Bailey Zimmerman Wrote a Song Using a Single Chord! New To Country

surely you can't just make a song that has one chord the whole time can you it has to be boring right if there's only one chord for the whole song I would have thought that I listened to this song the other day uh that my band really likes called new to Country by Bailey Zimmerman and it's such a cool song like it's got a Cool vibe it's Rocky it's in drop CP so it's nice and big very very interesting 3 minute song keeps your attention for the whole time I'm listening to it and I'm like I think that's just one I think he's just hitting that open drop C the whole time but he's got a really really interesting Melody that makes it work and some cool little Rifts and stuff that that makes him get away with it so we're going to unpack how Bailey Zim Zim how Bailey Zimmer man has written a one Chord song Hey I'm Craig from musician to artist and this channel is all about helping you go from musician artists our big uh topic that we cover is songwriting I'm really really into it I love helping people song right so when this sort of songwriting spiked my interest thought great thing to do a little episode about so I'll show you a bit of this song right I'm not going to show you too much because otherwise I'll get copyrighted so that's like the little intro bit so here's the big riff it drops [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in so you can hear like there's a nice big riff over it that's one of the things that helps him get away with just using one chord here let's listen to his melody in the verse here so again inly that's kind of just smacking that one note isn't it let's go to the chorus Melody which is the bit that where he's really made this work what you hear there is like he's gone same cour hole song and then he's just going these one big notes so I think as I unpack this song what makes it work I'm going to go through Section by section and show you how it works is that he's created Harmony to that one chord with the melody if that makes sense so usually what you'll do is your chords create your Harmony and then your Melody will be a little tune over that so essentially what he's got is this Big C minor chord that's just there all the time then he's creating the harmony to that which is his Melody line and it kind of does these big blocks um as a chord progression would normally do providing the harmony if you can catch me with that and then the melody is just these little fills and runs that he does with either the bass or the guitar to kind of add some melodic flavor but all the harmony is essentially coming from the melody crazy I thought I must be I must have got it wrong surely there's more chords in there I'm just not hearing them so not that ultimate guitar is the be all and end or but check this out this is Bailey in man to Country chords so he's got a cape on the fourth fret to make this an A Minor shape verse one Chorus Verse two chorus guitar solo chorus one o chord I teach some guitar in the primary schools always looking for easy songs to play maybe we found it so what's he doing with this melody here let's have a look so what I've done just to make it easier for my head is I've tuned this up one um semitone so it's in D um because my get doesn't sound great in drop C but it sounds cool in drop D so let's have a look at what we got [Applause] [Music] here for the kids playing at home there you go then he's got like [Music] a so that's kind of the Riff and then it is I've noticed it is a C minor and not major so we're in the key of D here it just doesn't work if you play a D major it's definitely that [Music] one so I'm trying to figure out what the key of this song is it's either C um and then that D Minor the highway through sorry you have to forgive my transposition here with and the minor is a the second the whole way through or it's in the minor key and then that c is like a minor 7 probably more likely so then uh but that gets crazy as well because then the melody is all around the f as if it's maybe in the key of F and then the D minus the six so it's a little bit crazy kind of what Key's going in that's why I think it's quite clever and that's how he's getting away with one chord I think because he's using within the melody he's using the minus 7ths he's using um a few sort of unconventional minor thirds and things to give it that sort of if it was just a G major and you're just hitting C's D's and G's all day that's when you'd run into a super boring song Let's just pretend that it's in the key D cuz that's where we are now so from now on I've said c Shar a couple times the music said a a minor we're going to go with I'm playing a d okay so the the verse is around the F and it goes to the the six blow [Music] it and then it jumps up to the a so it's kind of going like a third there let's say it's in the key of yeah I don't know if it's in the key of f but that's probably the chord change that you normally do you'd play like the first bit there'd be a tune over the F and then you'd go then there'd be a tune over the a so what he's done to make that tune is the first half of his verse is all the F second half of his tune is all the A and then it drops into the chorus Ain change