Songs Beginning with a Half-Diminshed 7th Chord on the Flatted 5th

That is a jazz harmonic device to do that. A tri-tone substitution.

 

But it's considered cool to not know music theory! I can be in a room full of "musicians" and if I start talking about music theory, the room will be empty within minutes. I think people mistakenly feel that knowing music theory destroys their organic creativity. It doesn't. It opens up possibilities, and you won't use the same old tired chord progressions. When I write music, I don't think about music theory at all, although my vocabulary of chords and scales is much larger than if I didn't know music theory. I usually realize odd harmonic devices I've used when I go back to chart the songs for other musicians.

 

Respectfully, not quite. That would be a B dominant 7 substituting for an F dominant 7. The half diminished chord is different.

 

I know! They probably felt obliged to defend their lack of knowledge about such things by making fun of it.

 

It's still acting like a substitution, though. A half diminished chord built on the tri-tone of the chord it is substituting is still a tri-tone sub.

 

That's the life of a musician who has been educated. I don't usually talk about these things with people for that reason.

 

Not sure I completely agree, but I hear you.

 

Many years ago I was in a band with a successful songwriter and guitarist. Had a #1 hit. I played bass. He would talk about going from say, C to D# to F in the key of B flat. I would explain that it was an E flat, not a D#. He just refused to get it. It drove me insane. I finally stopped correcting him.

 

i think but i hadn't the score in front of me that elvis costello used it a lot in" imperial bedroom"!!!! not as a first chord but as second one

 

maybe in kid about it, and the long honeymoon!

 

Agreed on the last part for sure.

That said, I'm also coming from a jazz background (originally), and studying classical theory helped me hear things in a more "big-picture" way and rely less on chord-to-chord thinking. Now, I tend to parse a lot of progressions as variations on the underlying diatonic scale and tonic harmony, and those variations can be expressed through linear voice-leading instead of key changes.

Of course that doesn't work with anything too chromatic, but for anything that depends on ii-V-I in closely related keys and/or circle-of-fifths progressions, it makes the cognitive load dramatically simpler, because you're making small changes to a single frame of reference instead of constantly changing that frame of reference.

As ShockControl noted, it's really how the chord is used that dictates the best name for it. If you have the progression Am > Fmaj7/A > Am6 > Fmaj7/A, which is common in spy movies, that's an Am6 for sure, because it's all about the moving line E > F > F# > F on top.

But in a progression like F#ø7/A > B7 > Em, the exact same pitches are now clearly a pre-dominant chord, and part of a ii6/5 > V7 > i progression.

 

One break coming up!

 

YEEEESSSSS!! Music nerd stuff!

This is incomprehensibly deflating. A mastering engineer sh-tting on someone for attempting to articulate and discuss a fun an interesting musical nuance.

As for the musical nuance I'm not immediately thinking of anything, but it's a leading chord in any voicing, it's on the verge of resolving to the tonic. That's what I'm hearing anyway, my theory knowledge - as an extension of my enjoyment of listening to music - is very piecemeal.

I'll come back if I think of something.. but I'm thinking I need a break from all the crotchety cynicism that's apparently in this in this forum's DNA.

 

Turned up another example in a year-old Reddit thread:



Progression is Aø7 > Eb/Bb > Cm7(9) > Fm7 > Bb7(b9) > Eb, more or less.

The funny thing is, I was just thinking of the possibility of this kind of progression as the intro to a song, i.e. having the half-diminished seventh resolve to a I6/4 chord, and quickly going V > I after that to set up the tonic. And then this example pops up, which does more or less that, though it's delayed by a deceptive cadence of a sort (I6/4 > vi) followed by a ii-V-I -- circle-of-fifths stuff, in other words (vi > ii > V > I).

It also occurs to me that there's some overlap between the title chord and a first-inversion V9/V or V7/V. In other words, the difference between F#ø7 > G7 > C and D7/F# > G7 > C isn't so huge, and if you throw in things like appoggiaturas it can get hard to draw a dividing line between the two. But then again it's sort of a distinction without much of a difference, since either way it's the same basic progression of pre-dominant > dominant > tonic, with #4 > 5 > 1 in the bass.

 

This video will explain the B knuckle 7th.

 

I went thru the song and wanted to see if anyone else heard it that way. You did also.
That opening arpeggio is nothing more than an F major chord and is a tonicization.

 

I don't even think Paul McCartney knows what this means.

 

The song Heart from the musical Damn Yankees starts off with a half diminished 7th chord.

 

He doesn't need to. Creative people often see that as an advantage.

 

Not sure if it was mentioned but Because ends with a half diminished chord.
I can't think of another song that ends with one of those chords.