Oct 30 2008
What is the sacred chord?
The hit song by Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen has been covered and recovered over and over by many different artists. It is said to have taken him over a year to write and went through about 80 verses before settling on the ones we heard in the 1984 release of the song.
In the section of the first verse that is as follows “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift..” the guitar chords actually move as the lyrics describe. The fourth refers to F, the fifth to G, the minor fall (Am) and the major lift (F). The minor falland the major lift simply refers to the pitch of the melody ‘falling’ to a minor chord, and then ‘lifting’ to a major chord (F). With the fourth and the fifth Cohen is referring to the fourth and fifth of a C major scale.
The general format for scales is as follows:
I Tonic
II Super tonic
III Mediant
IV sub- dominant
V dominant
VI submediant
VII sub tonic or leading tone
and this goes for any scale. So in the C scale, The subdominant fourth is F and the dominant fifth is G.
Learn to play Hallelujah with chords and tablature.
