"What You're Doing"

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Last night, I wrote out the tab for the repeating guitar phrase in "What You're Doing" (I've forgotten it once; I don't want to forget it again), and I figured out the rest of the solo!  I had the first six or seven notes (in the wrong octave), but I'd gotten stuck after that.

Also, apparently the lead guitar parts are on twelve-string guitar, which I hadn't realized.  So I've corrected that too.

A few of the phrases near the end are incomplete.  I'm not sure if they're incomplete in the same way in the original, but I do think they are incomplete.

"Any Time at All"

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I listened to A Hard Day's Night this morning, and I noticed a few things that I've been oblivious to, even though I've been listening to the album weekly for months.  Mostly, the things I noticed were just piano parts I hadn't realized were there.  (They're in "Tell Me Why," where I think it just doubles the bass part, and in "When I Got Home."  A few months ago, I discovered that there's one in "Things We Said Today" too.)  I'm pretty sure the CD copy I have of the album is in mono, which makes it a bit more difficult to distinguish the individual parts.

The other thing I noticed was in "Any Time at All."  Almost the entirety of the verses have doubled-tracked vocals except for the beginning of the fourth line.  In the first verse, the "If you're feelin'" part is just a single voice, but there's a second for the "sorry and sad."  Way back in March, I noted that alliteration, but the double-tracked vocals there emphasize it, since there's a second pair (a pair of words beginning with S and a pair of vocals).

In the second verse, the "When you need a" has a single voice, and "shoulder to cry on" has two.  The single/double-tracked voice feature here is more interesting.  There's a single voice for the part of the line that indicates a lack ("When you need"), and a pair of voices for the part that offers assistance.

"No Reply"

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All I'd intended to do was write a post about how I listened to Beatles for Sale again a few days ago and discovered that after the hand-claps in the bridge, there are a few finger-snaps during the third verse.  They're sort of loosely structured which makes me think that they were just improvised while recording the hand-claps.  That's all I intended to do, but then - in verifying that I did actually hear finger-snaps - I ended up learning the piano part and then I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the rest of the rhythm guitar chords.  I don't have the rhythm right for the "I saw the light" part in the first verse; it wasn't until I got to the second verse that I realized you have to strum upwards during those parts to stay in time.

"What You're Doing"

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A while after I listened to Beatles for Sale two weeks ago, I remembered that years ago I'd learned the recurring guitar phrase in "What You're Doing."  I re-learned it recently and got a few more parts too.  I figured out most of the chords on my own, but I did refer to The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook and made a correction.  Also, I figured out a truly minuscule part of the piano part.  There's an A note to accompany the "me" in "It's me."  I doubled it at the octave, but I'm not sure if that's accurate.

My recording cuts out a bit early compared to the original (also, it starts later because there's no way I could have done the opening drum part).  The tag at the end is made up of the same elements from the verses, so I didn't think I really needed to include it.

"A Hard Day's Night"

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I thought I'd learned the twelve-string part at the end of "A Hard Day's Night" months ago and that I just couldn't play it right.  But last night I discovered that the A note I'd been trying (and failing) to play is actually supposed to be a G.  Discovering that made this much easier to play.  It made it able to play, actually.

"I'll Follow the Sun"

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I listened to Beatles for Sale to-day, and I decided to figure out the short guitar phrase in "I'll Follow the Sun."  I'm not sure it's really long enough to be considered a solo.  Anyway, there it is.

"Please Please Me"

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After I re-learned a guitar part in "Please Please Me," I learned the bass part for the verses too (mostly so I could post an audio example that was more than just a seven-note guitar phrase).

This is only about the first minute; I'm still stuck at the bridge.  The bass part during the verse after this is virtually the same, but I still have the end to figure out too.

"Please Please Me"

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This morning, I got to thinking about how "Please Please Me" has a guitar part doubled on harmonica (or a harmonica part doubled on guitar, whichever).  I knew I'd figured out it before, but I didn't remember it, so I had to figure it out again.  I would post an audio example, but doubling the guitar part with harmonica requires an E major harmonica, which I don't have (and the guitar part by itself wouldn't be too interesting).  So until either I get an E major harmonica or I learn an-other part to the song, this text post will have to suffice.  I made sure to write down the part, so I won't have to re-learn it a second time.

"And I Love Her"

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Friday night, I finally learned the rest of the arpeggiations in "And I Love Her."  I'd been stuck on the last one, but I figured out that where the rhythm guitar plays an E major, that arpeggiated chord in the lead guitar is a C# minor.  Together, they make an E major 7th, which the rhythm guitar plays as a chord in the introduction.

Because I just learned those parts, I'm not very good at transitioning yet, so I missed a few notes in my recording.

"Yellow Submarine"

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I forgot to write about something I noticed when I listened to Yellow Submarine a few days ago.  In "Yellow Submarine," there's the line "Every one of us has all we need."  I think it's meant to describe what the previous line states - the "life of ease" where everyone has enough.  But because the pronouns change from singular ("one") to plural ("we"), it actually describes an excess.  Each single person has the amount required by the whole group of people.

