"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).