Stmpathy for the Devil is a fairly straightforward song using mainly 3 chords.
We start on E major, which is our root note.
This means that, as E is major, the song could be in either the Ionian, Lydian or Mixolydian mode.
The next 2 chords are D major and A major with a Bminor in one section. This makes the song Mixolydian.
The structure is:
I – VII – IV with a V section
E – D – A Bm
On the front of the Mode Decoder ® you can see a palette of 31 chords Mick Jagger could have used to write the song. Its good fun to use them to create your own sections – a middle 8 that never was!
We could use the mode Decoder to do this simply by picking different nimbers 1-7 e.g.
VI – II – I
Reading from the choices on the Mode Decode ®, these could be
Csharp min7 – F sharp SUS4 – E
Though you could also have
Csharp SUS4 – Fsharp Min9 – E11
…and then back to the song.
To jam along to it look for the 3 neck locations on the Mode Decoder® – These are
Location 1 – F sharp – 2nd and 14th fret
Location 2 – B – 7th and 19th fret
Location 3 – C sharp – 9th and 21st fret (thought the 21st probably won’t be useable)