How Radiohead Writes A Chord Progression | The Artists Series S2E1

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Under my last video for this series I got a comment saying : "that's it unsubscribed 0 music theory analysis"

And that's fine in the case of CM. I focus just late elsewhere, but now we're doing Radiohead

Hope you know what you got yourselves into

Welcome to season 2 of the artist series where we look at the biggest rock music acts in the world

and what we can learn from them.

In the past, we've looked at melody, music production, lighting, music videos and marketing

but we never really touched on harmony

and since harmony is one of the things I'm asked about most often

and because Radiohead songwriting revolves heavily around their chords

In this episode, I will focus on just that.

But before we do as always : perspective before practice. In other words : what's Radiohead's identity?

It is crucial to understand this before we move into the specifics because analyzing their image will tell us why they make certain musical decisions.

And again the question goes out to you

What do you think of when you think Radiohead?

Pause this video now, think of maybe three or four descriptive words then come back to me

Okay, you're ready?

Here's what I came up with : first of all their nationality.

It's not just the accent, there's something British about the production and style.

Second : a song.

Creep is still Radiohead's most famous song to date and in a way, it's the perfect trailer for their later career.

Radiohead sound was always out there, always weird and eerie.

Remember how in a previous episode I talked about : don't give them four, give them two plus two

well, Radiohead literally has a song called : 2 + 2 = 5

There's a certain outer-worldliness, a sense of alienation that runs through all of their music and lyrics.

Which is often been credited as a representation of not belonging, being the underdog.

And as with twenty one pilots, there is a sense of contrarianism here as well

but more so : a Counterculturism.

If you followed radio at over the years, you'll know that they've always changed their style

most notably with Kid A which introduced an electronic more abstract side of the band.

And for similar reasons, as with twenty one pilots,

there is a large overlap between artists who write depressing music

and artists who continuously change their style.

And this darkness does play a big role here as well.

In summary, I hope that we can agree that the typical fan of Radiohead

is older than the angsty teenager we discussed in the twenty one pilots episode

as Radiohead's music is less accessible, more intellectual

But it does speak to a similar emotion : depression, angst, isolation.

Now with all of this pre work done. Let's get into the good bits

Let's start analyzing some songs.

A little warning though

If your music theory's only so-so

A lot of what's about to follow might confuse you.

That's fine because the point I want to make with this video will still make sense to you.

So if you let me do this for a few minutes

I promise there will be a big payoff for you at the end of this as well

And

Sorry Radiohead. I know you're not the biggest fans of creep, but that's where we'll have to start.

Let's go

It's all there : the eeriness, the darkness, the alienation, the contrarianism

All summed up perfectly by the music and lyrics

And it's all supported by this chord progression :

We're in G major

Going from the tonic to the mediant up to the four

And then there's a bit of modal interchange when we get the four from G minor

So that's already kind of cool, since two of these courts do not naturally appear in G major

But what's even cooler in my mind, and this is where you can really hear the musicality of this band

Is that the melody follows these chords.

They didn't just write a cool chord progression and wrote whatever a melody over it

There's a strong relationship between the two

How can you hear that?

Let's take a listen

This line consists of the notes B, F sharp and D sharp which is an arpeggio of B major

So the melody here is outlining the underlying harmony

then we get

Which keeps coming back to that B, the major seven of the C major

And then

That B is turned into a B-flat

becoming the minor seven of the C minor

And this is why I think in the case of Radiohead

These songs begin with a chord progression

And the melody is written to that chord progression

This of course is pretty much the opposite with most of the artists we discussed last season

Where the harmony plays a lesser role

So that was 1992.

In 93, they released Anyone Can Play Guitar

Which uses very binding chords as well six for seven.

Like most of their chord progressions, this is not something you write to a melody you've already written

In 1994, Radiohead released the bends with its first single My Iron Lung

The chord progression is G, C minor and for the most part the melodies set in C Dorian.

The only exception is the tagline which follows the chord progression

Did you hear it?

We get a B instead of the B flat normally found in C Dorian and a D.

These very clearly line out the G major chord by hitting its third and fifth

Then we resolve into the third of the C minor : E flat

So again, the melody follows the harmony and Radiohead love doing this.

