Episode 1 - 'New York Minute'
Welcome to a new weekly series - Songschemes - which, for its inaugural track, features the Don Henley classic 'New York Minute' released in 1990 and featured on his End of the Innocence album.
A songscheme is a method of expressing, in a visual form, song information; a memory map. These schemes are not intended to replace notation/ TAB but hopefully they do offer a useful alternative view of a given song, and one I hope that will prove useful for guitarists and songwriters to help expand their knowledge of chords, harmony, form and progression.
'New York Minute' translates well to the guitar and utilises several harmonic concepts such as secondary dominants, tritone substitution, voice leading, modality and back-cycling. The progression sounds good because these concepts are combined so effortlessly and are perfectly unified with the songs extended verse form and the lyrical prosody employed. The song is, in my opinion, beautifully balanced on all levels.
Here is the songscheme. Alternatively you can download a hi-res PDF.
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Episode 2 will feature a track by Toto.
Steve