This week’s lecture14 was on non-diatonic progressions, which are always fascinating to see how apparently unrelated chords work together in practice. To further my understanding of the concept, I put Radiohead’s Just15 under the microscope.
Nevermind the octatonic riff that opens the track, the intro and verse chords always broke my brain. They are:
C – Eb – D – F
Am – Ab – Eb – F
Looking through an academic lens, I can start to see where the non diatonic chords have come from. Analysing it in the key of C, Eb and Ab have been borrowed from the parallel minor, while the D is a secondary dominant (V/V) that doesn’t resolve. It’s nice to have seemingly nonsensical chords demystified, so I can better apply the concept to my own tracks.
14 Habel, Robyn. “Non-Diatonic Chord Progressions”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1B, University of Adelaide, October 21, 2019.
15 Radiohead. “Just”. The Bends. By Radiohead (Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Philip Selway, and Thom Yorke). Produced by John Leckie. 13 March, 1995.
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