Picardy thirds are so piquant

Picardy thirds are so piquant!

Huh?

Songs that start in a minor key and hang in there for pretty much the duration until the very end when that running minor flips to the major.

Oh yes, those!

The prog rock band Yes’ Roundabout track is a great example. It basically riffs on E-minor, but when we get to the final chord it’s suddenly lifted to E-major. It’s quite piquant that change from minor to major.

Pink Floyd’s Shine on you Crazy Diamond does something very similar. Mostly G-minor for almost half an hour, but the very end lifts up to G-major. Given that it’s a melancholic song about Syd Barrett, there’s a kind of hope in that final chord.

You kind of expect such interesting nuance from prog rock bands though, don’t you? But even the grungemeisters, like Nirvana, who were all basically prog but doing it in a heavier way than Black Sabbath, also do it.

Smells Like Teen Spirit is F-minor. And sticks with it even to the last sustained power chord…but there’s a little inflection in the chord as the guitar feedback picks up and we get to F-major, ultimately.

You get a similar picardy ending with Alice in Chains’ Down in a Hole. Kicks off ostensibly in A-minor. The outro circles on Am-G-D and then ends on A-major.

I’ve used this little trick myself in my own songwriting a few times. It doesn’t have to be a change from start to finish, you can use it in a verse to take you to the bridge, for instance. Where say, you might have C-G-F-Am running through the verses, a jump from C-G-F-A gives you that picardy third lift into the bridge or the chorus or whatever.

Technically speaking, a picardy third, la tierce picarde in French, is a major chord at the end of a musical section that one expected to be a minor. The third of the chord is raised a semitone to create an unexpected suspension that feels, nevertheless, like musical resolution. This sneaky little modulation (key change) is often called a musical happy ending.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the term in the mid-18th Century, although musicians had been using it for centuries before that and some of the greats Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were very familiar with it. It’s probably nothing to do with the Picardy region of France but more than likely derives from the old French word, picart, meaning sharp, but the etymology is very ambiguous.

I saw mention of the Picardy Third most recently on Danny and the Duplicates Instagram.

Other modern examples:

The Band – This Wheel’s On Fire – The verses roll along with an A-minor undercurrent, then the chorus ends with F-G-A, where you might have naturally expected an F-G-Am

Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly with His Song – The chorus flutter around E-minor until the last word, which lifts to the E-major.

Hall & Oates – Maneater – Inverts the process in the verses: C-G–Bb-A, then it goes Dm–G-G#dim-Am

The Turtles – Happy Together – Verses run E-minor, then lifts to E-major for choruses.