{"id":5045,"date":"2026-09-29T05:42:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T05:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/blog\/?p=5045"},"modified":"2026-09-29T05:42:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T05:42:53","slug":"summer-in-the-city-beatles-key-changes-and-why-their-ears-were-smarter-than-their-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/blog\/tg-blogs\/guitar-news\/summer-in-the-city-beatles-key-changes-and-why-their-ears-were-smarter-than-their-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer In The City, Beatles Key Changes, And Why Their Ears Were Smarter Than Their Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"New Lessons + Beatle Talk  | Totally Guitars Weekly Update\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eWjd-pxt-bw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>September 25th. October is knocking.<\/p>\n<p>And I got completely carried away with music theory this week. Fair warning &#8211; this one goes deep. But in the best possible way.<\/p>\n<p>It started with Summer in the City.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Learn to play Summer In The City by The Lovin&#039; Spoonful \u2013 Guitar Lesson Preview - Totally Guitars\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EP1XMIK8w3g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/3079-summer-in-the-city\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SUMMER IN THE CITY LESSON HERE<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Descending Bass Line &#8211; And Why It Shows Up Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Summer in the City is built around a descending bass line in C minor &#8211; which on guitar we play by capoing at the third fret and thinking in A minor. The bass line descends chromatically, which is nothing new. Once you know what to listen for, you start hearing it everywhere.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/1381-babe-im-gonna-leave-you-acoustic-guitar-lesson\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Babe I&#8217;m Gonna Leave You.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/2676-25-or-6-to-4\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">25 Or 6 To 4.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/145-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">While My Guitar Gently Weeps.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/1384-stairway-to-heaven-guitar-lesson-led-zeppelin\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stairway to Heaven.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Even a slow blues &#8211; Loan Me A Dime, <a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/84-stormy-monday-allman-brothers-guitar-lesson\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stormy Monday<\/a> &#8211; uses a version of that same chromatic descent. It&#8217;s one of those foundational patterns that great songwriters keep returning to because it creates tension and resolution that feels almost inevitable.<\/p>\n<p>The interesting thing about <a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/3079-summer-in-the-city\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Summer in the City<\/a> specifically is what happens AFTER the descent.<\/p>\n<p>Once that bass line reaches E, we hear an E chord, then an E7 with G# in the bass &#8211; much easier to play than it sounds &#8211; and then an A minor. And then an A7.<\/p>\n<p>That A7 is doing something specific. It&#8217;s acting as a pivot chord &#8211; a dominant chord that pulls us into a completely different key. Suddenly we&#8217;re in D major, hearing D and G chords back and forth. And then it moves to E major, and we&#8217;re hearing chords two and five in the key of A.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;d expect it to resolve to A major.<\/p>\n<p>It resolves to A minor.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the kind of move that makes a song feel simultaneously surprising and inevitable. Your ear expected one thing. It got something better.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/48-guitar-geography\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Check out our Guitar Geography Series for more<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Beatles And The Art of Going Places People Don&#8217;t Expect<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I spent a lot of time with Beatles songs this week &#8211; partly because our Fingerpicking Beatles Super Pack is on sale right now, and partly because once you start thinking about unusual key changes, the Beatles are impossible to stop thinking about.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what made them extraordinary: they did things with chord progressions and key changes that simply weren&#8217;t done in popular music in the mid-60s. And they did it without knowing the theory behind what they were doing. Their ears told them it would sound great and go places people didn&#8217;t expect.<\/p>\n<p>They were right.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/packages\/324-fingerpicking-beatles-super-pack\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BEATLES FINGERPICKING SUPER PACK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let me walk through a few examples.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example 1 &#8211; A Minor and A Major Living Together<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of their recurring tricks was juxtaposing A minor and A major within the same song &#8211; treating them almost as two sides of the same coin. The song starts on A minor, moves through the verse, comes back to A major, then returns to A minor. The two keys blur together in a way that creates this restless, searching feeling.