around here so he goes he jumps up an octave from his verse which is great songwriting but again just smacking that F so I like with the with the chorus is these first Parts here I kind of want to show you I reckon you go and have a listen to it so you can hear it as well basically split the chorus up into four parts it's an eight bar chorus here so this first bit here is all around the F so he goes a minor third down from it so it's like between the F and the D he does drop down to the C that listen to this so that whole section there D minor chord all around the F right so then he gets to here this next to he drops that down to a c cool so then we got so we got F then we got C then this bit goes back to F but an octave lower and then we jump back up again but this time to a g so we're going One Tone above the F to kind of give that sort of tensionyoutube g c or GA a rather if you were to play those notes as chords tell you something say make in my [Music] [Applause] then it goes back to the F there so I think that's a super interesting sorry stop half sentence that's a super interesting way to do a song Let's quickly map this out in piano just to give you a quick little visual here uh this is what's happening so if midi makes sense to you otherwise I'll explain it this is the chords down here so all day just that D minor and this is the melody over the top so normally this is what if you opened up a regular midi track this is what chords would look like maybe I'll just quickly bring in a midi track give me one second so this is kind of a standard midi track this is just one I just imported just stuff out of a midi pack thing so you can see that that's where the Harmon is created because this keeps changing you got that chord then that chord and that sounds like this you get the harmony changes every chord don't know what the chords are but when we look at Bailey's one we got the chord staying the same but the melody on the top is doing that movement so let me quickly play this I've played it pretty dodgy I haven't quantized it but this is the Melody I should be able to play you this on without a hitting copyright so you can kind of have a listen [Music] can't get much dodgy than that but yeah they kind of that's what brings the interest in the harmony so the other thing that's really cool is it just there's so many little riffs and runs so sometimes the bass goes and does like a melodic thing um sometimes the the rips on the guitar do it even when you get to this guitar solo here he kind of rips a solo that's similar sort of notes to the melody um and they're just hitting that d minor underneath you know the quiet chorus other than that this song is kind of a slam dunk country pop song we got intro a double Verse Chorus a little turn which is the same as intro um a half verse um and then another chorus then a guitar solo then a small breakdown chorus another big chorus to finish it and then another big rift to kind of finish the song out so really classic structure but super interesting the way that he has been out to just it's not even a riff it's just like a big old cord um and then kind of wrappy Quicks spoken lyrics just over one or two notes always straddling between that it's always a minor third below whatever note is hidden and then just changing to kind of make super interesting song hits nice and Powerful I'm excited for his album actually because it seems to be a little bit of a shift from his previous stuff you know obviously he's been copying some uh copying some flak from his mates or industry professionals or something saying that he's changed his tune a bit and he's saying that I've always been country so super cool song check it out I'm always interested in different ways people go about songwriting because while there's a box and while there's a structure and I think this guy's nailed it with the actual structure of a song to be be consumable by the general public and not just be some sort of Arty music thing that nobody understands so he's writing within that sort of structure but he's found a really creative way to do that and kind of Center it around one chord and use his Melody to provide the uh harmonic difference in the song super interesting I teach songwriting I have a songwriting course that you can grab I've got a free Workshop actually if you want to just check it out if you maybe uh resonate with the way that I teach songwriting um you'll get a good idea there it's completely free it's just a little three-part thing where I write a song from scratch um I go through chords I go through Melody I go through structure Rhythm all those sorts of things you can check that out in the link below otherwise maybe you should watch this video up here this up here let's go up here I actually did a blind uh how do you say it analysis of Bens and Boon's beautiful things when it first came out it went number one I hadn't heard it so I kind of did a blind reaction to that and kind of talked about the songwriting techniques in that which again kind of fit within the mold of good solid pop songwriting but there's so many sort of differences in there which made that song really really unique and everyone loves it so you can check that out up here um I think you'll enjoy it