Let's look at another example in depth

This chord progression is set in C Dorian and G Dorian which you can see from the A and E here respectively

So very subtly, we get a key change halfway through this chord progression

And here's the melody Tom came up with

CEO he acknowledges the major six in both Dorian scales and then later we get these chords

This G Dorian again

You can hear the characteristic major six being played in the ostinato

And it's the most prominent note in the melody as well

This being the same scale as in the verse it connects up nicely

But then we get to the chord over the E

And it's a dominant chord instead of the diminished chord we would expect

This transition is accomplished by the F major seven preceding the E seven

here it serves as a dominant substitution : what we call a Neapolitan chord

This is a major seven chord one semitone higher than the chord you want to go to

So it's like a tritone substitution

But it has a major seven instead of a seven and it typically goes to the dominant

And if you just excitedly grabbed your guitar to try that out

Here's a few more things Radiohead likes to do

Number one

Changing the gender of a chord especially switching minor to major

Which is the musical equivalent of a nursery rhymes and horror movies

It's a strange out of place smile in a dark world

In some cases they also substitute major for minor chords, which has a dreamy sound

Number two

Showing us both versions of a chord : major and minor

Number three

Descending a half-step to the next chord whether that's from major to major

Or from minor to major

Since the minor second is considered a very dark interval

This adds to the eeriness of the band's sound

Generally we don't see a lot of movement to minor chords which is a point in itself

And the songs we've analyzed two thirds of the chords were major

For a band that's known for the depressing songs

I think that's noteworthy and maybe a hint at the fact that Radiohead is more about alienation and isolation

than just pure sadness

This also explains why they don't use Aeolian as much and often go for Dorian

Which because of its major six sounds less dark

Number five

Strange slash chords where the chord largely stays the same, but the bass moves to a weird note

And number six

Radiohead's chord progressions are rarely four bars long

Paranoid Android is twelve bars, Nude switches from ten to twelve, Ideoteque is five

Knives Out is eleven, Jigsaw Falling Into Place is twelve and the list goes on

This is mostly used in slower less attention-grabbing songs, and it breaks up the structure

making it less accessible

But ultimately easier to get lost in the music

In the melodies, there's a lot of semi tonal movement as well

Which also adds to the darkness like when Tom sings a chromatic melody in 2 + 2 = 5

Or how he plays with the semi-tones in Pyramid Song

Or when they're using a diminished scale in Just

Combine these semi tonal small movements with some big jumps to another chord tone

And you got yourself the Radiohead sound

Now if you didn't understand a word I said in this video

First of all, thank you for not turning it off just yet

And second, maybe that's the point

Maybe Radiohead doesn't want to be understood.

Maybe they want to hide behind a thick wall of complexity

It's like saying nobody understands me anyways

Which of course feeds into their image of isolation and alienation

Contracting just those listeners who can empathize

I said this before in my life Q&A, as an artist you get to choose your fans

The music you write determines the kind of people you attract into your life

One of the best things about starting a career in this industry

Is that you get to decide what kind of people you hang out in the future

Professor Adrian North of Heriot-Watt, University in Edinburgh

Conducted the largest study so far on how personality ties to the kind of music you listen to

And here's what he found

Chart pop fans have high self esteem, are hard working, outgoing and gentle

But are not creative and not at ease

Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing

Country-and-western fans are hardworking and outgoing

And rock fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing

Gentle and it ease

What kind of music you decide to make is not all about which genre will make you the most money

Or which genre you like the most

There's another factor to take into consideration

Do you like the kind of person you're writing for?

When I started holistic songwriting

I knew I didn't want to make courses for beginners

I was more interested in working with people who want to go from good to great

And so I decided to go deep instead of wide

Which is also the reason I only release one artist series a month

Will this throw off most of my viewers?

Yes

But I'd rather have a small fanbase of hardcore fans

Than 10 million Subscribers who just want to learn how to play a c-major on guitar

And make no mistake

small audiences can be valuable because there's often less stuff made specifically for them and

When you do make something for them

They're often more willing to buy it

So don't think you have to write accessible pop music to make a living

If you only have a thousand fans worldwide

But those thousand fans love you and buy a hundred bucks worth of stuff from you every year

That's a hundred thousand bucks a year, which is enough for a three-piece band to make a living

This is known as the 1,000 true fans theory

And if you haven't wrapped Kevin Kelly's book

Highly suggest you do

If you like this video, please like share and subscribe and let me know in the comments

Which rock artists you'd like to see on this season of the Artists Series.

This is Friedemann Findeisen from Holistic Songwriting

Take care