what are you doing it's a squash chord bro damn in 1958 a small seemingly insignificant article was
published in the humboldt times by andrew gonzoli about loggers in northern california who had
discovered mysteriously large footprints it was at that moment the bigfoot myth was born the rest
is history so why is bigfoot still with us why does it hold so much appeal
why do we want to believe bigfoot is out there somewhere why bigfoot researchers say it's real
but so far and after more than 60 years no hard evidence has been found and yes you are
in the right channel and this is a video about music theory specifically about chords or is it
this is a series where we investigate mysterious phenomena and search for
the musical structures hidden in them using advanced music theory concepts
numerology and whatever other weird thing we can think of welcome to crypto chords
cool let's start with the basics shall we bigfoot is this elusive massive mammal it has been spotted
thousands of times in the last 60 years but we're still waiting to find one piece of hard
evidence such as a dead body or good footage the closest we've got to it is in this famous picture
and in this footprint but while doing our research we also found this recording with bigfoot sounds
so we've transcribed his singing and we found out not surprisingly that there's a b-flat
in there and are really out of tune a really flat Ab also
of course the first note was going to be a b-flat come on b flat big foot
it's all there in the name so without a doubt the original bigfoot crypto chord has to be a
b flat chord but what kind of chord is it a major triad with the root the major third and the fifth
or is it a minor triad with the flat three well obviously the chord has to be a seventh chord
remember chords are built by stacking thirds so when you put a chord together you have the root
which is one and then a third and then a fifth and if you stack one more third you get a seventh
chord why does it have to be a seventh chord you ask well just count the letters in bigfoot
it's seven letters we need more info to find out what type of cord bigfoot is but the next clue
was nowhere to be found the revelation occurred when we found out there's another name that
this creature goes by sasquatch and that was the answer bigfoot's chord had to be a b flat seven
susquatch however this is not your ordinary b flat seven sus4 which is a dominant chord
with a suspended fourth as you know the b flat seven is one three five and flat seven b flat d
f and a flat while a b flat seven sus four is the same chord but replacing the third with a fourth
we call this chord sus as in suspended the fourth is a suspension that wants to resolve
to the third so the d is replaced by an e flat and now we have this chord b flat seven
sus four sure our seven susquatch chord had to be somehow related to a seven sus four but how
what are the differences we needed more clues all right i've got an idea i've created an audio file
of eight hours of bigfoot sounds that i'm gonna play while i'm sleeping and this is
either going to drive me more insane or help me solve the next piece of the puzzle
six hours later okay it's three in the morning and i think i've just had a revelation there's
a couple frequencies out of place with bigfoot's cry and i need to check on this like right away
i'm pretty sure the answer lies somewhere here alright so i've loaded the original bigfoot
sound file into adobe audition because i need to check something out so let's listen to the file
there's so much noise let's let's clean it up i'll capture the noise prints
and then run the noise reduction plug-in in audition this plug-in is awesome to remove noise
that's a lot better so now let's look at the frequencies present in bigfoot's notes
well that's kind of crazy look at this there are three main frequencies
in these notes let's zoom in and see what's going on here
so before we go any further here perhaps it might be helpful
we take a step back go over to the piano and show you what's going on here so whenever
you play or sing a note you're also playing a series of notes known as the overtone series
unless you're playing a pure sine wave which only contains the main frequency every note played in
an acoustic instrument is accompanied by all of the notes in the overtone series so when you play
a b-flat you're also playing the next note in the series which is a b-flat just an octave higher
and then an f which is a perfect fifth above the last note and so on each one of these notes
has a different amplitude or volume and it usually fades away as we go on to the next in the harmonic
series the combination of all these notes with their respective amplitudes is what gives the
instrument its timbre so a piano is a very different amplitude distribution in the overtone
series than let's say a flute so let me show you what i mean when i play this b-flat on the piano
i'm also accessing or playing this b-flat here and also this f here along with a whole other series
of overtones and i can prove this to you very simply by doing this if i hold down that that
first overtone note relative to the lower b flat i can get this damper to stay off of the
strings which will allow the strings to vibrate sympathetically to the overtone series that
relates to this b flat so that's what i'm going to do i'm going to hold down this b flat let those
dampers free up those strings to vibrate hit this b flat and you're going to hear this note resonate
so there it is there's our first note in the overtone series related to that b flat let's do it
let's do the same thing with the next the overtone series uh b flats overtone series this f so i'm
going to free up the dampers on the the f strings and do the same thing and see if we can access
by way of sympathetic vibration uh this b flat this b flat second overtone here we go
and there it is right so there we have and we can keep going with this uh explore all of the notes
in the overtone series and just to show you that we're not just getting vibrations in the piano
to get these strings to to to speak or sing i'll use a note that's not very strong in b-flat's
overtone series something that doesn't vibrate very sympathetically this e right here so if i
do the same exact process with this e and i try to get it to resonate sympathetically it won't just
silence so now that you know this amazing fact i'm going to record this b-flat here and then take it
over to the computer on audition this should clear some things up so here i have the b flat
i just played on the piano and the frequency is present let me zoom in now the brighter the color
the louder the frequency is in the recording so we expect the main pitch which was a b-flat 2
to be the loudest and there it is then an octave above which is b-flat 3 then the fifth above
that note which should be f4 then yet another octave above the original pitch that should be b
flat four wow look how loud it is compared to the second frequency in the overtone series that's
exactly what i was saying before about the timbre of the instrument see a piano has these specific
amplitude values for each frequency in the overtone series it's what gives it its piano-ness
and the next note is the major third the d5 so in a way every time you play a note
you're playing a major triad pretty wild so now let's apply this newfound
understanding of overtones to that bigfoot audio file when we look at the frequencies
in bigfoot's note there are clearly three main frequencies so i'm expecting to find a b flat
then another b flat above that and then up an f above that right all right let me zoom in
well would you look at that a b flat another b flat and an e that must have been what was
out of place earlier when i was listening to those recordings i knew there was something to
be found there and it looks like we found it so we discovered that the e natural was very
prominent which is very odd also as i just showed you the b flat should make the f ring not the e
and by the way the a flat note that the bigfoot sings contains a very strong e flat as predicted
with this amazing insight we were able to find two more notes in our susquatch chord so far we have
this b-flat e-flat e and a-flat we're getting closer to our sasquatch chord this chord is very
interesting because it is a b-flat seven sus-4 with a flat five a b flat seven sus four is b flat
e flat f and a flat right but our chord so far is the same chord with an e natural which is an
f flat instead of the f so our susquatch chord is so far the same as a b flat 7 sus4 flat 5.
so far so good but this tiny chord cannot possibly be bigfoot's chord there has to be much more to
it if you follow us at all you know how much we use upper structures to create interesting colors
in music and this is what we need to complete our chord upper structures but where to look for them
that's the question i need to access my inner spiritual musicians
okay bigfoot
oh i'm sorry this is probably backwards for you let me think in reverse
so bigfoot this is clearly showing that our b flat chord has a g chord with an f on top of it
what is oot does it mean ut which sounds like the german ut which means do representing that the do
or the root of the chord is in the name or does it mean that the f is diminished
but what is the other o t maybe it means watch out for the tritone as in don't forget the tritone
of course it means all of the above
so we can finally finish building our sasquatch cord at last i had found out how to build a seven
chord if b flat is the root then b flat e flat e and a flat is our lower structure and the upper
structure is a g triad with an f diminished we now have the g major triad the f diminished here and
the a flat with the d to make sure the tritone is there the seventh susquatch has been found
and it sounds like this awesome so how do you play a b flat 7 sasquatch chord well on the piano
i can show you uh the full chord with all nine notes on the left hand we need to do this b
flat the root of the chord and then we're going to play the fourth e flat followed by the flat fifth
f flat or e and then we have our seventh so our left hand basically have a b flat seven sus with a
flat five on the right hand we're going to get the rest of our chord by just basically playing a g7
and first inversion with the seventh of the chord a flat on top so we'll get this b d
f and g there's our g7 and first inversion and then i'm just going to add the seventh
of the chord a flat on top there's all nine notes broken apart and this is what
our chord is going to sound like once we put all nine of those notes together
so to play this chord on the guitar like the compromise a little bit as we only have
six strings and yet nine notes but i'm going to show you something today
that's going to help you play the b flat 7 sus chord at least the essence of it
on the guitar so we're going to start by just completely barring the sixth fret and then work
our way from there so on the sixth string the e string we have our our b flat our sixth fret note
and then we're going to go to the a string on the seventh fret back to the sixth fret on the
d string and then over to the eighth fret on the g string same thing for the b string we're gonna
hit that eighth fret again and then we're just gonna hit up the sixth fret on our first string
so this is going to give us the root the flat 5 the 7th and then we have our 4th over over here
our ces note our 13 there on the b string and then the root again up there on the on the e string
b-flat seven sasquatch so where can you use this chord well this is an amazing chord to end a blues
with but let's take it a bit further and honor that 1958 article that started the whole thing
how do we do that obvious isn't it the article was published in 1958 the digits are one nine
five and eight which is an upper structure chordal starting on the second degree right
in b flat that's b flat on the bass and then the ninth c the fifth f and the eighth which is b flat
again so now when you use the seven susquatch in your band you can finish the blues like this
cool sound right not sure just listen to the mix where we added bigfoot's recording
to our ending and wait to be blown away
all right thanks for watching if you're still here you must be as crazy as we are
but i hope you learned something from this video and the best part is now you know how to play a
seven sasquatch chord and if you really want a conversation starter and to impress your friends
with your music knowledge or give the perfect gift to your musician friend you need this crypto shirt
which i'm wearing to present this video but will also mysteriously take us to this video
what are you doing it's a squash cord bro
damn
i think i hear something
what are you doing i'm playing the susquatch chord man you're an idiot!