What is the 007 chord?

The name's Horn. Keith... you know what? I shouldn't... probably shouldn't be doing that. The 007 chord is one of the most recognizable chords of all time. It's at the end of the famous James Bond theme that first appeared in 1962's Dr. No. There was a controversy, or some would say controversy, over who actually composed the theme. Between Monty Norman, seen here picking you up for the prom in 1950, and John Barry, who scored 11 of the Bond films and went on to become one of the great film composers of the 20th century. Monty Norman won the legal battle over the authorship of the theme, but it's John Barry's arrangement of that theme that we all know and love. And the final chord was performed by session guitarist Vic Flick. And you know what? God bless his parents for calling him that. Flick was paid about six pounds for the session, which is about 60 bucks today. And man, if he would have got some royalties on that, I mean like even a fraction, a fraction of a point for every time they play that chord, Vic Flick would have been ballin'. I mean maybe he was, maybe he just played so many sessions and maybe he was, I'm just saying. I mean that chord, like money in the bank. So what is the 007 chord? Well it's this. An E minor with a major 7th and a 9th. So it's an E minor major 9. Or you could think of it as an E minor triad with a B major triad on the top. B major, E minor, and they meet in the middle at the B. A couple different ways to think about it. Now I would be remiss if I didn't play this on the guitar, so wait for it. So this voicing, we have open 10 9 8 7, like that. So 1 3 5 7 9. Another way to play it is down here, where you just don't have the B, you just have and without the 5th. That works too. Now I should also mention that this is the Die Hard chord as well. Michael Kamen uses this in Die Hard and a lot of his other scores like this. Let's listen to that section from Die Hard. Exact same chord, exact same key, and this is 1988. And in 1989 Michael Kamen went on to score his own Bond film, License to Kill. So maybe scoring Die Hard with this chord is what got him the gig the following year. Now there are a couple of chords that this reminds me of too. If we were to take this chord down a half step to E flat 7, E flat minor major 9, like this, and change the voicing around so it's not 1 3 5 7 9, but rather it's 7 5 3 1 9. That's from the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, The Ancient Ritual. This right here. Let's listen to that. Now I know it's not exactly the same chord, but it is the same five pitches. And there's another one. If we were to do this in A, right, A minor major 7, add the 9th, and flip the voices around like this, so the roots on the top. That's the Farben chord from Schoenberg. This time instead of 1 3 5 7 9, it's 3 7 9 5 1. And I know, again, it's not at all, the Die Hard chord is not at all the James Bond 007 chord, but it is the same five pitches. It's really interesting what you can do when you re-voice the same set of pitches. You get completely different effects. So if you change the notes around, taking the 007 chord, shaken or stirred, you get a variety of sounds, which is fun, but the only real version of the chord is the one that was played by Vic Flick. This chord has become a cultural meme, and you're guaranteed to hear a variation of it wherever you find an action spy thriller or a heisty kind of movie like Austin Powers or Phineas and Ferb or any number of other heist films or spoofs of heists or spoofs of this era. It's associated with the sound of intrigue, suspense, coolness, maybe even a little tongue-in-cheek, and there's no doubt that it's one of the most recognizable chords of all time.