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example 2 &#8211; Verses in D, Choruses in C<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the most striking examples is a song where the verses live in D and the choruses land in C. To get from D to C they use a half-step substitution &#8211; throwing in a B-flat chord to reach the dominant chord before the chorus. That&#8217;s the &#8220;flat six chord&#8221; move, and it shouldn&#8217;t work as well as it does.<\/p>\n<p>But it does.<\/p>\n<p>When they want to intensify the ending, they do the final chorus back in D. The whole thing is a masterclass in making key changes feel emotionally right rather than theoretically correct.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Example 3 &#8211; E Minor to E Major and Back<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Another example starts entirely in E minor, shifts to a little chorus that goes G major 7 to C to chord four in C &#8211; a chromatic half-step shift that sounds genuinely odd and then immediately right &#8211; before returning to E minor. After two verses it modulates to E major. There&#8217;s a bluesy twist on the A chord using G natural right after they&#8217;ve just used G sharp. And a secondary dominant &#8211; F sharp moving to F natural &#8211; that sets everything up for the resolution.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/146-ill-follow-the-sun-guitar-lesson\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">I&#8217;ll Follow The Sun<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s I&#8217;ll Follow The Sun &#8211; which I realized I&#8217;d been playing in the wrong key for a moment before I figured out it had to be in A. The opening starts on E chord, moves to D7, to A, to B. That B chord isn&#8217;t in the key of A. They didn&#8217;t know that. They just knew it sounded right.<\/p>\n<p>And it does.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the thing about the Beatles. They created some of the greatest music of our lifetimes &#8211; and probably many more lifetimes ahead &#8211; by trusting what their ears told them rather than what any theory book said they should do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here Comes The Sun &#8211; A Note On Arrangement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I finished this week&#8217;s update with <a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/162-here-comes-the-sun-guitar-lesson\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Here Comes The Sun<\/a> &#8211; which I&#8217;ve always taught as an intermediate fingerpicking song rather than a beginner piece. George Harrison played it with a flat pick, picking out individual notes &#8211; actually harder than the fingerpicking approach once you&#8217;ve developed some technique.<\/p>\n<p>I played it in A to match that mandolin-type pitch range.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in the Fingerpicking Beatles Super Pack if you want to dig deeper.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/packages\/324-fingerpicking-beatles-super-pack\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BEATLES FINGERPICKING SUPER PACK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Few Other Things<\/p>\n<p>Nesh put together a new lesson this week &#8211; Dolly Parton&#8217;s version of Heartbreaker. Worth checking out.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/lessons\/3078-heartbreaker\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">HEARTBREAKER LESSON HERE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And a reminder about the Student Review channel &#8211; if you&#8217;re a <a href=\"https:\/\/totallyguitars.com\/pricing\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gold or Platinum member<\/a>, you can upload a video of what you&#8217;re working on and get a personal video response with specific feedback. Hardly anyone is using it. It&#8217;s essentially a free private lesson. Upload something this weekend.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/totallylessons.com\/student-reviews\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Log in to Check Out our Student Review Uploader<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Spring 2027 IGC is April 7-11. We&#8217;re already building the waitlist. Email support@totallyguitars.com if you want to be on it.<\/p>\n<p>October is here. See you next week.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>September 25th. October is knocking. And I got completely carried away with music theory this week. Fair warning &#8211; this one goes deep. But in the best possible way. It started with Summer in the City. SUMMER IN THE CITY LESSON HERE The Descending Bass Line &#8211; And Why It Shows Up Everywhere Summer in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[18,3672,3674,3677,3676,3673,3675],"class_list":["post-5045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guitar-news","tag-acoustic-guitar","tag-beatles-guitar-theory","tag-descending-bass-line","tag-guitar-chord-theory","tag-here-comes-the-sun-fingerpicking","tag-key-changes-guitar","tag-summer-in-the-city-guitar"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Summer In The City, Beatles Key Changes, And Why Their Ears Were Smarter Than Their Theory - On The Beat with Totally Guitars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Neil 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