"You Never Give Me Your Money"

Yester-day I learned the vocal melody for the first two verses of "You Never Give Me Your Money," and in doing so I discovered something interesting.

I might be a bit off on the rests, but the melody is something like this:

The song is in A minor (at least this section is), but there's a G# accidental.  In the lyrics, this corresponds to "you" in the line "And in the middle of negotiations you break down" in the first verse and "I" in the line "And in the middle of investigation I break down" in the second verse.  The note's being an accidental sort of musically represents the "break[ing] down" of both "you" and "I."

"It Won't Be Long"

A couple days ago, I learned some of the guitar phrases in "It Won't Be Long."  I was thinking about the song again this morning, and I realized something about this section:

Since you left me
I'm so alone
Now you're comin'
You're comin' on home
I'll be good like I know I should
You're comin' home
You're comin' home

I'm not sure I have the line breaks in the right places there.  The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook renders this section as:

Since you left me I'm so alone,
Now you're coming, you're coming on home,
I'll be good like I know I should,
You're coming home, you're coming home.

I went more by where John Lennon takes breaths when he sings it (The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook evidently considers some of those caesurae).  Either way it's formatted, what I realized still stands:  there's internal rhyme in the line "I'll be good like I know I should," which - to some degree - illustrates the perfection of character that the narrator says he'll attain.

"Within You Without You"

When I listened to Sgt. Pepper a couple days ago, the phrase "the people who gain the world and lose their soul" in "Within You Without You" stuck out to me.  Because the song seems to have some Eastern influences (certainly in the music), I'm not sure if this is coincidental or not, but that line is very similar to Mark 8:36:  "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?"

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

After I listened to Sgt. Pepper yester-day (because it was the 50th anniversary of its release), I figured out the first keyboard section in "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  I did some research and learned that the specific instrument is a Lowrey organ, which has different accompaniment settings.  This explains why at one point I thought it was a harpsichord.  In my recording, I doubled organ and harpsichord, so the specific sound probably isn't very accurate, but I'm pretty sure the notes are (most of them, at least).

After I learned that keyboard part, I learned the bass part for that first section, only to discover that I'd already learned and even notated it last year.  I think it was around the same time I wrote about the song in September.