - C - G - D) chord progression and I think all later chords on the song belong to the Diatonic Scale.

You guitar pros.. could you give me more songs of this type? I would really appreciate it! Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, rock, blues.. etc!

I also would appreciate if, in case I'm using musical vocabulary erraticly, that you correct me, since I'm learning and maybe I'm destroying it.


Thank you and forgive me for my english.

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Mar 25 2012, 09:35 AM

Hey friend! I would also recommend taking a look over the Beatles songs there's a big music lesson there and if you need some more advanced things try jazz fakebooks - do you know what those are?

Cosmin

Posted by: piporz Mar 25 2012, 01:56 PM

No idea, Cosmin. Any song in particular from Beatles?

Thank you

Posted by: Amitai Kedmi Mar 25 2012, 06:04 PM

The Beatles write their songs diatonically, so you can identify the chords in the scale write away, just an example, in Octopuses Garden (1-6-4-5, 6-5-4-5 / E-Cm-A-B, Cm-B-A-B ) and so on.

And a Fake Book is a book containing mostly jazz compositions with chord progression, melody line and lyrics.
There some classics that you can learn from the Fake Book.

Posted by: Cosmin Lupu Mar 25 2012, 08:03 PM

Yup, Amitai has certainly summed it up here from the Beatles, you can try all the classic hits man literally each and everyone, from Yellow Submarine, Hey Jude to Norwegian Wood for instance!

Posted by: El Fortinero Mar 25 2012, 09:57 PM

for pop songs here is the formula: I- V - VI - IV


and if it is a love song: