What’s up everybody!
My name is Jacob Collier.
How’s it going?
Today I’m gonna teach you how to play the chords of the song “Best Part” by Daniel
Caesar and H.E.R.
For me, the most amazing thing about this song is these chords are quite colorful, and
quite interesting.
It’s a song that I think a lot of people can see themselves in, and I think that’s
one of the reasons that so many people have done covers of this song.
Because it’s one of those sort of all-time classics in my opinion.
So the way this song was constructed is that it’s the same four chords that go round
and round and round.
There are two different kinds of chords available in this song.
The first is a major seventh and the second is a minor seventh chord.
Both good chords.
The first chord of the song is a D major seventh, which looks like this on the guitar.
D, E, C sharp, F sharp.
D major seventh.
And what sets this chord apart from a normal major chord is the C sharp, here, which is
the major seventh of the chord.
The second chord of the song is what’s best known as an A minor seventh chord, which looks
like this on the guitar.
A, G, C, E. And what sets this chord apart from an ordinary A minor chord is the G here
which is the seventh, the minor seventh of A.
The third chord of this song is a G major seventh chord, which is G, F sharp, E, D.
And the fourth and final chord of this song is a B flat major seventh, and it’s the
same voicing, just three frets up.
And this is, B flat, A, D, F. B flat major seventh.
And it’s just the same four chords round and round and round.
In jazz, we have this idea of a chord becoming increasingly colorful as you rise by thirds.
What we’ve done here is we’ve gone D to F sharp which is a major third, and then F
sharp to A which is a minor third.
And if we do the same again we go up a major third.
We can actually keep going.
And the higher up we go, the more color is added to the chord.
So what Daniel Caesar’s done here is he’s decided to involve the C sharp in the chord
to add a bit of color.
It would sound fine if it was, “You don’t know babe, when you hold me...:” But it’s
more interesting and more colorful to have, “You don’t know babe, when you hold me…”
B flat major seventh.
And I think that’s what provides some of the sort of soul influence because a lot of
these voicings come from jazz and soul music, and I think that added with the sort of R&B
elements of the groove–I think that’s what’s makes this song such a successful
recipe.
Since this song is in D major, the two most important notes that define it to be D major
are D and A. Now the cool thing about the B flat major seventh in this song, which is
this chord here, is that we have these two notes which remind us of home, but the B flat
is a departure from home.
And I think that what that means is when we return to D major for the first chord, you
have a sense of, a sort of continuum of the harmony of the song.
And so, we’re almost home here, but then when we go back here, we’re home.
We really feel like it’s truly D.
Melodically speaking, a lot of the melody involved in this song revolves around the
pentatonic scale.
Now the pentatonic scale is the five most important notes in the major key center.
So D major, which is the key of this song, contains these notes in it’s pentatonic
scale.
D, E, F sharp, A, and B. So when you have a melody like, “You’re my coffee that
I need in the morning, you’re my sunshine in the rain when it’s pouring.”
All of these are taken from D pentatonic.
And the nice thing about this chord sequence is that all of these notes work across all
four chords.
And what this provides is a sense of harmonic constants.