"Hey Bulldog"

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I listened to the Yellow Submarine album this morning, mostly to hear "Hey Bulldog" after seeing some footage of it from the new Beatles 1 Video Collection and not remembering the song that well.

This evening I thought I'd try figuring out the riff, and it was pretty easy.  I figured out most of the chords for the rest of the song too, but I figured them out on guitar, and I don't know if they're played differently on piano (with inversions and such), so I didn't include them.

"She Loves You"

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Back in August when I listened to Anthology 1, I finally understood a line in "She Loves You" that I'd previously been unable to comprehend.  It's the third line in the third verse:  "Pride can hurt you too."

At the time, I realized that because of the too/two homophone, this line could be either "Pride can hurt you too" (probably the more obvious meaning) or "Pride can hurt you two," as in "Pride can hurt the two people in this relationship."

To-day I happened to re-read my reminder to myself to get around to writing about this, and I realized that there's more to that line than I originally thought.  There is that too/two homophone, but the key to which meaning is meant lays in the "Pride" earlier in the line.  A prideful person would be more likely to perceive the "you" as the singular you where a less prideful person would understand it as the plural you.  A prideful person would think of their self alone where a less prideful person would think about other people and the relationship between them.

Between the ambiguous you and too/two, it's a really clever line that could be interpreted in different ways.

"All I've Got to Do"

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As part of my listening schedule, I just listened to With the Beatles.  A few lines of one of the stanzas in "All I've Got to Do" sounded familiar:

And when I, I wanna kiss you, yeah
All I gotta do
Is whisper in your ear
The words you long to hear
And I'll be kissin' you

There are some incredibly similar lines in "Do You Want to Know a Secret":

Let me whisper in your ear
Say the words you long to hear

Apparently "Do You Want to Know a Secret" was primarily composed by John Lennon and "All I've Got to Do" solely by Lennon, so that similarity makes sense.

"I'll Be Back"

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After listening to A Hard Day's Night on Thursday, I figured out (at least an approximation) of the bass part for "I'll Be Back."  I might have some of the rhythms wrong, and I might even be missing some notes, but it's at least pretty close.  One thing I discovered while learning it is that McCartney includes an extra note at the beginning of the first verse.  In all the other verses, there's just a descending line starting with an A note, but in that first verse, he drops down to an E before going back to the A and then doing that descent.  The part before that just alternates between A and E, so I think he just got stuck doing that and missed his cue.

I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords, although I didn't play them exactly the way the book has them listed.  I think it sort of combines the other parts to get chords.  So if the rhythm guitar plays a B minor chord over which the lead guitar plays an A note, the book just combines those two things and says, "Play a B minor 7th."

I tried to figure out the lead guitar part for this a few weeks ago and didn't get anywhere, but then I got the whole thing this afternoon before I recorded this.

"Baby It's You"

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I just wrote a post about some songs by the Shirelles (mostly about implications of melismas), and since the Beatles covered some of their songs, I felt it'd be worth noting here that they do the same thing as the Shirelles in "Baby It's You."

The "apart" in the line "It's not the way you kiss that tears me apart" is broken up into syllables, so the way that it's sung reflects what the word means.

"Lovely Rita"

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I recently listened to the Tremeloes' cover of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue," and for some reason, I then got thinking about "Lovely Rita."  I'm not sure if it's an indication of Holly's influence on the Beatles or just common poetic devices, but there seems to be a resemblance between "Pretty Peggy Sue" (a line from two of the verses in Holly's song) and "Rita, meter maid."  The syllable count for each phrase - even the division among the words - is the same (two syllables, two syllables, one syllable), and there's alliteration between two consecutive words ("Pretty Peggy" and "meter maid").

Regardless of that possible influence, I found a few other interesting things in the lyrics of "Lovely Rita."

The final line in the third verse exhibits two strains of alliteration:

In a cap, she looked much old
And the bag across her shoulder
Made her look a little like a milit'ry man

There are a lot of words that begin with M or L, so the collection of words appears (and - more importantly - sounds) uniform, like Rita's appearance.

There’s also assonance in the last line of the second verse:

Standing by a parking meter
When I caught a glimpse of Rita
Filling in the ticket in a little white book

Again, there's a sort of uniformity, but - if I have my phonetics correct - the I in white isn't the same as the other Is.  It's a long vowel where the others are short.  So the vowels sounds in that line provide a sort of audible representation of Rita's filling in the book.  The previous Is go with each other, but she hasn't gotten to that last one yet.  It's as if it has yet to be filled in.

"A Hard Day's Night"

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When I listened to A Hard Day's Night to-day, the bass part for the title track seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to figure out.  I referenced the version on Live at the BBC too, although I'm not sure if that bass part matches the studio version exactly.

Even just in listening to it over the last few months, I noticed a little bass riff that occurs after "You know I work all day / To get you money to buy you things" (acting as an embellishment of the "things"?) and during the solo.  I think I have that figured out correctly, but - as with everything in this project - I might be wrong.

