Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd (G maj? - where's the F come from?)

[missis sumner]

Yes, I've been asked to learn this. 🙄

 

I quite like the song though, and well, the bass line is very, um, interesting! 😄

 

 

So listening to it, I've just started to get the intro and verse down as G F# E E, F C D D.  The song sounds very much like it's in G major to me, so where's that F come from?  Is it just a borrowed note from another scale?  It's very prominent - at the start of every second line of the verse.

 

Assuming I'm not wrong, can someone with a lot more theory knowledge shed a little light on it for me, please?

 

TIA

 

 

[jrixn1]

You're in the key of G, and this F chord is the bVII, functioning as the secondary subdominant, or the IV of the IV.  One way to think of the F-C is as a IV-I in the temporary tonal centre of C.

[missis sumner]

12 hours ago, jrixn1 said:

You're in the key of G, and this F chord is the bVII, functioning as the secondary subdominant, or the IV of the IV.  One way to think of the F-C is as a IV-I in the temporary tonal centre of C.

I wish I understood all that... I was ok up to bVII. 😆

 

Thanks for your reply though.  It's got enough pointers for me to go digging.

[Guest]

In short the song moves temporarily from the key of G to the key of C (the subdominant is the 4th degree of the scale, so G,A,B,C = 4 steps). The subdominant of this new key is F (C,D,E,F). Because it is effectively a 4th step of a key built on one of steps of the original key, it’s called “secondary”. Hence the term secondary subdominant. So F is described as the secondary subdominant of G.

 

Dominant is the name given to a chord built on the 5th degree. As above, if we do the same we can build a secondary dominant. Start in the key of G, move to D, then build another dominant (5 steps up) = A. So in G major, A major is considered a secondary dominant.

One other point: the second chord is in fact a D chord with an F# in the bass. This is usually called an inversion in the classical world, or a slash chord in pop/rock/jazz (because it’s usually written D/F#).

 

Hope this helps?

 

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by FDC484950
Correcting an error

[missis sumner]

It does.

[Reggaebass]

I don’t know the song but excellent music theory knowledge there @FDC484950, are you self taught or do you study music 🙂

[Guest]

A bit of both - time spent at the piano made most of the difference, as especially with chords it’s much easier to pick them out when you can play all the different inversions and hear how they sound - not something you can really do on bass 

[Bilbo]

Not every note on a piece of paper is loyal to the key signature as tunes move temporarily to different keys as a tune modulates. If the key signature changed every time, the chart would be confusing. Think of a Blues in F. For a start, it is not in F because F is the dominant 7 chord. That aside, on the 5th bar, it goes to Bb which has a flat of Ab which is not in F. A piece being 'in C' broadly means 'mostly'. 😄

[bassman7755]

On 20/08/2021 at 18:29, missis sumner said:

Yes, I've been asked to learn this. 🙄

 

I quite like the song though, and well, the bass line is very, um, interesting! 😄

 

 

So listening to it, I've just started to get the intro and verse down as G F# E E, F C D D.  The song sounds very much like it's in G major to me, so where's that F come from?  Is it just a borrowed note from another scale?  It's very prominent - at the start of every second line of the verse.

 

Assuming I'm not wrong, can someone with a lot more theory knowledge shed a little light on it for me, please?

 

TIA

 

 

@jrix 's explanation is technically correct but another (simpler IMO) way to understand it is as a borrowed chord from the G mixolydian mode. 

 

Borrowing chords from different modes is very common e.g. Summer of 69 is in D major but the middle 8 switches to borrowed chords from D Aeolian  (AKA D minor).

[Huw Foster]

edit: posted something but was about the wrong song, ignore this!

Edited October 19, 2021 by Huw Foster
Got mixed up!