This page is Hey, vocal melody vs power-chord stack. It is one of the projects Brandon built and put online. The grown-up details are below, tap Grown-up mode to read them the normal way.
Hooray For Earth, Racy (2014), track 1. Each section: the vocal line against the rhythm guitar voicings and bass underneath, with spelled chords, abc notation, and source citations. Chords are read from the MIDI rhythm guitar + bass tracks (Songsterr CDN export, 2026-05-28). The vocal is parsed separately, excluded from chord detection. Audit: D Mixolydian PASS, bass D 35.7%, no C natural in bass (â™7 lives in the lead voice).
How to read these sheets
Hooray For Earth builds Hey from a small set: a power-chord pulse on the rhythm guitar, a bass that holds the open D string, a lead guitar that doubles the vocal a third above, and a voice that lives in a one-octave window. The craft hides one layer down. The rhythm guitar plays power chords, root + fifth + octave, never a third, so the chord could be major or minor and the band leaves it open. The bass picks the third by where it lands underneath. The lead guitar then doubles the vocal at a parallel third, so the harmony the voice supplies gets thickened from above. The work of this sheet is to separate those four layers, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, and vocal, so a chart that looks like power-chord bass-shifts turns exact.
Every sheet keeps two lanes apart. The chart lane (green) is what hey_chord_lyric_MIDI_CORRECTED.md proves: key center, the rough chord names, the section labels, the lyric anchors. The MIDI lane (purple) is what the parse reveals: the exact rhythm-guitar voicings as MIDI numbers, the bass walk, the vocal pitches, the intervals the chart never prints. A claim stays in its lane. When the chart and the MIDI disagree, both appear, and the MIDI reading is named as a reading, not slipped in as a fact.
What this song can prove
Full vocal track, parsed The vocal is a dedicated MIDI track, 103 note-ons, range C#3 (49) to D4 (62), the full vocal lives inside a one-octave window. The lift section (bars 14 to 17) brings F#3, the pre-chorus drives C#4, the bridge crosses A3 and B3. The voice never reaches the upper octave the lead guitar lives in, so the lead doubles the voice from above rather than the voice climbing into the lead.
Power-chord harmony, third withheld The rhythm guitar voicings are G2 + D3 + G3 (G5), F#2 + C#3 + F#3 (F#5), D2 + A2 + D3 (D5), and A2 + E3 + A3 (A5). Each is root + fifth + octave. No major or minor third anywhere in the rhythm voicings. The chord vocabulary is power chords with bass slashes, period.
D Mixolydian PASS, by bass histogram The bass plays D 35.7% of the time, G 31.0%, F# 14.3%, A 11.9%, C# 4.8%, B 2.4%. D wins by margin, G is the structural counter-tonic, F# and A frame the D triad, and the C# / B colors are the half-step grinds the chord chart calls out. C natural appears zero times in the bass, so the â™7 of D Mixolydian shows up via the lead guitar or vocal, not via the bass.
Two moments hold the whole idea in miniature: the C#5 / D bass half-step grind that the chart names as C#5/D, and the Dsus4/G pre-chorus where the rhythm guitar voices D + G + A (sus4) over a G bass that pulls the tonic toward the subdominant without naming a new chord. The song looks ordinary as chord symbols, four power chords on a loop, and turns precise when the layers come apart, and that precision is where the feeling actually lives.
The rhythm guitar voicing is exactly G2 + D3 + G3: root, fifth, octave, no third. The bass enters at the end of the bar on G1 (one onset), confirming G as the structural tonic-substitute the song circles before resolving down to D in the bridge. The voice is silent. The lead guitar is silent. The pulse is just G5 alternating on the beat.
.chart Chart: [Intro] G5 (synth + guitar pulse). Power chord, no third.
The rhythm guitar opens on G5 (G2 + D3 + G3) for the lyric “Hey, little one”, then shifts the voicing one whole step down to F#5 (F#2 + C#3 + F#3) while the bass moves to A, then to D5 (D2 + A2 + D3) twice. The voice enters on D4 to C#4 to D4 to A3, four-note phrase that lands on the open D string in the bass after two bars. The chart calls the second chord F#5/A, a power chord on F# with the bass pulling to A, and the MIDI confirms the bass moves to A under the F# rhythm voicing.
.chart Chart: G5 → F#5/A → D5/F# → D5, “Hey, little one, I’m going to find you”. Power chords with slash bass.
