Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Assistance identifying four chords

Hello chaps,

May I call upon the wonderful folks at PW to decipher the four chords in the following short MP3 clip:

http://www.mediafire.com/?5fd1i2rr9bs5vo9

They may sound easy, but I tried earlier this morning before heading to the office and really struggled to work them out.

All suggestions gratefully received, and extra brownie points if you can identify the track the clip is taken from.

Cheers,
James
x

Let me guess... The Crusaders" track is "Street Life" from 1979

OK I didn't guess that's what the ID tags embedded the file say.

Hey, that's cheating!

I used mp3DirectCut to extract that small clip and didn't think that the ID3 tags would be carried over to the new file.

Oh well...any ideas?

Cheers,
James
x

I can't tell where you're at in the tune from that mp3 James, but I'm assuming you want those chords in the intro and interlude. I haven't played this in probably over 20 years but from what I recall it's basically a triad over a bass note a whole step away.

The verse starts in Fm so the walkup in quarter notes would be something like

Bb/C B/Db Db/Eb D/E // Fm / Bbm / etc.

The interlude might be longer with a variation on those chords but basically it's the same concept of triad over bass note a whole step down.

A funny story--this past Valentine's Day I drove up to this restaurant in Ventura for a gig with this singer I work with occasionally. About halfway through the first set Randy Crawford comes in. I guess she was friends with the bass player and had drove in from the Valley to hang....jeez quite a long drive just to hang. In any case the singer kept asking her to come up and sing. She said thanks but no I'm cool just hangin' out and listening. On the break I go over and greet her and say I've always enjoyed her voice, etc. Someone from the audience comes over and says, "you guys gotta let her sit in and sing Street Life !!" You should have seen the look on her face---she said "Please not that, anything but that !! If I NEVER have to sing that song again it'll be too soon"

She never did come up to sing. Would have like to have heard her.

Hi Dave,

Thank you for posting that nice little story, Dave.

I'm actually reasonably familiar with the chords in the intro, verse, and chorus, etc. - they're not so complicated, although Joe Sample adds lots of nice flourishes here and there to keep things interesting.

I also hope to do the sax/vocal intro ("I still hang around...") that's on the album cut of the song, but will come around to that later.

Still, I'd be grateful if someone could listen to the MP3 (it's approximately 5 seconds long), and provides some hints.

Cheers,
James
x

Oh, okay... ;-)

No promises this is exact, of course, but I spent a few minutes and I think this is pretty close...

Fm6 with a sharped 5th (over an Ab bass)

Abm6 (over Db)

Ab6 (over Db)

Bb augmented (over D)

Give it a shot and let me know what you think...

Here is what I hear:
1. Dm(maj7b5)/Ab (the chord is very dissonant, and that's the closest to my ear), tone by tone, bass first: Ab D F Ab C#

2. Dbsus7(add3), tone by tone: Db Gb Cb Eb F

3. Gbmaj7

4. Bm7/9

There is a good program called Transcribe which can slow down without changing the pitch and also do a Fourier analysis to show you most probable sounding tones but is not free and mine has expired With that program you could figure out the tones in a matter of seconds. I'll check if I can reinstall the program to restart the evaluation again but I don't think that's legal

P.S. As expected, reinstalling the program didn't reset the evaluation, so I am not able to run it on my computer anymore but if you haven't installed the program so far, you can download the free evaluation and use it yourself.

Dear James,

Here is a link to the last two pages of the Rhodes part to "Street Life". The four chords are notated at the end.

http://www.cabotmusic.co.uk/music6/STREET_LIFE_PNO_P5-6.pdf

Best regards,

David Kear

Cabot Music Productions, UK

Seems I've nailed the last three chords Only the first one is slightly different but in the record there are some inadvertent wrong notes or something...

Good morning chaps,

Wow, talk about community - you guys are bloody terrific!

I shall look forward to giving the various suggestions a try after work this evening. The sheet music is also especially helpful, however I'd quite like to experiment with different combinations to keep the song 'fresh', you know?

The ability to slow down recordings without affecting pitch is certainly a useful feature of most sample editing packages, however I was unaware that there is software that can identify individual notes in chords - that would be very handy!

Thanks again for all great responses (including Dave's Randy Crawford anecdote!).

Cheers,
James
x