Chords for R&B CHORD THEORY EXPLAINED - D'Angelo Breakdown

Hey everybody, Jeff Schneider here.
In today's video we're going to do a chord analysis of one of my favorite
D'Angelo songs, Feel Like Making Love off of the record Voodoo.
The song was originally written by Gene McDaniels for Roberta Flack in I think 1974
and then of course it was covered by D'Angelo which is the version that we're going to be talking about today
and that was in the year 2000 when Voodoo was released.
So let's jump right into the theory of it.
I'm going to break down some of these chords and you'll be able to follow along with the voicings that I'm using.
I'm not sure if they're the exact voicings that are on the record but they're pretty close.
So let's go.
Also I'm going to do a little singing in this video.
I don't consider myself a singer but I just kind of want to show you where the lyrics kind of line up with the chords
so bear with me as I try to do some high vocals on this one.
Here we go.
So the D'Angelo [D] version is in D major but it's a sharp D major.
It's tuned to like 446 or something like [G] that.
But I'm just going to do it in regular 440 tuning.
So let's start.
So the first chord is actually the ii chord.
We're going to come in with an E minor 11.
_ [D] And then we're going to go to the V chord.
[Em] But we're going to do an A13sus this [Bm] time instead of an A7.
So if you look here [A] we have the root, [G] that's A.
That's the flat 7 there, G.
_ The 9 is B.
There's the [Bm] sus4, that's D.
And then the 13 is F sharp.
This also kind of looks like a G major 7 over A.
Sometimes you can call it that.
I'm going to call it A13sus just to keep the essence of the ii V I here.
So following the V chord we're going to go to the I.
We're going to do a D major [F#m] 9.
Alright let's do [D] a quick review.
_ _ ii V I
Okay so how does that fit with the lyrics?
Here we go people.
Strolling in [Em] the [Bm] park.
Watching winter turn to [D] spring.
_ [C]
Alright so, yeah sorry.
But let's continue on.
So this is where it gets kind of cool.
Because we're going to go to the non-diatonic chords now.
We're going to go to the chords that don't exist within the key of D major.
Which is the original home key here.
We're going to go to a C7.
I'm going to play a very basic shell voicing here.
Meaning just the root in the left hand and the third and the seven in the right hand.
Well this is the seven here and this is the third.
So why this chord?
Where does this C7 come from?
Well if you're going to analyze it, it would be a flat 7 7 chord.
So in the key [G] of D major, [F#m] you have a C [C#m] sharp.
That's the regular 7.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Okay but we're going to do [C] the flat 7.
So we're going to lower it down a half step, get to C.
And then we call it a flat 7 7 chord.
That last 7 at the end there is what makes it a dominant 7.
So instead of doing C major 7, we're going to do C dominant 7.
So flat 7 there.
B flat.
So how does this chord, which is non-diatonic, how does it work?
How does it fit in with this song?
Well we have to look at some of the chords that come after.
So let's keep going.
We have the C7.
Then we're going to go down [B] a half step to B7.
And then finally [D] back to [Em] the E minor.
E minor 9 in this case.
[C] Okay so we have [B] C [E] B E.
The destination here is important.
So let's work backwards.
We're going to do a little [G] memento action and go backwards from E minor.
So we have the E minor.
That's the 2 chord.
[Em] We already figured that one out.
What came right before [B] that?
The B7.
B7.
A non-diatonic chord in the key of D.
Doesn't fit.
Why?
Well we have D sharp in it.
D sharp is definitely not in the key of D.
But this is what's called a secondary dominant.
I've talked a lot about secondary dominant chords before.
Very good to know.
Very important chord function to know.
And basically what it means is we're doing the 5 chord of whatever chord follows.
In this case the chord that follows is E minor.
So the question is, what is the 5 chord of E minor?
And the answer is B7.
So that's how we get B7.
Because we have that nice resolution here.
If we were to do a traditional resolution it would sound something like this.
[Em] _
You [B] can see how the D sharp resolves up [A] to the E.
The flat 7, that A, [Em] resolves down to the G.
[B] So you have that [Em] nice [B] resolution.
That's the traditional way of resolving a 5 chord to a 1 chord.
But of course we're doing some more modern music here.
It's a little bit of an R&B song, jazzy song.
So we don't have to worry so much about all of those counterpoint rules.
So we're going to just go from here [G] _
_ to E minor 9.
You still have some of those [B] resolutions.
You still have the A resolving down to the G.
And you actually have this D sharp [G] resolving down to [B] the D.
[Bm] _ Which sounds pretty nice.
So, [C]
now we have to figure out what's going on with that C7.
The C7 is very much related to the B7.
It's a great passing chord from getting from the 1 to the 6.
Because remember we were on D [D] major 7.
And then we went down to the [C] flat 7.
And then [B] to the B7.
So you hear this transition [D] a lot.
[C] D, [B] C, B.
[C]
The C is actually very similar to [G#] that secondary dominant.
This is instead [B] though a secondary dominant turned into a tritone substitution.
Well, what the heck does that mean?
Well, if you take a look at the B7 and you figure out what would the 5 chord,
what would the secondary dominant chord be going to B7.
You have to [F#] find the 5 of B.
And the answer is F sharp.
So an F sharp 7 would resolve really nicely to a B.
_ [B] You hear that [F#] nice resolution [B] there. _
Okay, but now we also have to do that tritone substitution I was talking about.
So we're going to look at the F sharp 7 and go a tritone away.
What's a tritone away from F sharp?
[F#] What's a tritone by the way?
Well, the answer is in the word tri.
Tri is 3 like tricycle.
It's going to be 3 whole steps.
So we're going to go from F sharp [C] to a [F#] C7.
_ [G#] [A#] 1, [C] 2, 3.
Those 2 chords are tritone away.
That's where you get the tritone substitution.
That's how the passing chord of C7 works so well going to a B.
We're going to keep going forward [N] here to the second verse.
Well, it's not really the second verse.
It's the second half of the first verse,
which is basically a repetition of what we just did.
So we have from the top, [Bm] from the very top,
E minor 11, _ A13 sus, [F#m] _ D major [C] 9, [B] C7, _ [G] B7, back to the 2 chord.
E minor 9, _ A13 sus, and then the [F#m] 1 chord.
And then [Cm] again, B7, [C] oh sorry, [B] C7, B7.
Okay, that's when things are going to change.
But before we do that, I'm going to do a little vocal action here
so you can hear how the lyrics [Bm] land with the chords.
Here we go.
Water break.
_ _ _ _ Strolling in the park, _ watching winter turn to [D] spring.
_ _ [C] _ _ [B] _ _ _ [G] _
Walking in the [Bm] dark, watching lovers do [D] their thing.
_ _ [C] _ _ [B] _ Okay, so we're halfway through the chord progression.
Now we just have to go to the chorus.
So instead of going from_
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