Figuring out the notes you hear...

[Moseph]

Just listening to it briefly, the chord structure for the song sounds to me like Eb maj alternating to C min over Eb (which is to say, the Bb moves up to C -- a 5-6 exchange, as my counterpoint teacher would have called it) -- or the whole structure can be taken as Eb6 -- and this same basic harmonic motion gets repeated up a half step and down a half step at different points in the song. And some stuff going on in the pad/melody that I'm not interested enough to figure out in detail, such as the Eb holding over into the E maj to create a major 7th.

You missed Neblix saying that Chariots of Fire started with a parallel fifth.

Parallel 5th =/= leap of a 5th (which is what Neblix said).

Moseph's description of it clearly shows that means 'parallel'... which indeed sounds like a failed music theory student's counterpoint exercise

And the first leap in the melody of 'Chariots of Fire' is indeed a fourth, not a fifth. There are some horn motions before the melody that are leaping fifths, though... so there's room to save yourself, Neblix.

To clear this up, the post wasn't intended as a dig at neblix, although I see how it can be taken that way. I was mimicking his phrasing to facetiously describe what I thought parallel fifths sounded like and didn't mean it as a commentary on his post -- I'd have posted the same thing even if neblix's definition had been correct.

[davidoff]

On a quick listen with no keyboard verification, I'm hearing:

Eb6, EM7, Eb6, EM7, D6, Eb6, D6, Eb6, then it repeats. The sixes don't sound like they're in the pads, but in whatever the plucked instrument is. The pads may also have some 7s or 9s in there. In any case, it's only the three chords. If you don't know what those chords are, here are the individual pitches that make them up:

Eb6: Eb, G, Bb, C

EM7: E, G#, B, D# (could also be spelled as Fb, Ab, Cb, Eb to keep it more "in the key")

D6: D, F#, A, B

Not guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but if it gives you a good jumping off point, I'm glad to have helped!