Greg was out, so Ernie Lee ran this one — and the whole lesson got rebuilt around your deadline. Two songs, a singer, a drummer, and you on harmony. You pulled the bass line of "Golden" out of an isolated stem by ear, met a chord that isn't in the key, and learned what the parts of a song are called.
September 11, Long Beach — the space dinner. Family, the Taiwanese ambassadors, your investors. Everything in this lesson points at that night.
Ernie brought "Golden" split into isolated tracks. Solo the bass, find the roots. You got three of the four notes on the first listen, cold.
The "special thing": the D in the verse is D major, not D minor. One raised note — F♯ — and the whole bar changes color.
Intro · verse · pre-chorus · chorus · bridge · outro. Your own words at the end: "Today I learned the structure of a song."
Close position, hand stays put, fourth finger anchored, wrist quiet. "I'm trying to conserve as much motion and energy as possible."
"Blinding Lights" — F minor, four chords. Same key as "Children" from Lesson 4. Ernie: "God, you're getting it."
"If you want to discover a song, the most important thing to begin with is figure out the bass."
Ernie arrived with "Golden" already split into isolated tracks — bass alone, keys alone, drums alone, vocal alone. Then he soloed the bass and made you name the notes. That's the same drill Greg gave you in Lesson 4, except now the production is stripped away and there's nowhere to hide.
In C major the 2-chord is D minor. "Golden" plays D major. The only difference is F → F♯.
You asked, mid-lesson: "So this is called verse? I don't know like the terms of…" — and by the end you said the thing yourself: "Today I learned the structure of a song."
This is not the same thing as voice leading. Greg taught you to pick the nearest inversion because it sounds smooth. Ernie taught the same shapes as ergonomics — so your hand doesn't have to re-find the keyboard four times a bar under stage lights.
"There are similar chord progressions for all types of music. Just the way you play it — the rhythmic things you play — really defines whether it becomes R&B."
That sentence is the answer to the question you've been asking since Lesson 4. You don't get R&B from different chords. You get it from what your hands do with the chords — which is exactly what Greg's sixteenth-note grid was for.
You asked for it after the clock ran out. Ernie: "Theoretically not, but whatever." Then: "Blinding Lights is actually pretty easy because it's just four chords."
The lesson recording captures every word that was said — but the chords Ernie played without naming don't survive on tape. Rather than invent them, here's exactly what's missing. Bring Ernie's chart to the next lesson and these close in ten minutes.
Two things are certain: it starts on C, and the "special thing" — that D major — comes back inside it. The rest of the progression was played and never spoken.
→ Resolve at the piano with Greg, against the recording.Confirmed: F minor, four chords, starting on Fm. One chord name in the transcript is garbled and can't be trusted, so it isn't printed here.
→ Get Ernie's chord chart; verify each chord by ear.Ernie was clear that a 7th goes on the fourth chord only. He never said which 7th — and a dominant 7th and a major 7th sound nothing alike.
→ One listen with the keys stem soloed settles it.Ernie's chart is in C major, which is convenient for your hands. Whether it suits the singer's voice is a different question, and the singer isn't cast yet.
→ Greg's call once the vocalist is booked.🔍 Greg has already pulled published chord charts for both songs and lined them up against the recording — that comparison lives on the Lesson 6 plan. Nothing from it is printed above, because a chart found online is a good hypothesis and your ear at the piano is the test. You'll settle all four of these together.
The whole assignment fits one sentence: know the chords cold, plainly, before you decorate anything. In Ernie's words — "for September, let's get the basics."