Clocks

To this day, Clocks is still mesmerizing. A truly compelling 4 bar progression: Eb Major, Bb Minor, Bb Minor, F Minor. That’s 3 minor shapes in a row — yet the riff sounds overwhelmingly positive — which is normally the domain of major chords. A true stroke of genius.

To my knowledge, I can’t think of another song (other than Coldplay’s The Speed of Sound) that doubles up on the middle (minor) chord. ‘The Speed of Sound’ was clearly a later attempt to capture the magic of Clocks. At the time, they weren’t fooling me — but I wonder if folks realized the two chord progressions are identical.

I’ll give you a quick lesson on the chord theory of Clocks, you’ll be amazed:

The Major Scale, if you remember from music class in Elementary School, is: “Do Re Me Fa Sol La Ti Do”. That’s 8 notes. They can also be numbered, simply like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.

There is a corresponding major/minor chord built off of each of those 8 notes. The musical key of Clocks is Ab Major. Here are the chords built from each of those 8 notes, in order:

(1) Ab Major
(2) Bb Minor
(3) C Minor
(4) Db Major
(5) Eb Major
(6) F Minor
(7) G Diminished
(8) Ab Major (one octave higher).

The 1, 3, and 5  chords are a traditional progression for Blues, Folk, and Rock music. For “Clocks”, Coldplay uses the 5, 2, and 6 chords. That’s a very avant-garde progression. Even stranger, they double the 2 chord so their progression looks like this: 5 2 2 6.

Everyone has used 1, 3, 5 progressions since Blues music was invented. It’s clearly in the public domain. That’s why Tom Petty suing Sam Smith over “Stay With Me” was patently absurd. However, Coldplay was legitimately the first to use the 5 2 2 6 progression with Clocks. The chord riff is so mystical sounding that any attempt to use it, in any key, sounds exactly like Clocks.

You might also like to play…

Coldplay: Yellow | fingerstyle guitar + TAB

How to play Clocks | fingerstyle guitar

The guitar tab for this piece is beautifully written across 3 pages. Although I make my arrangements as easy to play as possible, this one feel best suited for intermediate guitar players and up. Enjoy! The guitar tab is available below:

My song structure looks like this, in accordance with the guitar tab:

Intro, Verse 2x, Verse (cont.), Chorus

Intro, Verse 2x, Verse (cont.), Chorus

Bridge, Intro, Chorus

**Coldplay: Clocks | fingerstyle guitar

This piece is played in a Drop D tuning: D A D G B E, with a capo on the 1st fret.