In order to play that riff, I have to play the preceding G note as an open string.  Before I figured that out though, I was playing the G note on the fifth fret of the D string.  In my recording, I sometimes go between the two, and because of the difference in the thickness of the strings, it sounds a bit weird at times.

A few years ago, I discovered this article/video/radio show clip that explains the opening crash.  According to that, the bass plays a D note at the beginning.  I haven't tried recreating it with the guitar parts, but I'll get around to it eventually.

"Tell Me Why"

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I haven't been doing much work on learning the songs (mostly because I've had difficulty distinguishing the parts), but when I listened to A Hard Day's Night yester-day, I thought the bass part to "Tell Me Why" would be pretty easy to figure out because it sounded pretty much like a scale with a few back-tracks.  It didn't take too long to figure out, and then I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords (although I played the opening part as just E minor chords, not E minor 7ths as the book says; it goes between E minor 7ths and A majors, and that's a difficult transition to make quickly).

I'm still suspicious about the last note in the bass part at the very end of the bridge ("Well, I'm beggin' on my bended knees…").  I played an E note, but the chord above it is a D major, so I probably have that wrong.

"Free as a Bird" CD Single

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Yester-day I found the "Free as a Bird" CD single at Half Price Books.  I wasn't aware of this, but it includes some other tracks.  There are alternate versions of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "This Boy," and there's also a Christmas song:  "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)."

So now I have an-other title to add to my listening schedule.

"Misery"

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When I listened to Please Please Me yester-day, I thought the piano part in "Misery" sounded pretty easy to figure out (and it was; it's pretty much just a C major scale, although it doesn't start on C).  So I figured that out, and then I got the chords too.

My guitar tone isn't the best here, and I think there's a slight tempo mistake in the second piano phrase, but it's close enough.

Please Please Me

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I listened to Please Please Me as part of my new(-ish) listening schedule, and I have a few things to say about it:

"Please Please Me"

In the bridge, there's the line "But you know there's always rain in my heart," which I'm pretty sure is a subtle Buddy Holly reference, specifically to "Raining in My Heart," where Holly uses the same image.  (This is one of the things I noticed while listening to Anthology 1 exactly a month ago.)

"Do You Want to Know a Secret"

I've been suspicious about this for awhile, but I'm now pretty sure that in the last verse, in between the "Do you promise not to tell" and the backing "Doo dah doo," someone (I'm not sure who) sticks in an "I" (or possibly an "ah," but "I" makes more sense).  So, the whole line becomes: "Do you promise not to tell (I do dah doo)."  The lead vocals ask a question that the backing vocals answer.

"A Taste of Honey"

I'm not sure if this is specific to the Beatles' version (I have three versions of "A Taste of Honey," but theirs is the only version I have with vocals), but there are two great elements in some lines in the second verse:

There lingers still though we're far apart
That taste of honey

It's inverted so that the verb ("lingers") precedes the subject ("taste"), which mirrors the actual lingering: the effect (the verb) remains although the actor (the subject) is gone.  Also, the verb and the subject are separated by a line break, which mirrors the "though we're far apart."

"Cry for a Shadow"

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An-other thing about Anthology 1:  one of the songs included from the Beatles' early days (specifically, 1961) is "Cry for a Shadow," about which the liner notes are sort of frustratingly brief: "Cry for a Shadow is a rare instrumental performance by the Beatles; the composer credit, Harrison-Lennon, was the only such occurrence on disc."

The name seems to suggest that it was written in the style of the Shadows, who performed mostly instrumental music and were one of the big British bands around that time.

"Long Tall Sally"

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I listened to Anthology 1 to-day.  I noticed a few things which I'll get around to posting eventually (I might wait until I listen to the album versions of the songs I found things in), but the most exciting thing I found is in the Beatles' cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally."

During the last verse (the second one that's mostly just "Gonna have some fun tonight"), the guitar part plays the melody of the backing vocals from Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It."  It's easier to hear in the version on Anthology 1, but it's also present in the EP version.

"Good Morning, Good Morning"

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The thing about transcriptions is that they sometime solidify a line into one meaning, where the audible version could be taken more than one way.  There's an instance of this in "Good Morning Good Morning."  One of the lines could be transcribed as "I've got nothing to say, but it's OK" or "I've got nothing to say but it's OK."

"I've got nothing to say, but it's OK" has the speaker saying that it's fine that he doesn't have anything to say.

"I've got nothing to say but it's OK" has the speaker saying that "It's OK" is the only thing he has to say.

"Getting Better"

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There's a troublesome relative pronoun in a line in "Getting Better" - "The teachers that taught me weren't cool."  Instead of that, it should be who, since it refers to people ("the teachers").  It's a minor point, but it illustrates either that the singer/speaker hasn't been paying much attention to what his teachers were saying or that the teachers neglected to point this out in the first place.

"I Should Have Known Better"

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I used to know some of the parts to "I Should Have Known Better," and over the last few days, I re-learned/remembered them.

