Danny Boy by Traditional (Londonderry Air)

Overview

Key: F major · Chords used: 9 · Sections: 4

Form: A Section → B Section → C Section → D Section

Where these chords come from: a lead sheet of this public-domain song, contributed by a musician to the Wikifonia archive and preserved in the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). It describes the song as written, not any particular recording. This page shows that lead sheet as-is: the analysis below is generated directly from it by code, not written by AI. Consecutive repeats of a chord are shown once, and the piano voicings are our playable arrangement of each chord symbol, not a note-for-note transcription.

Section by section

A Section

• Fmaj7 – F – B♭ – Fmaj7 – Dm7 – Gm7
  Imaj7 – I – IV – Imaj7 – vi7 – ii7

B Section

• C7 – Fmaj7 – F7 – B♭ – C7 – F
  V7 – Imaj7 – I7 – IV – V7 – I

C Section

• B♭ – F (×2)
  IV – I
• C7 – F – B♭ – G7
  V7 – I – IV – II7

D Section

• C7 – F7 – B♭ – F – B♭m – F – Gm7 – C7 – F
  V7 – I7 – IV – I – iv – I – ii7 – V7 – I

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• B♭m (iv) is borrowed from the parallel key, F minor.
• F7 acts as V/IV: it resolves to B♭.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords: the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). Community-contributed lead sheet (chord symbols over the melody) from the Wikifonia archive, MIT licence. Title and songwriter credit as written on the sheet.
• Section names: detected by code from repeated 8-, 12- and 16-bar phrases (letters such as A and B mark different phrases; a phrase that comes back keeps its letter). Lead sheets rarely print section names.
• Not verified: only one lead sheet of this song is available, so it hasn't been cross-checked.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.