The Beatles · from Abbey Road (1969)
A study in classical voice leading and floating minor harmony.
Three voices move in close, chromatic harmony over a broken-chord accompaniment, and the tonic keeps its distance so the song never quite lands.
This is a slow, dreamy Beatles song in a dark home key called C# minor.
Three singers sing three different notes at the same time, stacked close together like a small choir.
The way those three lines move so smoothly, one step at a time, is called voice leading, the same craft used in classical music.
The guitar rolls each chord out one note at a time instead of strumming, which is why it sounds like a music box.
The chords keep drifting to unexpected places and never really settle on home, so the whole song feels like it is floating.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The song is anchored in C# minor, but it treats the tonic as a place to leave rather than to rest on.
That reluctance to cadence firmly on home is what gives the whole piece its weightless, suspended character.
The opening moves from the tonic through a half-diminished second-degree chord to a dominant seventh, the classic minor-key i–iiø–V of harmonic-minor practice.
From there the harmony slides through chromatic, mediant-flavored chords rather than a plain diatonic path, which is the source of its unusual color.
Confirm the exact chromatic continuation at Isophonics and BeatlesFC.
The vocal is a tightly spaced three-part harmony that moves largely by step, with each line kept smooth in the way a written chorale would be.
This disciplined voice leading, not any single chord, is the reason Because sounds composed rather than strummed, and it is the lesson the starter path picks it for.
The accompaniment arpeggiates each chord, rolling the notes out one at a time instead of striking them together.
That study-like figuration keeps every harmony transparent, so the ear hears each chromatic shift clearly as it happens.
The "love is old, love is new" bridge lifts the harmony to a fresh area before the verse returns.
Even at the close the song favors suspension over a decisive tonic cadence, so it resolves more by fading than by landing.
Confirm the bridge's exact chords at Pollack.
| Degree | Chord | Nashville | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | C#m | 1m | i |
| 2 | D#° | 2° | ii° |
| b3 | E | b3 | III |
| 4 | F#m | 4m | iv |
| 5 | G#m | 5m | v |
| b6 | A | b6 | VI |
| b7 | B | b7 | VII |
Chords sourced from a public transcription, in C# minor.
Reading the numbers: each is a scale degree in C# minor. m = minor, ø = half-diminished, ° = diminished, (7) = a dominant-seventh coloring, b-degrees are chromatic steps.
These chords are movable barre shapes rather than open-position chords, so they are given as fret spellings (low E to high e; x = mute).
C#m (1m) is a plain minor barre shape. D#m7♭5 (2ø) = x 6 7 6 7 x. G#7 (5) = 4 6 4 5 4 4 (an E7 barre shape at the 4th fret).
Prose analysis of the C#-minor center, the chromatic harmony, and the three-part voice leading.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files: the exact chromatic chords and where the bridge modulates.
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody for the harmony, if a community tab exists.
Open the Beatles index →Tonic, predominant, and dominant labels for the minor-key chords at phrase level.
Open the paper →