The Beatles · from Let It Be (Jan 1969) · credited to Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Starkey
A study in a three-chord jam and improvised name-check.
An ~50-second edit of a much longer studio jam in F, cycling a plain IV–I–IV–V pattern (Bb–F–Bb–C) while Lennon improvises a rolling list of names.
This is a very short, made-up-on-the-spot song on Let It Be, in a home key of F major.
It only uses three chords, over and over, so the band can just jam.
Those three chords are the two friendliest neighbors of home, plus home itself.
John sings a list of names off the top of his head instead of a proper melody.
It is a musical warm-up that made it onto the record almost as a joke.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The jam is in F major and never leaves, treating the tonic as a base camp rather than a destination to travel back to.
There is no modulation, no borrowed chord, no surprise; the harmonic content is deliberately minimal.
The band cycles a single Bb–F–Bb–C pattern, the subdominant, tonic, subdominant, dominant of F.
The 4 chord bookends the pattern on either side of the tonic, and the 5 comes only at the end to reset the loop, so the harmony is basically two chords with an occasional pull home.
The chord pattern exists mostly to give Lennon room to talk-sing a stream of names (BB King, Doris Day, Matt Busby, and so on) without needing to plot notes.
This is harmony as scaffolding rather than storytelling, the same job three-chord blues has done for a century.
The vocal is more list than melody, closer to a chant than a tune, and it sits comfortably on the F-major scale without leaning on any particular scale-degree color.
Studying it is less about melodic shape than about how casually a great singer can ride even the plainest harmony.
The released Dig It is a ~50-second slice of a jam that ran much longer in the studio, cut down to fit the running order.
Its form on the album is essentially “short loop, fade,” a curated fragment rather than a designed song.
| Degree | Chord | Nashville | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | F | 1 | I |
| 2 | Gm | 2m | ii |
| 3 | Am | 3m | iii |
| 4 | B♭ | 4 | IV |
| 5 | C | 5 | V |
| 6 | Dm | 6m | vi |
| 7 | E° | 7° | vii° |
Chords sourced from a public transcription, in F major.
Reading the numbers: each is a scale degree in F. Plain = major, m = minor. Here the entire jam is 4–1–4–5 (B♭–F–B♭–C), one pattern repeated for the whole edit.
All three chords (Bb, F, C) are plain major triads, played as either open (C) or first-position barre (F, Bb) shapes. No diagram needed.
Prose analysis of the F-major jam, the Bb–F–Bb–C pattern, and the edit.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files (per-album zip that includes Dig It).
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody, if a community tab exists.
Open the song page →