Your favorite songs with neat key changes?

[haggardfan1]

 

[drmordo]

At 20:30, Bill Evans walks you thru a song with modulations. It's pretty magical.

At 37:30, they discuss adding modulation to a standard, and he illustrates again.

They talk about modulation a few other times as well.

 

[ndcaster]

love the 70s vibe on this one



drop D

the maj7 feeling, the bridge, takes me back to vinyl seats, sunshine, and the smell of unleaded gas

 

[Bendyha]

At the moment, I'm fascinated by this tune from Zita Swoon, a band from Antwerp. I have most of their albums, but only got this one recently. Most of the songs are in English, but not all.

 

[green_henry]

I think this has to be one of the earliest key changes; there's another one later on

 

[ndcaster]

let's count neat tonicizations



this is one of the top three pieces of vocal music of the past 75 years

perfect at every level

 

[Willie Johnson]

(Edit: reading is *fun*damental. Doyee.)

 

[goonie]

4 or 5 key changes in the last 90 sec or so... just keeps building. Brilliant.

 

[Chester P Squier]

Doobies--"What a Fool Believes"

Neat chord changes.

 

[HoodieMcFoodie]

 

[teleMc]

Dr Robert - Beatles
Help is on its way - Little River Band

 

[teleMc]

Some of the great modulations have been to accommodate the instrument that is taking the solo…

 

[AAT65]

A few really well-crafted Eagles songs come to mind.

" Already Gone" the whole song is G/D/C
until that vocal Chorus outro, which changes key, to C/G/F

And " New Kid in Town" - I don't even know what's happening here, but there's a great key change during that 'middle 8' bridge> key change into that last verse/chorus
Beautiful song

Here’s a great article about the key changes in New Kid In Town. We’ve played this for a couple of years and understanding the key changes helps you get to grips with it (Otherwise that’s a lot of chords!).

Another song where understanding the keys helped me learn the chords is Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. It switches back and forth very slickly between F and Gm: that‘s why you sometimes have a Dm (when you’re in F) and sometimes D7 (switching to or playing in Gm). And the chord that takes you back from Gm to F at the end of the chorus is a masterpiece — you could call it Bb11 I guess.
(Not key related, but there’s another nice feature in Don’t Stop Me Now, which is the way the intro / outro is a contracted version of the verse & chorus. And the verse is a nice 5-bar pattern. All in all a very clever song.)

 

[micpoc]

One is "Oh Well, OK" by Elliott Smith; instead of going up, it goes down a whole step at the 1:30 mark...

 

[Mike M]

Not a key change, but always thought this throw away had some great chord changes in it, especially from the chorus back to the verse.

 

[Mike M]

New Kid in town

Almost a textbook case of how to use modulations and key changes.

Just when you think they are done, they throw that E-Gm#-A, then Am at the end.

 

[John Frets]

Faithless Love. This one doesn’t really change keys. It just suggests a change in tonal center a couple of times (with a ii-V of the key a minor 3rd up followed by a return to the I of the original key). This starts at the beginning of the bridge. Very subtle. It happens around 1:35. The song was written by J.D. Souther, who also co-wrote New Kid in Town.

 

[BigDaddyLH]

Modal Mixture Common Tone Enharmonic Double Chromatic Mediant Modulation.

 

[HoodieMcFoodie]

Modal Mixture Common Tone Enharmonic Double Chromatic Mediant Modulation.

Would you like fries with that?

 

[runstendt]

The key changes in this song are so seamless that you don't really notice them until you try to play along.