I've been going through my harmonica book in order to get better at it, but the harmonica part here is still very rough.  I cobbled it together from a few takes, and the part during the solo took at least nine attempts.

I took the chords from The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook, but I haven’t studied the original closely enough to know if I play them in the exact same rhythm.

I’m still unsure of the last notes of the guitar solo.  I resolved it to (part of) a G major chord (D and G), but the original seems to have a bit of dissonance.

"With a Little Help from My Friends"

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One of the lines in "With a Little Help from My Friends" is "Lend me your ears, and I'll sing you a song."  I'm not sure if the Beatles were conscious of this (because it's become a pretty common phrase), but "Lend me your ears" comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  After Caesar's death, Mark Antony speaks to a crowd and begins with "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." (III.ii.73).

"She's Leaving Home"

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When I listened to a few Sgt. Pepper songs about a week ago, I also listened to "She's Leaving Home."  I noticed that the first and third verses start with the same structure ("Wednesday morning at five o'clock..." and "Friday morning at nine o'clock…").  Both mention the day of the week and the time.  I didn't think too much about that at the time, but this morning I got thinking about this again, and I realized that it's not significant that those two are the same, rather that the second verse doesn't follow that structure.  Instead of talking about the titular "she," the second verse deals with the parents when they realize that the girl has gone.

If that structure were followed in the second verse, it'd be "Thursday morning at [some number] o'clock" and go on to tell about the girl.  Instead, it starts with "Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown."  The girl isn't physically present anymore, which is reflected in both A) her absence in the verse and B) Thursday's being skipped over.

I listened to the whole album (and noticed some other things, about which some more posts are queued) to finish off my transcription of "She's Leaving Home," and - in doing so - I noticed something else I'd never noticed:  the lines before each chorus all end with a homophone ("buy" or "by"), which - after the proper chorus - are recalled with "bye."  So, the first chorus:

(She) We gave her most of our lives
(Is leaving) Sacrificed most of our lives
(Home) We gave her everything money could buy

She's leaving home
After living alone
(Bye bye) For so many years

The second:

(She) We never thought of ourselves
(Is leaving) Never a thought for ourselves
(Home) We struggled hard all our lives to get by

She's leaving home
After living alone
(Bye bye) For so many years

And the third:

(She) What did we do that was wrong
(Is having) We didn't know it was wrong
(Fun) Fun is the one thing that money can't buy

Something inside
That was always denied
(Bye bye) For so many years

I'm not sure if there's anything to this other than just a poetic effect, but it's a great effect.

"When I'm Sixty-Four"

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I have an-other project like this based on Electric Light Orchestra, and I've (slowly) been going through their albums.  I just posted some notes about Face the Music, and I listened to a few songs from Sgt. Pepper to compare "Evil Woman" with "Fixing a Hole."  I also found a phrase in "Down Home Town" that's an astonishingly-well-crafted homage to "She Loves You" (it uses the same notes!).

In any case, since I was already listening to one Sgt. Pepper song, I added "When I'm Sixty-Four" to my now-playing list just for the sake of completing a bit more of my transcription.  I noticed a line in the second verse:  "Sunday mornings go for a ride."

It's not too spectacular by itself, but it has connections to two other Beatle songs - "Day Tripper" and "Two of Us" from Let It Be.  Back in February, I noticed that both contain the phrase "Sunday driver" (or "Sunday driving").  And now I've discovered that "When I'm Sixty-Four" has something similar.

Like I said back in February, it seems significant that the girl in "Day Tripper" goes on Sunday drives alone where the pair in "Two of Us" goes on them together.  The couple in "When I'm Sixty-Four" seems to fit into that paradigm too, aligning with the pair in "Two of Us."  It's unsurprising then that "When I'm Sixty-Four" and "Two of Us" - with their similar views on Sunday driving - were both written by Paul McCartney.

"I Feel Fine"

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I happened to hear "I Feel Fine" on the radio at McDonald's to-night, and I noticed something about the third verse:

That her baby buys her things, you know
He buys her diamond rings, you know
She said so
She’s in love with me, and I feel fine, ooh

"Things" rhymed with "diamond rings" is also a feature of two verses of "Can't Buy Me Love."  There's some similarity with the first lines of the first verse ("a diamond ring" rhymes with "anything"):

I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend
If it makes you feel alright
I'll get you anything, my friend
If it makes you feel alright

But there's a greater similarity with the first lines of the third verse ("diamond rings" rhymes with "kind of things"):

Say you don't need no diamond rings
And I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of things
That money just can't buy

"Yellow Submarine"

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I listened to "Yellow Submarine" to-day so I could compare the spoken background parts to ELO's "New World Rising/Ocean Breakup Reprise," and I found some other things about "Yellow Submarine" itself.

The third verse is a line shorter than the other verses.  They're all four lines, but the third verse has only three:

And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

Of course, in lieu of that missing line, there's the brass band playing.

"As we live a life of ease / Every one of us has all we need" could be taken in two different ways.  It could be "Because we live a life of ease…" or "While we live a life of ease…".  It could be causal or temporal.