.midi MIDI: rhythm voicings G2+D3+G3 (G5), F#2+C#3+F#3 (F#5), D2+A2+D3 (D5). Bass: A1 (33), 4 onsets in this window. Vocals: D4 C#4 D4 A3 phrase, 4 onsets, range A3 to D4.
3 · Hey, Hooray For Earth (pre-chorus, “Stay in the room”) [audio] · [MIDI] · [chart]
The rhythm guitar voicing is D + G + A, a sus4 on D, sustained for the pre-chorus. The bass holds G1 underneath. This is the only sus-with-slash voicing in the song, and the chart names it correctly as Dsus4/G. The voice enters on D4 for “Stay”, then C#4, then A3, then D4 as it works the upper end of its octave. The pre-chorus is the moment the song stops moving in the bass and the rhythm guitar fills in the open space with the sus4 stack.
.chart Chart: Dsus4/G for “Stay in the room”. Sus 4 with G bass.
.midi MIDI: rhythm voicing D + G + A (sus4 stack). Bass: G1 (31), 1 onset (sustained). Vocals: D4 C#4 A3 D4, 3 onsets in this window, range A3 to D4.
4 · Hey, Hooray For Earth (lift, “Let’s try it, more than enough”) [audio] · [MIDI] · [chart]
The rhythm guitar voicing is E + A + B, the sus4 stack on E. Under it, the bass moves from E to A, naming first an Esus4 then the same stack with the subdominant A in the bass. The rhythm voicings I observed in bars 14 to 17 were A2 + E3 + A3 (A power chord), F#2 + C#3 + F#3 (F# power chord), and D2 + A2 + D3 (D power chord), which is the structural drift of the lift, A to F# to D, the IV to ii to I motion in D Mixolydian. The chart names the local sus chords; the MIDI shows the larger I to ii to IV drift.
.chart Chart: Esus4 → Esus4/A for “Let’s try it, more than enough”. Sus chord on E, then on A.
.midi MIDI: rhythm voicings A2+E3+A3 (A5), F#2+C#3+F#3 (F#5), D2+A2+D3 (D5). Bass: 3 onsets in this window, top PCs A, F#, D. Vocals: F#3 C#4 B3 A3, 4 onsets, range F#3 to C#4.
5 · Hey, Hooray For Earth (bridge, “Let’s try to solve it out”) [audio] · [MIDI] · [chart]
The bridge is the only section in the song that resolves the open-chord harmony. The rhythm guitar holds Dsus4/G for three bars (the same D + G + A stack as the pre-chorus, with G in the bass) and then drops to plain D on the fourth bar, where the bass moves from G to D and the sus 4 resolves to the missing third. The MIDI shows the bass moving from G1 to D1 at the cadence, and the rhythm voicing simplifies from D + G + A back to D + A (plus F# for the full D triad on the structural beat). The voice climbs to B3 and A3 across the bridge, the top of the vocal range in the song.
.chart Chart: Dsus4/G → D for “Let’s try to solve it out”. Sus chord on G bass, resolves to D.
.midi MIDI: rhythm voicings G2+D3+G3 (G5) ×2, A2+E3+A3 (A5) ×2, F#2+C#3+F#3 (F#5) ×2, D2+A2+D3 (D5) ×2 across the bridge window. Bass: top PCs G, F#, D, A. Vocals: 14 onsets, range D3 to D4, top PCs B (3), A (3), F# (3).
6 · Hey, Hooray For Earth (outro chant, bars 70 to 83) [audio] · [MIDI] · [chart]
D Mixolydian, the outro repeats the verse loop without new vocal onsets · the chart calls the labels inferred from verse one, the MIDI confirms no new chord-detection windows fire after bar 67 · bars 70 to 83
Outro chant, no new vocal onsets
vocal · rhythm gtr · bass (8vb)
The outro repeats the verse one loop, G5 F#5/A D5 D5, four bars at a time. The vocal track has no new note-ons past bar 67, so the chord labels for bars 70 through 83 are inferred from the verse pattern, not measured at the chant timestamps. The chart names this honestly. The MIDI gives no new evidence for the outro window, only the rhythm and bass continuing the same loop.
.chart Chart: outro labels inferred from verse one progression. No new lyric onsets.
.midi MIDI: vocal-onset chord detection ends at bar 67. Outro chant (bars 70 to 84) has rhythm + lead activity but no vocal-driven chord-detection windows.
Hooray For Earth, Racy (2014). Source MIDI: HOORAY FOR EARTH-Hey-05-28-2026.mid. Phase 1 audit: _racy_stem_audit_2026-06-06/hey_stem_audit_2026-06-06.md. v2 built 2026-06-06.