Lazarus

Bar 1. C minor center, Drop C tuning, 4/4 at 117 BPM. The lead guitar strikes a C5 power chord: open C2 plus open G2 plus open C3, the three lowest open strings of Drop C. Root plus 5 plus root, no 3rd. The voicing is the simplest possible declaration of C as the tonic, and the guitar holds that exact shape for the entire 6-bar opening phrase. The shape never changes. The bass moves.

The bass walks underneath through six different roots and the guitar shape stays fixed: C1, then E1, then F♯1, then D1, then F1, then G1. Each bass step renames the chord above it without the guitar voicing moving. The riff is one of the cleanest examples of bass-as-harmonic-engine in modern rock.

Bar 1, C5 over C1: root and 5 stacked on root in the bass. The home position. The chord is ambiguous between major and minor because the 3rd is absent.

Bar 2, C5 over E1: the bass slides up to E1, which is the M3 of C. The chord now reads as C in first inversion, the M3 in the bass. The voicing has nothing minor about it. For one bar, Lazarus is C major.

Bar 3, C5 over F♯1: the bass moves a half step up to F♯1. F♯ against C is the tritone, the most foreign interval relative to the home key. The chord becomes a polychord, a C triad stacked on the tritone of C. This is the riff's signature dissonance, the moment of harmonic crisis. The bass refuses to settle for one bar.

Bar 4, Cadd9 over D1: the bass falls back to D1, the 9 of C. The chord reads as Cadd9 with the 9 in the bass, a sweet color after the tritone. The 9-in-the-bass is a Steely Dan move, unexpected in a power-chord-driven rock song.

Bar 5, Csus4 over F1: the bass settles on F1, the perfect 4 of C. The C5 voicing over F reads as Csus4 (with the 4 supplied by the bass) or as F-rooted Fsus2 if you re-imagine the bottom-up voicing. The chord is harmonically ambiguous depending on which note you call the root.

Bar 6, Cm over G1: the bass arrives on G1, the 5 of C. The guitar still holds the same C5 shape. But this bar the bass briefly touches E♭1, the low C string at fret 3. E♭ is the m3 of C. After five bars of voicings that refused to declare major or minor, the E♭1 visit in bar 6 finally answers the question. The song is in C minor.

The riff has played coy about its mode for the entire phrase. The M3 (E natural) appeared as a bass root in bar 2 to make the chord look major for one bar. The 9 in bar 4 sweetened the room. The F in bar 5 introduced sus ambiguity. Only on the last bar does the m3 appear, and only as a bass-string visit at fret 3. The harmonic answer slips in at the last possible moment.

From bar 7 onward the cycle repeats E1 to F♯1 to D1 to F1 to G1, omitting the bar 1 C plant. The macro form of bars 1 through 11 is one bar of C followed by two iterations of the five-bar walk. The 6-bar phrase plus a 5-bar phrase equals 11 bars total before the next section.

Lazarus has no confirmed vocal track in any available recording. The analysis is harmony-only. The lead guitar carries the entire melodic identity through the held C5 voicing. There is nothing to supply the 3rd from above, so the chord's mode-question stays unanswered for five bars in the voicing alone. The bass is the only instrument that can declare C minor, and it does so in bar 6 with one chromatic visit.

The reharmonization device: pick a fixed power-chord shape on the lowest strings of your guitar and let the bass walk under it through six chromatic and diatonic neighbors. Each bass note renames the chord. The same three guitar pitches become root-and-5, first inversion, tritone polychord, add9, sus4, and minor-with-passing-color across one phrase. The guitar player does nothing. The bass player does everything.

Take this into your own writing. Find a three-note power-chord voicing on open strings (your tuning's lowest available shape). Hold that voicing across a six-bar phrase. Write a bass line that walks through I, ♮III, ♯IV, II, IV, V. Withhold the m3 of your key until the last bar, then have the bass visit the m3 as a passing tone. The arrangement does what a chord progression would do, but with one chord shape and a moving bass. The minimalism is the point. The bass is the harmonic engine.