I think I noticed this one other time, but I certainly haven't written about it:  the last lines in the last verse form a progression of colors:  "Sky of blue and sea of green / In our yellow submarine."  Blue to green to yellow.

"Any Time at All"

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Early in this project, I started wondering why Paul McCartney sings the second "Any time at all" in "Any Time at All."  It seemed incongruous because John Lennon sings the whole song except for those lines.

Listening to it this time though, I remembered something that I read in The Beatles Anthology (or at least I think it was in The Beatles Anthology).  I can't seem to find it again (and I don't really want to re-read large sections in an effort to find it), but it was John Lennon's explaining that Paul McCartney sings the "When I'm home" sections in "A Hard Day's Night" because he (McCartney) has a higher voice.  I'm pretty sure that the McCartney-sung "Any time at all" is even higher, so that switch might be just because of the register.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"

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Over the past few months, I've been (slowly) re-reading The Beatles Anthology.  On Sunday, I read the part about "Tomorrow Never Knows" (p. 210), which got me thinking about the lyrical structure.  I just listened to it and transcribed the lyrics (checking them against those in The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook).  I was sort of right in what I was thinking.  Aside from the last, each verse ends with lines that have the same structure; they're all "It is" or "It is not" completed with a gerund and then repeated:

It is not dying
It is shining
It is being
It is knowing
It is believing
It is not living

There's also a mirrored sort of structure as far as when the "not"s are present.

In the last verse, there's "Of the beginning," which somewhat holds to the established paradigm in that it ends with a gerund.

"And I Love Her"

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I spent the last week or so figuring out the bass part to "And I Love Her."

There's a really interesting part transitioning from the second verse into the bridge (just before "A love like ours / Could never die").  At that point in the bass part, there's the same phrase that - on guitar - opens the song (B, E, D#, C#).  Without having learned the parts, I doubt I ever would have noticed that.

I'm still missing the arpeggiations in the guitar part, but I have learned two of them.  I'm still working on the others, but I think I'm pretty close.  Also, I might rush a note or two in the solo, and I think one or more of my instruments is slightly out-of-tune.

"And I Love Her"

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I haven't done too much on this project for the last month.  Basically, I've just been listening to A Hard Day's Night every week.  But I decided to figure out a few of the guitar parts for "And I Love Her."  I got the solo and the phrase at the beginning and end.  I'm still stuck on the arpeggiated parts, but - thanks to The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook - I do know the chords, so those shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  (Before I referenced the chords, I hadn't realized that the song changes key right before the solo.  The second half is a half-step higher than the first half.)  I think I figured out a phrase from the bass part too, but I didn't include that.

I don't have a nylon-strung classical guitar, which is what I think George Harrison used on this (that's what it looks like in the A Hard Day's Night movie at least).  It's on my list of instruments to get, but since I already have a regular acoustic guitar, 1) a nylon-strung guitar isn't too high on that list and 2) I just used that.

You can hear my wrist crack at the very end, which is why I'm not too keen on recording acoustic guitar, and it's sort of a rough audio example anyway, but good enough to give an idea of what I know.

"We Can Work It Out"

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Two days ago, I listened to a few songs from Past Masters, Vol. 2 ("We Can Work It Out" and "Paperback Writer"), so I could write a post about Brian Wilson's use of "Frère Jacques" in "Surf's Up" and compare it to the Beatles' use of it in "Paperback Writer."  I just listened to "We Can Work It Out" for the sake of listening to it, but I discovered something interesting about some lines in the bridge: "Life is very short, and there's no time / For fussing and fighting my friend."

I'd previously noted the alliteration in that second line ("For fussing and fighting my friend"), but the "my friend" part stuck out in listening to it this time.  Writing it out, it could be either "For fussing and fighting my friend" or "For fussing and fighting, my friend."  In the first, "friend" is the object of "fighting;" in the second, "friend" is a vocative - the person to whom the whole statement "Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting" is directed.

It reminded me of an-other ambiguous "my friend" I discovered in the Beatles' catalogue.  In the first verse of "I'm a Loser" from Beatles for Sale, there's the line: "She was a girl in a million, my friend."  Here, it could be a vocative (someone to whom "She was a girl in a million" is directed) or an appositive renaming the "girl in a million" (which could be rendered as "She was a girl in a million [and] my friend").  I think it makes more sense as a vocative, but it's still viable as an appositive.

"Any Time at All"

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I forgot to mention a tiny thing about "Any Time at All" that I noticed when I recorded a version yester-day: there's a bit of alliteration in the first verse:

If you're feelin' sorry and sad
I'd really sympathize

"Any Time at All"

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Yester-day, I figured out the piano parts in "Any Time at All."  During the solo, there are actually some chromatic phrases - A A# B and B C C#.  I'm not sure if I fully realized this until learning the parts, but the phrase at the very end of the solo is the same as the guitar phrase that recurs throughout - G F# E D F#.

