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  #46  
Old 12-02-2017, 12:24 PM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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Originally Posted by lpa53 View Post
I've often noticed that early 50s "rock", Buddy Holly for example, use extremely simple chords and often, at least to my ear, didn't change or add chords when they should have. In comparison, the Beatles used more sophisticated, and more musical, chord transitions right off the bat.
Yes, but they learned just about all of it from that older pop music -along with older jazz, blues and show tunes.
E.g., it was Buddy Holly that use a bVI chord in Peggy Sue (F chord in key of A major), as did Carl Perkins in Honey Don't (C chord in E major). And Elvis's It's Now or Never used a minor iv chord.
The Beatles' ears picked up on all those kinds of things - the uncommon practices as well as the common ones. Essentially, you can't find any element in their music that hadn't been done before. What was new was the combination of so many influences in one body of work.

And as well as that huge library of effects stolen from older music, they were unafraid to experiment. The Lennon-McCartney rivalry (and mutual respect) meant they were always trying to impress each other, as much as anyone else. They each upped their game, in a way they wouldn't have if they'd never met (and in a way they didn't when they split).

And once they'd made it, then George Martin was intelligent and open-minded enough to facilitate and encourage their creativity.
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  #47  
Old 12-02-2017, 06:35 PM
Guitars+gems Guitars+gems is offline
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John Lennon wrote I'll Be Back after hearing Del Shannon's Runaway. Both songs flip between Am and A major keys. So that's pretty un-simple. And you'd never think the 2 songs were related, or at least I wouldn't. I think I'll Be Back is more sophisticated and nuanced in its melody.
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  #48  
Old 12-02-2017, 09:39 PM
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Acousticado Acousticado is offline
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Default “Hey Bulldog”

A buddy sent me a link to this film footage of the Beatles recording Hey Bulldog. He said it’s the only Beatles recording session that was filmed, was later disassembled to make a fake video for Lady Madonna (not sure what that means), but a few years ago, some of the original film was rediscovered and Apple has reassembled it to show some of the real recording sequences. I think this is priceless stuff. Enjoy.

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  #49  
Old 12-03-2017, 05:41 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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Originally Posted by Guitars+gems View Post
John Lennon wrote I'll Be Back after hearing Del Shannon's Runaway. Both songs flip between Am and A major keys. So that's pretty un-simple. And you'd never think the 2 songs were related, or at least I wouldn't. I think I'll Be Back is more sophisticated and nuanced in its melody.
They have the same "andalusian cadence" chord sequence: Am-G-F-E. (Which was used not only in Runaway, but also Hit The Road Jack and Walk Don't Run from the same period.) But it's obviously the parallel minor-major thing in Runaway that caught Lennon's ear.
The interesting thing - as you say - is he didn't directly copy or steal. Neither Lennon nor McCartney were interested in faithful transcription as a learning process. While they would learn songs properly in order to cover them, influences like this one were often fragmentary or vague. All Lennon took from Runaway was the chord sequence (of the verse) and the minor-major flip. Where Runaway sticks to the minor sequence in the verse, only going to major in the chorus, Lennon goes straight to A major after the first E chord.
And he makes the lyric fit too, which is the genius. So the minor part is "you know, if you break my heart I'll go". But "I'll be back a-gain" is where it turns major, to reflect the positive confidence of that phrase. He knew instinctively (or without thinking about it too much) how to marry major and minor to the mood of the lyric - or vice versa.

(The strange thing about Runaway, in comparison, is that the major section is not associated with a more positive lyric. In fact it suggests a kind of proud stoicism in misery, as if owning up and expressing it makes it a positive, not a negative. "Tears are falling and I feel the pain" - but it's OK because I'm in a major key! Arguably that's a lot more subtle than Lennon's very obvious sad-happy switch, although Lennon's song has other subtleties.)
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Old 12-03-2017, 06:59 AM
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For serious Beatle fans, there is an Italian guy on YouTube who has dissected most of the Beatles' harmonies and posts instructional videos. Here is a sample of one of the more difficult ones.
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  #51  
Old 02-28-2018, 04:15 PM
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Default Sir Paul still has it

We saw Paul McCartney on tour last summer and he just blew the roof off the arena. When he first came on stage (on a hot humid midwestern evening) we both thought he looked tired -- but as the man wrote so many years ago, all he needed was some audience love. He *tore* *it* *up* non-stop for two and a half hours. What a pro! What a performer!

