[link to original on tumblr]
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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).