I figured out most of the chords for myself, but I had to reference The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for a few.  I also have some of the guitar phrases, but I'm not too sure about one of them.

I'm still confused about the two chords at the end.  I think they're both on electric guitar, but since the rhythm guitar is acoustic (I think), that would require an overdub.  So…?

In any case, the piano parts were what I was focusing on, and I'm fairly certain of those.

"Tell Me Why"

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I listened to an Elvis album this morning, and part of "Don't Be Cruel" sounded vaguely familiar:

Baby, if I made you mad
Something I might have said

It has a fairly strong resemblance to some lines from "Tell Me Why":

If it's something that I've said or done
Tell me what, and I'll apologize

I'd been transcribing the songs on that Elvis album, so after I discovered the similarities of those lines, I looked for others.  Elvis' "Sittin' home all alone" seems to have inspired the Beatles' "But you left me sittin' on my own."  The syllable count is different, but they even rhyme ("alone"/"own").

There are also some similar lines in Elvis' "My Baby Left Me":

Yes, my baby left me
Never said a word
Was it something I done
Something that she heard

Elvis was one of the Beatles' inspirations, so it makes sense that there'd be some elements of his music in their songs, but I'd never realized that there were phrases that are so similar.

"Any Time at All"

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An-other thing I noticed while listening to A Hard Day's Night last week is that "Any Time at All" begins in the same sort of way as "A Hard Day's Night."  "A Hard Day's Night" is well-known for its dissonant beginning, and while "Any Time at All" begins with just drums, it has the same immediacy.  Interestingly, on the original vinyl, "A Hard Day's Night" started side one, and "Any Time at All" started side two.  I don't know how much influence (if any) the Beatles had on the sequencing of the album, but those two songs' beginning each of the sides helps make a more consistent album - each side starts with that suddenness.

"If I Fell"

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Listening to A Hard Day's Night last week, I found an interesting connection between "If I Fell" and "Anna (Go to Him)" from Please Please Me: both have the same grammatical error.

"If I Fell" has the line "You / Would love me more than her," and "Anna (Go to Him)" has "You say he loves you more than me."  Both of these are comparisons, but the second element in each comparison is in the accusative case where it should be in the nominative, so "You / Would love me more than she [loved me]" and "You say he loves you more than I [love you]."

"Anna (Go to Him)" is one of the songs in the Beatles catalogue that they didn't write (it was written by Arthur Alexander), and while I'm not sure if there's any real connection between "If I Fell" and "Anna (Go to Him)" (I'm fairly certain I've run into this same error in other songs), I still thought it interesting that they mess up in the same way.

"When I'm Sixty-Four"

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I listened to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds yester-day, and I think I found an influence for "When I'm Sixty-Four."

A particular instrument (the identity eludes me) doubles the melody of the vocals during the first verse of "I'm Waiting for the Day":

I came along when he broke your heart
That’s when you needed someone
To help forget about him
I gave you love with a brand new start
That's what you needed the most
To set your broken heart free

I'd thought it was oboe, but according to The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, the only woodwind present is flute.  As far as the influence it (probably) had on the Beatles, the particular instrument isn't as important as the instrument's doubling the vocal melody.  The same thing is present (with clarinet, according to Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions [21 December 1966]) on (most of) the last verse of "When I'm Sixty-Four":

Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine forevermore

I've read a few things about how much Paul McCartney liked Pet Sounds, but I haven't seen anything where he talks specifically about "I'm Waiting for the Day."  Still, I'm fairly certain that this connection is valid.  At the very least, it's possible, as Pet Sounds was released on 16 May 1966 (although I sort of remember something about how Lennon and McCartney heard it before it was officially released) and that section of "When I'm Sixty-Four" was recorded on 21 December 1966.

EDIT: I did some more research, and according to Peter Ames Carlin's Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, that instrument that doubles the vocal melody in "I'm Waiting for the Day" is a viola.

"Things We Said Today"

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I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords for "Things We Said Today," and I figured out the two lines of vocal harmony.  Almost everything else is double-tracked, which has some similarity to Buddy Holly's "Listen to Me," which I've written about earlier with "And I Love Her."  I should have mentioned in that post that Holly was a big influence on the Beatles, so it makes sense that their songs would share some of the same characteristics.

Like "Listen to Me," one of the vocal tracks in "Things We Said Today" shifts between double-tracking and harmony, but I don't think the line "Then I will remember" is double-tracked or harmonized.  It's just a single vocal track.  All the other instances of that line have first person plural ("Then we will remember"), so the single vocal track mirrors the first person singular pronoun and the loneliness.

While recording the vocals for this, I also noticed the similarities between two lines in the bridge:

Me, I'm just the lucky kind
Love to hear you say that love is love
And though we may be blind
Love is here to stay, and that’s enough

There are a number of resemblances between the second and fourth lines - "Love" in both, "hear"/"here," and "say"/"stay."  There's also a similarity of sorts between "love is love" and "that's enough."

"I'll Be Back"

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While transcribing "I'll Be Back" last Thursday, I noticed the effect of the melisma on "so" in "I love you so."  Just by itself, it indicates the degree of that love by drawing it out.

