In the Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett

Overview

Key: E major · Chords used: 7 · Sections: 5

Form: Intro → Verse → Verse → Instrumental → Outro

Where these chords come from: an expert transcription of the original recording made for the McGill Billboard Project (Burgoyne, Wild & Fujinaga, 2011). This page shows that transcription 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

Intro

• D – B – A – G
  bVII – V – IV – bIII
• E – A (×2)
  I – IV

Verse 1

• E – A (×8)
  I – IV
• B7 – A7 (×2)
  V7 – IV7
• E – A (×3)
  I – IV
• D – B
  bVII – V

Verse 2

Same chords as Verse 1.

Instrumental

• E – A (×2)
  I – IV
• E – D – B
  I – bVII – V
• E – A (×3)
  I – IV
• B
  V

Outro

• E – A (×20)
  I – IV

Chord vocabulary

Chord	Roman numeral	Role	Heard in
D	bVII	Borrowed from E minor	Intro, Verse, Instrumental
B	V	In the key	Intro, Verse, Instrumental
A	IV	In the key	Intro, Verse, Instrumental, Outro
G	bIII	Borrowed from E minor	Intro
E	I	Home chord (tonic)	Intro, Verse, Instrumental, Outro
B7	V7	In the key	Verse
A7	IV7	Outside the key (chromatic)	Verse

Harmonic highlights

• D (bVII) is borrowed from the parallel key, E minor.
• G (bIII) is borrowed from the parallel key, E minor.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords and sections: the McGill Billboard Project (Burgoyne, Wild & Fujinaga, 2011). Expert transcription by trained musicians (song 1018, CC0), via ChoCo.
• Cross-check: the Rock Corpus RS 200 (de Clercq & Temperley, 2011), analysis by Trevor de Clercq. Expert by-ear harmonic analysis of the original recording, shown on this page. Independently transcribed; it matches this page's chords closely (similarity 100%).
• Verified: two independent expert transcriptions agree on this song's harmony.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.