"When The Sun Goes Down" by Arctic Monkeys Chords

Question

Where do these chords come from in "When the Sun Goes Down" by Arctic Monkeys?

The chords do not line up with the key of B. I am confused.

Here are the song chords used: B, D#7, Emaj7, D#m, C#m, F#7, E7, G#m, G, F#, Bm, Em, F#m, Bm, A, F#

These are the chords in the key of B: B, C#m, D#m, E, F#, G#m, A#dim, Bmaj7, C#min7, D#m7, Emaj7, F#7, G#m7, A#m7b5

Some overlap, some do not.

Thank you!

Answer 1

"Where do these chords come from in "When the Sun Goes Down" by Arctic Monkeys? The chords do not line up with the key of B. I am confused."

You are indeed! Confused in your concept that the chords of a song SHOULD all be diatonic - using only the notes of the home scale. Where did that come from?

Ditch that concept, then you can ditch a lot more 'theory' like 'modal interchange' and 'borrowing' that seek to justify the naughtiness of venturing outside the diatonic. It's allowed. Really!

OK, that's going too far. Don't ditch them entirely. Just recognise them for what they are - descriptions. There's the plain vanilla ice of the diatonic. (Nothing wrong with that. I like plain vanilla ice.) Then there's the sprinkles of chromaticism. It's still a vanilla ice, but with added exotic touches. Then there's a whole range of mixtures and additions culminating in a full-blown Knickerbocker Glory containing multiple flavours of ice cream plus every imaginable extra!

Theory can measure the degree of exoticism. It can't tell us WHAT chord or note to choose, but it can list the ones that are close to home (good) or further out (also good). Vanilla ice or Knickerbocker Glory? Your choice! Enjoy!

Answer 2

The chords in the opening and closing slow section until the G#m are all diatonic to the key of B with the exception of the D#7. Making a 3 chord dominant (D#7) instead of minor is a common non-diatonic substitution. Not every chord in a song has to come from the diatonic chords of the song’s key. Even relatively simple songs sometimes have non-diatonic chords in them.

The fast section changes key to B minor so starting with the G chord the chords in this section are diatonic to B minor:

Bm C#o D Em F#m G A

The 5 chord can either be F#m or F#7. They both can both be used in the key of B minor and in this case they both are used at different times.

Hope this explains it.

Answer 3

You're asking the wrong question, but it's a question that keeps getting asked over and over and over again. "Where did these non-diatonic chords come from." It has been asked by so many people, and people give the same answers, and it never helps, and the questions keep on coming. The OPs eventually give up and go away, but I have a feeling that few of them really understood much about what was said.

The types of answers that are usually given are:

• Modal interchange and borrowing and secondary hyper plagalified pseudo-dominantification of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious structures. But if you learn to recite the "correct" theoretical abracadabra, is that understanding?
• They're just notes. You can play anything anywhere, it's not forbidden to play non-diatonic notes. But how does this help, if the problem is that the OP can't reason about what's happening?

The real question you should ask is, "What happens when I use these non-diatonic chords?" You feel that something happens, which is good - you're not deaf!

What happens is: the harmonic feeling is temporarily changed. Call that "mode" or "harmonic context" or whatever, it is somehow modified by the non-diatonic chords. The feeling of the tonic note, the home note, is not necessarily changed, but the harmonic possibilities around the tonic are changed. Notes added to (played on top of) the chords do different things that they would have done without the change.

Let's take the first one, the B chord. What does it do, and what possibilities does it offer? You're probably expecting to hear only notes from the B major scale on that, and those notes won't surprise you. You could play for example an E# note on the B major chord and it would produce a B Lydian harmonic feeling like in the Simpsons theme, but it probably wouldn't occur to you to try such a bizarre thing because the only possible thing in your world is to play notes from the major scale based on the tonic.

Then the next chord, D#7. If the song's key was G#m, which is B major's relative minor key, would you be surprised to find a D#7 chord there? The D#7 chord changes the harmonic possibilities so that suddenly the E# note that felt like Simpsons on the B, feels completely natural, and should I say, melodic even. And you can play the F## (or G) note, and the F# that used to "belong" in your B major doesn't feel that good anymore. And if you press pause on that chord, and then instead of the E major chord that would be coming next, you play G#m ... it feels pretty natural to you, doesn't it? Almost as if the D#7 had resolved to the G#m, don't you think?

Then the Emaj7. It returns things back to normal. The same for D#m, C#m, F#7. All the notes of the B major scale feel ok now. Though ... on the F#7, if you press pause there and play a B major chord, it feels as if the F#7 had resolved, doesn't it?

But then, E7 ... it has a minor seventh, a dominant seventh, there's a D note in the chord? Try to play your D# note that felt appropriate on the Emaj7 just a few seconds ago, and now it doesn't fit in! You have to play a D now. And even the A# doesn't feel that nice, it's better with an A ... almost as if the scale was A major, three sharps?

Etc. etc. Every chord changes the way other notes feel.

But where did the chords come from into the composers mind? How did it occur to the composer to start causing harmonic changes like that? At least two possibilities:

• (1) They were thrown in deliberately randomly. The composer wanted to have something "outside" the diatonic cage, and they picked some chord. Then they tasted the feeling for awhile, maybe they tried how the "outside" chord changes the harmonic possibilities ... and they liked it!
• (2) The composer had previously encountered this kind of a chord and harmony change in some other song. They already knew what kind of a harmonic change it will create, and that was what they wanted to use.

So there. That's where the chords come from.