But it also differentiates "I love you so" with "I wanna go."  Those lyrics are above the same musical phrase but because "so" has a melisma and "go" doesn't, it illustrates that the singer/speaker doesn't want to dwell on going.  Going doesn't receive the same emphasis that loving does.  The next line confirms this:  "I wanna go / But I hate to leave you."

A Hard Day's Night

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After I listened to A Hard Day's Night last week, I noticed some connection among "A Hard Day's Night," "Can't Buy Me Love," and "Tell Me Why."  Working on transcribing the lyrics yester-day helped in fleshing it out.

"A Hard Day's Night" and "Tell Me Why" present opposite outcomes of the same situation.  In "A Hard Day's Night," the speaker/singer says, "It's worth it just to hear you say / You're gonna give me everything / So why on Earth should I moan?"  There's gift-giving (or even just the promise of gift-giving), so there's no grumbling or animosity, unlike in "Tell Me Why":

Well, I gave you everything I had
But you left me sittin' on my own
Did you have to leave me oh so bad
All I do is hang my head and moan

Here, there's also giving "everything," but now there is cause to "moan" because the affection isn't reciprocated.

"Can't Buy Me Love" presents the same sort of idea ("I'll get you anything, my friend / If it makes you feel alright"), but it also complicates the idea with the titular line: "Money can't buy me love."

Taken together, it seems to present the view that giving "everything" can certainly help a romantic relationship, but it's not the essential element.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that there's also "She gives me everything" in "And I Love Her."

A Hard Day's Night

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While listening to A Hard Day's Night, I found a few things that sort of illustrate the Beatles' progress, specifically things that make a distinction between A Hard Day's Night and their previous work.  A Hard Day's Night is particularly important in this regard as it's the first Beatles album that consists entirely of material that the Beatles wrote themselves.

While watching the A Hard Day's Night movie, I found two things in "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" that illustrate this difference.  One of the verses starts with "I don't wanna kiss or hold your hand," which seems to make a distinction between the outlook presented in this song and the Beatles' earlier "I Want to Hold Your Hand."  An-other verse starts with "I don't need to hug or hold you tight," which - along with its structural parallelism with "I don't wanna kiss or hold your hand" - presents the same idea, contrasting "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" and "Hold Me Tight" from With the Beatles.

While listening to A Hard Day's Night last Thursday, I found an-other instance of this type of distinction.  In "If I Fell," the lines "Love was more / Than just holding hands" also act to sort of over-write the sentiment in "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

With those phrases, the Beatles seem to be marking their new material as more advanced than their previous and placing distance between their current and past work.

"You Can't Do That"

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In transcribing the lyrics to "You Can't Do That," I found two interesting things, both of which are in the bridge.

There's internal rhyme (of a sort) in the line "'Cause I'm the one who won your love."  One and won are homophones, so I'm not sure if that technically counts as internal rhyme, but - nevertheless - it's still an interesting element.

Near the end of the bridge, there are some ambiguous lines.  They could be rendered as:

But if they'd seen
You talkin' that way
They'd laugh in my face

Or as:

But if they'd seen
You talk in that way
They'd laugh in my face

Either way is valid, but I think I prefer that second rendering because the last two lines have structural parallelism:  "You talk in that way" and "They'd laugh in my face" are both [subject*] [verb] [preposition] [adjective] [object of the preposition].

—

*with a contracted verb in the second instance ("They'd").

A Hard Day's Night

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While listening to A Hard Day's Night yester-day, I worked on transcribing the songs.  I finished a few, but I'll probably have to listen to the album a few more times to complete them all.  In any case, while doing that, I noticed that both "I Should Have Known Better" and "When I Get Home" have "whoa oh I" in them.  It's a phrase that starts "When I Get Home," and it begins the second verse in "I Should Have Known Better":

Whoa oh, I never realized what a kiss could be
This could only happen to me
Can't you see, can't you see

At first, I thought that this was just a really minor lyrical phrase that connects those two songs, but then I got wondering about the musical phrase that accompanies it.

The "whoa oh, I" in "I Should Have Known Better" alternates between E and F# before falling to a D.  The "whoa" and "oh" each have an E and a F# (the "oh" has a melisma so it's two syllables), and the "I" falls on a D.

The "whoa oh I" in "When I Get Home" has most of this same phrasing (although I think it's an octave higher).  As in "I Should Have Known Better," the "whoa" has an E and an F#.  The "oh" is only one syllable here, but it's still an E.  The "I" is higher though; here, it's an A.

[Disclaimer that I could very well be wrong in those notes.]

So that short phrase helps to tie those songs together lyrically and musically.

"And I Love Her"

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I watched the A Hard Day's Night movie on Sunday when I started this project (so I already had some things to think about), but to-day was the first day of listening to the album.  Because I found so many things to write about, I think I'm going to separate things and just go by song.  This also gives me some time to research and compare a few things.

