stick around to find out how you can practice your ear training with today's sponsor tone Jim a few weeks ago I made a couple of videos where I was training you on how to recognize chords by ear which is an incredibly valuable skill and when I was writing that video I was coming up with songs that could be good examples of particular chords in context and maybe it's because I'm a massive beetles fan but I just kept coming up with Beatles examples it's like the Beatles seem to have an example of every chord you might want so I thought let's make a dedicated video to ear training recognizing chords but based off Beetle songs so what we'll be doing here is looking through each chord of the key like the one chord the four chord the five chord the six chord Etc giving examples from famous Beetle songs that you can use to help you identify those chords when you hear them in other songs even in songs that aren't by The Beetles so let's begin with chord one of the key the tonic chord so if we were in the key of C for example the tonic chord is C and the distinctive characteristic the sound of the tonic chord is being completely at rest completely resolved so if I go for a little chord progression [Music] here here how complete it sounds there's nowhere else I could go that would sound any more finished than the one chord so that's the sound you're looking for with the one chord is complete resolution and it's very typical to end a song on the one chord so that's what you can sort of Imagine of course let it be here is a great example of a song ending on a one chord and sounding very done so that was the one chord now let's look at the five chord the distinctive feature of the five chord is that it wants to resolve back to the one chord so imagine that we were in the key of G flat for example this is the one chord g flat and the five chord is d flat and we're on that d flat particularly if there's a seven involved we really want to go back to the one that's where it resolved so the characteristic of the five chord is that it really wants to resolve back to the one chord which is what happens in yellow tambourine what do we want to happen [Music] now another Paul McCartney song um that does that in a similar vein is the song all together now which was on the Yellow Submarine film at the end so this song is also based on a move from 1 to 5 and it's even getting the seven in there on the five which makes the pull of the five back to one even stronger 1 2 3 4 can I have little more the next chord we're looking at is the fourth chord of the key so if we were in the key of G that's the one chord the fourth chord is the chord built on the fourth note of the scale which is C now the fourth chord of the key is like a diluted version of the fifth chord of the key remember the fifth chord of the key really wanted to go back home well the fourth chord of the key wants to go back home but it's not in so much of a rush now a good example from the BTO catalog is the song Love Me Do where the verse is based on the move from G to C which are one to four love me too you know I love you so next we're looking at the two chord of the key the second chord of the key so if we were in the key of E for example the second chord of the key would be based on fshp because FP is the second note of the E major scale so we'd have the chord F Shar minor the second chord of the key is always Minor by default because that's just the chord we get when we harmonize the notes of the major scale up from the second degree and the Beatle song I'm going to give you while you might have guessed it from the road sound it is don't let me down which starts on the tonic chord of e and then goes up to the two chord of F [Music] minor don't let me down so for the next chord we're looking at this one that chord D minor in the context of a major what is that that is the minor version of the four chord so usually in the key of a major the fourth note would be D major the fourth chord is D major but quite a common change to make in the major key is to swap out the major four chord for the minor version of that chord D Minor so of course what I have here is in my life which is a great example of the minor four chord because we go initially to the major four chord so that's D major and then it goes to the minor four so we suddenly get that moment of the Sun going behind the [Music] cloud and then we go back to one so next we're going to look at the sixth chord of the key now so if we're in the key of C for example the sixth chord of the key 2 3 4 5 6 is a minor now the characteristic of the sixth cord of the key is that it offers an alternative place to rest so usually we rest we resolve to the one chord but on the sixth chord we do still feel a sense of weight and resolution and we can just sort of sit here if we want to you can imagine the song could end here or be with a sort of dark Edge because it's a minor conclusion now a good Beetle song to hear this in is a song that actually uses a very famous core progression known as the doop changes or the 50s changes core progression that goes 1 6 then it goes four five so that is from the end of Happiness is a Warm Gun by the BOS we're going around that classic 50s chord change going from one C to six a [Music] minor ultimately the only way you get better at using your ear to recognize things about music is to practice and a great way to practice ear training is with today's sponsor tone Jim tone Jim offers a whole range of ear training games to improve your listening skills for example their game Route 6 plays you a short core progression and you have to identify what those chords are by ear or you could play their game cordus which instead focuses on chord type so you have to ID identify whether the chord is major or minor or diminished Etc you can also practice other aspects of music for example intervals with their departures game you played a melodic interval like a perfect fifth or a major Sixth and you have to identify What It Is by ear use the link in the description to start improving your ear today with tonim so the next chord we're looking at is the third chord of the key so