I've loved the Beatles since I was ten and saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show -- and I still do.
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  #52  
Old 02-28-2018, 06:09 PM
jeanray1113 jeanray1113 is offline
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I saw him in 2016. So impressed by his energy and enthusiasm. He was on stage for 3 hours! Incredible concert!
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  #53  
Old 03-21-2019, 12:34 PM
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For serious Beatle fans, there is an Italian guy on YouTube who has dissected most of the Beatles' harmonies and posts instructional videos. Here is a sample of one of the more difficult ones.
Absolutely brilliant breakdown of some incredibly complex harmonies.
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  #54  
Old 03-23-2019, 10:42 PM
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Huge Beatles fan here. April 1st will mark the 24th anniversary of the day my wife walked down the aisle to Good Day Sunshine.
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  #55  
Old 03-24-2019, 12:55 PM
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Nice. Just celebrated 23 years this month, and "In My Life" was always our song (if we had a song, since we more or less eloped!).
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  #56  
Old 03-24-2019, 01:24 PM
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It’s a shame I never liked the Beatles tone or their image, but my god the lyrics and songs are just magical , just sung and played differently accousticly they are the best............
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  #57  
Old 03-24-2019, 01:46 PM
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My oldest sister turns 70 this summer. She saw the Beatles when they came to the US. My older brother (now 58) was a huge fan though he never got to see them. I grew up hearing a lot of the Beatles. I was always in the "they're kinda overrated" camp. I am one who is kind of done with all "classic rock" as well. There has been lots of great music written since they quit the scene. And no, not all subsequent artists owe their artistry to the Beatles.

Like, dislike or ambivalent I recommend any one interested in the history of popular music read this book.
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  #58  
Old 03-24-2019, 01:54 PM
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I was in a Beatles cover band for years, and it was a real eye-opener, even for a guy like me who's been a fan since he first heard Love Me Do in 1964 at age 12. Everyone who plays guitar can bang out some Beatles chords, but when you see how they really played those things, what voicings they used, etc., it was a real education in song writing and musicianship. We all used the white book (Complete Scores) to get the music right - it's by far the best source we found for that - because it has all the parts written out. Every guitar, bass, vocal, keyboard, and drum part is right there on the page in one place. Not 100% accurate; we found a mistake here and there, but as close as you're going to get in a book. That band was loads of fun, and playing live was beyond awesome - everyone in the audience of course knew every tune and sang along like we were the real Beatles.
So yeah, I'm a fan.
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  #59  
Old 03-24-2019, 01:56 PM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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Here's an interesting counterfactual.
How would pop music have developed if the Beatles had never existed?
If John or Paul had never been born? Or if they'd never met? Or if they'd never gone to Hamburg? if Brian Epstein had never discovered them?
Remember there were a whole load of unlikely circumstances: a Beatles fan comes into Epstein's record shop to ask for the record they made with Tony Sheridan. Instead of just saying "no, sorry, never heard of it", Epstein goes to the Cavern to check them out. He basically falls in love with them (yes, he's gay, and they exude sex appeal in both directions).
Then he brings their amateurish demo to London. It gets rejected - "guitar groups are on the way out". Its only Epstein's persistence, never taking no for an answer, and the fact he talks a similar posh English to George Martin, that gets GM to listen a bit closer.
And then there's George Martin's unusual imagination and intelligence (having worked with comedians) that lets him spot something intriguing beyond the clumsy playing on the demo: something about their personalities. No other A&R man then would have seen that, or thought it important if they did.
The band would have slunk off back to Liverpool, no doubt cynical about the whole business, and probably split acrimoniously. ("It's all Pete's fault, his drumming is crap!" "But he's my mate, we're not sacking him!")

So, in the absence of the four mop-tops, what then? There was still the underground blues movement, exemplified by the Rolling Stones, Animals, Yardbirds - all existed contemporaneous with the Beatles, before the Beatles had been heard of. Of course the spotlight on the Beatles also shone on all the other groups, bringing them out into public gaze and record contracts. But even without that, the blues/R&B boom would doubtless have continued in clubs around the country (mostly London). Andrew Loog Oldham would still have discovered the Stones. He wouldn't have had the Beatles to set them against, but he knew sex appeal when he saw it. I think the mid-60s UK R&B groups (including the Kinks and Who later) could have ended up like a kind of proto-punk movement, outraging the commercial pop mainstream (Cliff and the Shadows and all those).
Of course, that kind of thing happened in the US anyway, but most of those 60s "punk" guitar bands were inspired by the British Invasion, which wouldn't have happened without the Beatles. It was also the Beatles who inspired Bob Dylan to ditch the acoustic and pick up a Strat.

Pop songwriting probably would have got more interesting through the 60s and beyond - Bacharach, Smokey Robinson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Stevie Wonder - but nothing like the explosion in DIY sophistication that the Beatles inspired. Songwriting would probably have remained with the Tin Pan Alley professionals, at least for a lot longer than it did.
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Last edited by JonPR; 03-24-2019 at 05:19 PM.
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  #60  
Old 03-25-2019, 04:55 PM
Johny Tenthumbs Johny Tenthumbs is offline
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Howard Goodall explains it so much better than I ever could when people ask what makes them the best?
The Beatles musical appreciation and analysis -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQS91wVdvYc
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