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THE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR CHRONICLES.

When Feelings Overtake Reason.

My dismay at the current Ed Sheeran Affair.

Robert Gowty
3 min readMay 4, 2023

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By the author.

Anyone with a passing interest in music will be aware that Ed Sheeran is currently facing a lawsuit regarding his song, Thinking Out Loud, having a chord progression similar to a Marvin Gaye song.

A CHORD PROGRESSION

Anyone with a passing understanding of music will have an awareness of how absurd this is. For those who don’t, here is a simple music theory primer.

Music Theory Basics

In Western Music, there are 12 notes. Expressing these notes as sharps (#) that’s C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. That is it.

When a piece of music is said to be in a key, we are talking about a scale that uses a selection of these notes. The easiest scale to understand is C major. That’s the white keys on a piano.

From C major you can construct seven primary chords. C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished. That’s seven chords.

For a sequence of four chords, which is what the Ed Sheeran case revolves around, there are about 2,400 combinations.

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Robert Gowty
Robert Gowty

Written by Robert Gowty

Extemporal Explorer. Music, art, fiction, science fiction, culture and technology. Tasmanian Existentialism. Aficionado of the number seven.

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