What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Charles Converse

Overview

Key: F major · Chords used: 14 · Sections: 2

Form: A Section → B 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

• F – E♭maj7/F – B♭ – Gm7 – Am – Dm7 – Gm7 – C7 – F – F7 – B♭ – Bdim – F/C – C – B♭/C – C7 – F
  I – bVIImaj7 (bass F) – IV – ii7 – iii – vi7 – ii7 – V7 – I – I7 – IV – #iv° – I⁶₄ – V – IV (bass C) – V7 – I

B Section

• C – F – B♭ – Gm7 – C7 – F – F7 – B♭ – Bdim – F/A – Gm9 – F
  V – I – IV – ii7 – V7 – I – I7 – IV – #iv° – I⁶ – ii9 – I

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• 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.