Chord of the Day: A Long Walk

Who Is Jill Scott? (Words and Sounds Vol. 1) is the platinum album from Neo Soul singer, songwriter, poet, model and actress, Jill Scott, released on Hidden Beach Recordings in 2000. A Long Walk is written by Scott and Andre Harris and produced by Harris and Vidal Davis. It reached at no. 9 on the US Billboard’s R&B Singles chart.

I remember first hearing this album and thinking the chord and harmonies were a next level of sophistication, something I’d heard nothing like before. However these kind of voicings are quite typical of the Neo Soul genre, and are far less complicated than I’d first thought.

Rhodes

What makes this song work so well is the groove between the drums, bass and Rhodes (likely to be a Yamaha Motif, as my best guess). Logic’s factory electric piano will get us close to the sound, with plenty of stereo tremolo.

I’ve scored the Rhodes and bass below, let’s first look at the intro. As ever, if you’re unfamiliar with chord naming conventions, have a look at this.

In bar 2 we see the Bm/E (B minor over E). I’ve seen other transcriptions denote this as an Em11, it basically doesn’t really matter what you call it because it only happens this one time in the intro, and I felt this was the easiest way to remember it; a B minor chord 1st inversion (D F# B) in the right hand with an E in the left hand.

Slash chords are a common feature of modern RnB and Neo Soul, here we can see the aforementioned Bm/E, a B/C#, Gmaj7/A and a B/F#.