#16
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Right! - except that's not the ending I though Jeff meant.
It's a standard blues ending. I was assuming he meant the jazz cliche where you play a bIImaj in place of the I, not in place of the V. I.e. Bb7>A7 in key of A is the Bb7 substituting for E7 to produce a chromatic parallel move (with the A7 proving it's blues and not jazz ). I was thinking of something like E7>Bbmaj7>A6, where Bbmaj7 is the surprising harmonization of the tonic note (A), before the real final chord (which could be Amaj7 or A6). Hopegfully Jeff will clarify.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. |
#17
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#18
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The song I keep thinking of - which doesn't really fit this bill at all! - is Penny Lane, which uses modulation in a couple of really clever ways, beautifully effective.
Firstly, the verse is in B major, and the chorus is in A major. Secondly... or is it (in either case)? I.e., the verse begins confidently enough in B major, stomping down the scale in the bass line, outlining a very familiar chord sequence (I-vi-ii-V) in the first two-bar line. This is Paul invoking the doo-wop pop of 10 years before, for obvious nostalgic purposes. But then the second line switches to the parallel minor in bar 4 (Bm, Paul singing the b7, A, on "know")- now the nostalgia is melancholy, introspective. The bass goes down again, to the 6th (Bm/G#) and one half-step more to the wistful Gmaj7, and finally - "stop and say hello" to F#7, the V of both B and B minor. Gmaj7-F#7 support the present B minor key, but of course lead straight back to the positive B major. Second time through the verse, the F#7 drops to E - "very strange" - and that leads us, naturally enough to the A major of the chorus. But actually, is it really A major? The first two bars are A, but the bass - rather than descending as in the verse - now rises to C# and leads to D in bar 3. OK, just the IV of A major, right? But listen to that happily syncopated horn line, which sounds like the sun coming out, flags unfurling: the D major scale. It's like he has led us into A major, but now we've turned the corner into a street parade in D major! Relative major of that moody B minor in the verse. "There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit" - as does the song - until "meanwhile back" the F# major arpeggio rudely disturbs the reverie to take us back to B major. (Lyric neatly reflected in the song structure.) This is obviously songwriting genius at work. But he's not done yet! At the end of the song, as is traditional, the chorus is repeated. The F# that ends the chorus leads to B as before, but now it's the first chord of the chorus! A whole step up! The old "truck driver's gear shift", but by a cleverer route than usual. As before, bars 3-4 make the E chord feel like the true tonic (not the IV), with its triumphant little trumpet line in E major, not B major. (And although George Martin did the horn arrangement, it was from lines sung to him by Paul; this is all Paul's work.) That leads to a slightly odd ending, as the E leads to E/B, and then a final B major on the title phrase (whch ends on D#, the 3rd of the chord). I.e., he is deliberately leaving the ending inconclusive, quizzical. Cutting us off on the B, which might be the key chord, or it might be the V of E ... A more firm cadence on the ending would have been too confident, too insensitive. IMO this is Paul's masterpiece, just as its B-side, Strawberry Fields Forever, was Lennon's masterpiece - the pinnacle of their joint body of work, arguably even of the whole 1960s decade of pop; and both on the same 45 rpm piece of plastic! That's value for you....
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 03-23-2023 at 04:55 AM. |
#19
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Nice post.
There's never been another pair of songwriters like them since. They must have really absorbed the previous generations' musical attention to craft |
#20
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In terms of personalities, they seem to be have been a lucky combination - very different characters, but admiring each other and firing off each other. John's arrogance and self-confidence was critical, as was Paul's intuitive musicality (thanks to his father). And of course they had that psychological bond of both having lost their mothers. And both of them were instinctively creative. At a time when pop performers simply didn't write their own songs, John and Paul alike saw no reason why they shouldn't have a crack at it. (They each thought, hey this guy is doing it, so I definitely can...) And in terms of musical influence, they simply copied anything and everything they could lay their hands on. Their contemporaries were fully occupied with rock'n'roll (maybe just a few old standards), but the Beatles dipped into every popular genre across the board (and Paul and George even learned a classical tune or two). Then there was the baptism of fire in Hamburg, where they learned how to entertain in tough circumstances. "Mach schau!!" Basically, if you take Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, the Everlys, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Peggy Lee, the Shadows, the Miracles, the Isley Brothers, Ray Charles, the Shirelles, George Formby (yes!), Hank Williams, various 1920s jazz standards, etc etc, throw it all into a blender, add a drop of Scouse wit, and what comes out is: the Beatles - inevitably. (Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa would come a little later, lifting them up another level...)
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. |
#21
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The Beatles music was magical and mysterious to me as kid.I couldn't grasp even some of the lyrics.I thought Penny Lane was a girl? A glass onion? what the heck is a Mac the banker doesn't wear?
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#22
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If you want to get all "theory" about it, the chorus of "Good Day Sunshine," is in a different key from the rest of it. Pretty cool. Makes way more sense when you hear them do it than it does when you sit down and play it.
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#23
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They were students of the craft. I'm sure having George Martin around didn't hurt either.
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#24
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There was a piano and band kit, everyone was expecting John Lennon's son and his band to provide the entertainment but I think he was a young teenager at the time and just too intimidated. So along with Harry Nielson they started playing those old rock 'n roll songs which really turned the night into a party, no idea how long it had been since they had played those songs from the time of Hamburg and the Cavern Club but they really didn't have to hesitate at all, fell right into it like they were still there, but George and Paul never played at the same time. It's said George Harrison was also influenced by the finger picking of Chet Atkins. |
#25
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Well, that's one you needed to have asked John Lennon... From one angle, it's just a piece of nonsense surrealism, like "I Am the Walrus". John loved how easy it was to bamboozle credulous fans with lyrics that sounded "Deep And Meaningful" - a bit druggy, a bit Dylan-ish, but ultimately meaningless. Wow man, far out. But also, you could take it a little more seriously, thinking about the saying that a person can be mysterious, having many "layers, like an onion". So he is saying "yes, I have (or the world has) many layers, but the onion is glass, so you can see them all!" He might also have been inspired by an archetypal psychedelic album released the previous year, which was influential on a lot of people (Led Zeppelin especially): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_50...s_of_the_Onion Check out the opening track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHD6ukXtyCo (That's "essence of 1967" in microcosm - it tells you everything you need to know about being a teen in the UK that year.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackintosh
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 03-23-2023 at 01:02 PM. |
#26
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Not only did I play in a Beatles trib for five years, I also studied theory at the graduate level. So: many times in theory, there isn't ONE right label to put on something.
In this case, since we've modulated to G, the F "can" be considered on one hand a modal borrowing, very common in many "folk" leaning or traditional musics. BUT...in this case it immediately loses its possible modal function by being used as a pivot chord to slide down a half step to the original key, E. There may be a fancy term for this "half step above the tonic" movement, which I forget right now, but really, the label doesn't matter. Lennon never knew any fancy labels, he just thought it sounded gear. |
#27
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#28
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