if we were in the key of a major for example like we are in the song Help the chord c Shar minor would be the third chord of the key a chord that is minor by default in the major scale built on the third degree of the scale now this chord has a sort of in between quality it doesn't necessarily sound at rest but it also doesn't sound necessarily that tense so the third chord of the key what something refer to as the median cord is sort of a halfway house between tension and resolution and of course help by the bols is a great example of [Music] it when I was so mucher than to so the next chord we're looking at is the flat sixth chord the chord built on the Sixth Degrees of scale but flattened so in the key of E major like this [Music] usually we'd have C sharp as the sixth degree of the scale but here we're flattening that down to C natural so it's a major chord built on the flat six degree of the scale and a really good example of that is the song It Won't Be Long by the B tools where the verse is built from a change from E major and then to C major and then back to [Music] e and another chord that doesn't belong in the key another sort of chromatic chord is that one E flat in the key of f I'm sure you can guess which song I'm playing here so in he Jude we're going from the chord F which is the one chord to the flat seven [Music] cord do you recognize that that is Magical Mystery Tour by the bours one of the middle sections it's kind of hard to pin down the structure of that song but in the middle we have this move from the chord E which is our one chord and then we go to this chord g major and then it goes to the four chord A so what is G in the context of e so we're in e that's the key and then we go to G well that is the flat three chord the lowered [Music] three so now we are looking at the major variation of the two chord so you remember earlier when we were talking about don't let me down we were talking about how the two chord is usually Minor by default but we could make it major and it changes the sound of the music so here in the song 8 days a week we're in the key of D so typically in D you'd have E minor as the second chord but in 8 days a week instead we get E major and it really gives it a really bright colorful sound I think instead of the minor having the major just adds an undeniable sunshine to the music [Music] oh I need your love so so far we've only been talking about chords in the context of the major key but the thing is chords can have a slightly different quality slightly different sound in the context of the minor key so now let's look at some examples of these chords in the minor key and that one I was just playing while Guitar Gently Weeps is a good example of the one chord in the minor key the song's in the key of A minor and starts on a nice big solid a minor chord so just like in the major key the one chord has the same quality of sounding fully at rest and resolved it's not like there's anywhere else we could go that would sound more finished and complete than that but unlike in the major key we get this slightly darker Edge solemn serious tone of the minor chord rather than the major chord the the brightness of the major chord isn't there it's minor instead so next we're going to talk about the sixth chord of the minor key so if we were in E Minor for example the sixth note is C so a C major Triad is the sixth chord of E minor now the sixth chord in the minor key has a sense of sort of momentary brightness because so we're going to a major place but within the minor key and also has a a tendency to want to resolve back to one but it's not in a hurry we we can wait there for quite a while and then eventually come home and a great example in the B Tools catalog of this chord of the sixth chord of the minor key is and a RI be look at all the lonely so throughout this video we've been talking about chord function the degree on which the chord is built in the scale but something I want to show you is a few examples from be songs that are great at identifying chord type so not necessarily which degree of the scale that cord is built on but the quality of that cord is it major is it minor is it augmented or does it have a sixth on it or something like that so for example do you recognize that chord that is an e augmented Triad and it is the chord that opens the song O darling what happens in O darling is we get this e aled Triad which is actually on the fifth degree of the scale and then it goes to a major which is the one but you don't necessarily have to worry about the fact that it's built on the fifth because we just get it at the beginning of the song there in isolation it's a really great example of the characteristic of the augmented chord the the sort of dissonant sound of [Music] it okay what about this chord do you recognize that that is the opening of fall on the hill and that is a sixth chord what we have here well if we look at my hands we we actually have a B minor 7 over D but that is just a different voicing of a D6 chord so if I remove the left hand and put the B at the top we can see we got a sixth there here's the usual Triad the D major Triad and we've added the sixth degree of the scale turning into a sixth chord day after day [Music] so that is the end of for no one where we're getting a g sus 4 resolving to G major which is a great sort of isolated example of the sound of a sas4 chord not only are we hearing a nice sort of prolonged suas chord just kind of on its own at the end of the song song but then we're also hearing the resolution of that SAS four chord back to the regular major Tri which is the context where you usually hear SAS four chords because that's kind of the beautiful function of this chord is that it has that suspended quality which then gives us that nice bit of release when it [Music] resolves so that is all of the Beetles ear training I have for you today if you enjoyed this video let me know in the comments and if you can think of other bands perhaps that could be a good basis for ear training maybe I could do a radio head ear training um video let me know in the comments about that as [Music] well [Music]