The Beatles · from Abbey Road (1969) · the 23-second hidden closer
A study in a chromatic descending bass and a secondary-dominant lift, in miniature.
The whole album ends on a 23-second McCartney sketch that slides its bass down by half-step, then swings through a secondary dominant into the subdominant before cadencing home.
This is the tiny hidden song at the very end of Abbey Road, only 23 seconds long, in a home key of D major.
It starts with the same chord but a walking bass note underneath that steps down one half-step at a time.
Sliding the bass down under a held chord like that is called a chromatic descending bass, one of Paul's favorite tricks.
Then the song grabs a bright chord that lifts it up and out, called a secondary dominant, before finding its way home.
It ends in the tiniest, sweetest way, on a single guitar strum.
To see the exact chords and key, open Pollack or Isophonics.
The song is planted in D major and never really leaves, packing a full harmonic arc into 23 seconds.
Its brevity is a joke about form: an entire miniature song squeezed into what would normally be an intro.
The opening runs the same D chord over a bass line that walks down by half steps, D to C# to B, giving the illusion of chord change while the harmony above stays put.
That chromatic descending bass under a held major triad is a McCartney trademark and the whole reason the song feels like it moves so much in so little time.
After the descent, the harmony uses an E7, a secondary dominant (V/V) that resolves to A, the dominant of the home key.
That non-diatonic lift is the emotional peak of the fragment, a bright reach outward before it turns homeward.
The chord list also passes through a D7 and a Ddim, using dominant-seventh brightness and a diminished-chord slide as chromatic connective tissue between the diatonic chords.
Even a 23-second song finds room for two flavors of non-diatonic color.
Unlike the medley pieces that came before, Her Majesty cadences, closing the album with an old-fashioned V–I resolution (A7 to D) rather than a segue.
The final chord is famously cut off short, one strum stripped of its own decay.
| Degree | Chord | Nashville | Roman |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D | 1 | I |
| 2 | Em | 2m | ii |
| 3 | F#m | 3m | iii |
| 4 | G | 4 | IV |
| 5 | A | 5 | V |
| 6 | Bm | 6m | vi |
| — | E7 | 2(7) as V/V | secondary dominant |
Chords sourced from a public transcription, in D major.
Reading the numbers: each is a scale degree in D. Plain = major, m = minor, ° = diminished, (7) = a dominant-seventh coloring, slash chords show a bass tone under the chord. Here the opening 1/1, 1/7, 1/5 spells the chromatic descending bass D–C#–B.
Most chords (D, A, Bm, G) are plain open or barre triads. The seventh chords are shown below (low E to high e; x = mute).
Prose analysis of the D-major miniature, the chromatic bass, and the secondary dominant.
Open Pollack mirror →Downloadable chord and key files: the exact chords and the cut-off ending.
Open Isophonics →Roman-numeral function and melody for the sketch, if a community tab exists.
Open the Beatles index →