YouTuber Charles Cornell has discovered Nick Drake (better late than never) and has devoted a few videos to his songs. The first (that I know of) is about 'Riverman', although I would never have known this from the title of his video, 'The most hauntingly beautiful 4 chord song ever written'. Those four chords are Cm add 9, Eb7, Ab and C add 9. Whilst the chords are definitely something special, the rhythm (often written as 5/4 but it seems more like 10/4) is also special, as is the string arrangement that grows and grows throughout the song.
As it happens, I heard 'Riverman' on the radio yesterday. Someone on the station has a thing for Nick Drake: at one stage, we used to hear 'Northern sky' fairly regularly, but lately they've begun mixing this up, and I've heard several of his songs played*. A few days ago I heard 'One of these things first', and as it happens, all of Nick Drake's songs were playing on my headphones in the past few days, so 'One of these things first' resonated.
Today we have a new video about 'One of these things first', although again, one would never know it from the title, 'The ONE chord that turned a simple progression in genius'. There's no need for such hyperbole. I had never paid attention before, but this song is in 3/4. The introduction has a bar of E, a bar of A, a bar of B; the fourth bar is more interesting as it has a Bb chord played as a dotted crotchet and an A as another dotted crotchet. Apart from the Bb - which is a very interesting chord in itself, but obviously is a passing chord between the B and the A - this bar is effectively played in 6/8, or as one might say, 2 against 3. A polyrhythm.
But the ONE chord to which the title refers is the G chord in the verse: again, the chord sequence seems simple, but sophisticated. Cornell was very enthusiastic about this, especially when considering that later on in the verse where one might have expected the G to appear (that is, 'expected' after one has got over the unexpected first appearance), it doesn't.
To me, at least, Cornell rambles a bit: the knowledge content of his videos could be compressed, or in other words, David Bennett imparts much more knowledge in one of his videos. After all, that G chord is simply a chromatic mediant - words that Cornell does not say. Cornell does not consider the fact that Drake's songs were mainly written on guitar, often with unusual tunings, so the whole idea of 'chords in a key' has less meaning than on a piano. Sliding down by one fret is something that guitarists don't think twice about, but it's a foreign idea to the piano.
It would have been more instructive to talk about the unusual and irregular vocal phrasing - bars with no vocals, bars where the vocal starts on beat 3 and similar. That's along with the polyrhythm in the introduction.
* On the other hand, whilst 'Who knows where the time goes?' by Fairport Convention is played about once a week, they have yet to play anything else (that I have heard) by Fairport.
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