Yesterday | Chord and Melody Analysis pt. 1 (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone,

In this lesson, I examine the chord progression and melody of the Beatles song "Yesterday" and talk about what key its in, how the chord progression uses secondary dominant chords borrowed from the relative minor, and how the melody interacts with the chords using the major scale and the melodic minor scale. We discuss how each note of the melody interacts with each chord to create interesting tension and release as well as how the melody notes affect the chords.

If you want to play along to the track yourself, check out the tablature below and the jam track to play along to the verse and chorus. If you're feeling adventurous, trying making your own voicings of the chord progression by studying the fingerboard dots on the jam track or try mapping out a solo or even a few different places to play the melody. 

In part 1, I get into the verse or A section of the song. The next lesson (coming soon) goes over the next part of the song.

If this lesson feels overwhelming, I recommend watching the previous three MTM lessons about melody making and brushing up on your melodic minor understanding. This lesson is one of the more dense lessons I've produced on here so I expect some community forum discussions, some questions, and I expect some people will need to review some previous lessons for this one to make more sense.

Post your questions, homework, etc on the community forum. 

Check out the Lesson Archive for more Songwriting lessons.

This lesson is part of my Song Analysis series.