Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) by The Beatles

Overview

Key: E major · Chords used: 6 · Sections: 8

Form: Solo → Verse → Bridge → Verse → Solo → Bridge → Verse → Outro

Where these chords come from: an expert transcription of the original recording made for the Isophonics reference annotations (Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London). 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

Solo 1

• E – D (×2)
  I – bVII
• E
  I

Verse 1

• E – D (×2)
  I – bVII
• E
  I

Bridge 1

• Em – A – Em – F♯m – B
  i – IV – i – ii – V

Verse 2

Same chords as Verse 1.

Solo 2

Same chords as Solo 1.

Bridge 2

Same chords as Bridge 1.

Verse 3

Same chords as Verse 1.

Outro

• E – D – E
  I – bVII – I

Chord vocabulary

Chord	Roman numeral	Role	Heard in
E	I	Home chord (tonic)	Solo, Verse, Outro
D	bVII	Borrowed from E minor	Solo, Verse, Outro
Em	i	Borrowed from E minor	Bridge
A	IV	In the key	Bridge
F♯m	ii	In the key	Bridge
B	V	In the key	Bridge

Harmonic highlights

• D (bVII) is borrowed from the parallel key, E minor.
• Em (i) is borrowed from the parallel key, E minor.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords and sections: the Isophonics reference annotations (Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London). Expert chord and structure annotation of the original recording (CC BY 4.0 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 81%).
• Verified: two independent expert transcriptions agree on this song's harmony.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.