Of what I discovered listening to the album to-day, I think the most interesting is the comparison between "And I Love Her" and Buddy Holly's "Listen to Me," which Holly co-wrote with Norman Petty.

Some of the phrases in "And I Love Her" are right out of the chorus of "Listen to Me":

I told the stars you're my only love
I want to love you tenderly
Those same bright stars in Heaven above
Know now how sweet sweethearts can be

The "tenderly" shows up in the lines "She gives me everything / And tenderly."  "And I Love Her" also uses the "bright stars" image, coupled with "know[ing],"  and the same rhyme scheme as Holly's chorus (albeit with an extra line) in the last verse (which is repeated again at the end):

Bright are the stars that shine
Dark is the sky
I know this love of mine
Will never die
And I love her

So "And I Love Her" bears some lyrical resemblance to Holly's song, but - like "Listen to Me" - it also plays around with double-tracking the voices.

In "Listen to Me," Holly uses double-tracking (or, rather, a lack thereof) to emphasize certain lines.  Each of the verses is double-tracked, but one of the vocal tracks changes into a harmony during each "listen closely to me," which not only provides emphasis, but is also a sort of musical joke based on the word "listen."

McCartney's voice is double-tracked throughout "And I Love Her," except for the first two lines of that last verse ("Bright are the stars that shine / Dark is the night").  I should note that it's the verse that precedes the solo, not the repetition.

Because those lines aren't double-tracked, further emphasis is put on the lines that follow ("I know this love of mine / Will never die / And I love her") when the double-tracking resumes.  As in Holly's song, the double-tracking provides a sort of extra-textual highlighting that lends more weight to those convictions.

Introduction

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In 2013, I started getting really interested in prescribed listening.  I listened to the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed every Tuesday (it contains the song "Tuesday Afternoon" and 2013 started on a Tuesday, so naturally….).  For a few months in mid-to-late 2013, I listened to the same albums on certain days of the week.  For the last few weeks of 2014, I listened to Simon & Garfunkel's Wednesday Morning, 3 AM every Wednesday, and at the beginning of this year, I started listening to one of Bach's orchestral suites, one of his Brandenburg Concerti, and one of Vivaldi's Four Seasons everyday.

Because I'd been listening to these albums (or pieces) regularly, I started to become quite familiar with them, but only as a listener.  I started wondering what would happen if I tried regularly listening to an album while also trying to learn all of the parts to it.  That's basically the goal of this project, although it's only an incremental part of a larger project.

What I'm going to do is listen to the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night every Thursday for the remainder of the year and try to learn as much of it as I can.  It was originally released on Friday 10 July 1964, so the night before (which the title would seem to describe) was a Thursday.  This also works well in the progression of what albums I listened to on certain days of the week (Days of Future Passed on Tuesdays; Wednesday Morning, 3 AM on Wednesdays; and now A Hard Day's Night on Thursdays).

That's the immediate goal of this project, but it's part of a larger objective of learning all of the parts to all of the Beatles' songs.  That's clearly a massive undertaking, but even if I never achieve that goal (and I probably won't), I think I'll learn a lot of interesting things about the Beatles' music.  I've been working on this same goal with the Zombies' music since 2012, and I've learned an immense amount of stuff about their music.  I've also become much better as a musician, and since some of the Beatles' material is pretty complex, I'm hoping that - while it seems overwhelming now - I'll eventually have the skills required to play it (or, considering albums like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper, engineer it).

I'm starting with A Hard Day's Night because about five or six years ago I knew the chords to most of the songs (thanks to The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook by Hal Leonard, which I might use as a reference but won't completely depend on).  After A Hard Day's Night, I'll go on to Beatles for Sale (because that's probably my favorite Beatles' album - almost entirely for the bridge in "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party"), and then go back to the beginning to start with Please Please Me.  Aside from the first two, I'm going in chronological order so my musical progression can more or less follow that of the Beatles as - over the course of their albums - they themselves became better musicians.  Doing it in this order also gives me time to procure and learn how to play some of the more unusual instruments on later albums.  Percussion is the only thing I lack from their instrumental palette for much of the early catalogue (although I do have a tambourine…).

I should note that this weekly listening applies only to odd years because every even year I try to listen to all of the music in my collection, which has gotten so large that I have to listen to about four titles a day to finish within a year.  I just won't have time for this kind of dedication while I'm doing my Collection Audit.  This is also my fifth learn-every-part-to-every-song-by-a-band project (I might have a problem), so things might appear neglected every now and then if I'm focusing on an-other project.

I might skip around a bit if there are particular songs I'm interested in learning in order to compare them with other songs.  For instance, I think some guitar parts in "Carry That Weight"/"The End" from Abbey Road are precedents for those in the Electric Light Orchestra's "In Old England Town" (ELO is an-other of the bands I'm trying to learn the complete catalogue of - a project I'm starting concurrently with this one), so I'm going to try to learn both parts in order to check that.

There will probably also be posts that are purely commentary on particular elements of songs (I listened to a few early albums just before starting this project, so I already have a list of things to look into and expand into posts).