"Don't Let Me Down"

I recently started the section of Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions about the Get Back sessions, so yester-day, I watched the video for "Don't Let Me Down":

It occurred to me that some of the "down"s are sung with descending melismas (either E C# B or F# E C#), musically giving a sense of the word's meaning.

"I'll Be Back"

Last night I figured out some of the brass parts for the Buckinghams' cover of "I'll Be Back."  This morning I was still thinking about the song, and I realized something that also applies to the Beatles' original.  "Surprise" in the line "But I got a big surprise" is sung with a melisma (D C# B), and that extra note helps musically represent the "big[ness]" of that surprise.

"The Night Before"

I watched Help! back in June, and during the sequence for "The Night Before," I noticed that the bass part for the verses lookt to be mostly fourths and fifths.  I sort of forgot about this until late October, when I learned most of the bass part.  While I was writing it out in early November, I figured out the sections I was missing (the bridges).

Here's the notation, but - as always - there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong (I'm a bit suspicious of some of the note and rest values in the introductory section, but I'm pretty sure I have the right pitches, at least):

"Julia"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to The Beatles last week is that in "Julia," both "shimmering" and "glimmering" in "Her hair of floating sky is shimmering / Glimmering" are sung with melismas (A G# F# D for each).  To some degree, this gives a sense of the meaning of those words, specifically the wavering involved in both.

"I'm So Tired"

Thursday was the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Beatles (22 November 1968).  I listened to the album and found a couple small things to write about.

I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this before, but some of the "so"s in "I'm So Tired" are sung with melismas (either B A B or C# B A B), indicating the degree of tiredness.

"Hello Goodbye"

Last week I read in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions about the viola overdub for "Hello Goodbye."  This reminded me that back in August I'd learned one viola part for the first verse and the first chorus (although I'd mistakenly thought it was violin).  Rather than try to notate the part, I'd decided just to film it.

I finally got around to doing that to-day.  Since reading about it, I also figured out one of the viola parts for the second verse and the second chorus.  I'd previously figured out almost all of the bass and fuzz guitar parts.

Since I don't own any type of bowed string instrument, I used the mellotron violin sound on my keyboard.  The longer notes aren't too bad, but the short repeated ones ended up a bit too choppy.  I did the best I could (although I think I accidentally hit an extra note).

"Across the Universe"

Recently, I've been reading in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions about the recording of "Across the Universe" in February 1968.  Last night I was thinking about the song and realized something about the title line.  "Universe" is sung with a melisma (four syllables rather than just three), and that the word is stretched out gives something of a sense of the span of "across."

According to the Past Masters, Volume Two liner notes, the version of "Across the Universe" on Let It Be is basically the same as the version on the World Wildlife Fund charity album (collected on Past Masters, Volume Two), just slowed down and remixed with different instrument parts.  The World Wildlife Fund version is almost in Eb major (the tuning of the whole song seems a bit off to me), and "universe" is sung to Bb C D D; the Let It Be version is in C# major, and "universe" is sung to G# A# B# B#.

"All Together Now"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to Yellow Submarine yester-day is that - as in "Yellow Submarine" - the repeated "All together now" in "All Together Now" is sung by a multitude of voices to represent that "all together."

"Yellow Submarine"

Recently I've been reading entries in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions about songs that ended up on the Yellow Submarine album ("All Together Now" and "It's All Too Much" in particular).  This morning I listened to the album and noticed a handful of things.

In "Yellow Submarine," more voices join in for the choruses.  There's a harmony part, and I'm pretty sure the lead vocal is also supplemented by additional voices (it certainly is when the chorus is repeated at the end).  These additional voices provide a musical example of the "all" in "We all live in a yellow submarine."

"So How Come (No One Loves Me)"

I recently listened to a two-disc set of the Everly Brothers that includes "So How Come (No One Loves Me)."  Yester-day I was thinking about the song and realized something about it that also holds true for the version that the Beatles did live on the BBC.

Each verse is basically:

They say that ev'ryone
Needs someone
So how come no one
Needs me

with later iterations replacing "needs" with "wants" and then with "loves."  (Compared to the Everlys' version, the Beatles flip the order of the first two verses.  The Everlys sing "needs" and then "wants"; the Beatles sing "wants" and then "needs.")

There really isn't a rhyme scheme here; it's just "-one" rhymed with itself, which illustrates the speaker/singer's loneliness and solitude.  It's just "one," "one," "one."

"I'm Down"

The day after I wrote about the descending backing vocals in the chorus "I'm Down" and how they musically represent that "down," I realized that the lead vocals there do the same thing.  "I'm down" is sung to three different musical phrases, but they all descend: G C, D G, and D C.

"Hey Jude"

I got behind in writing about things I noticed when I listened to Past Masters, Volume 2 last month.  Here's a small thing about "Hey Jude."

The melody to which "don't let me down" is sung has a precipitous drop at the end (A C D G), so while it's "don't let me down," there's a musical feature (a falling fifth) to represent that "down."

"The Inner Light"

In the last section of "The Inner Light," the line "Do all without doing" is sung by at least two voices where the other lines are sung by just one voice.  To some degree, these multiple voices give a sense of that "all."

"Day Tripper"

In "Day Tripper," the "so" in the line "It took me so long" is sung with a melisma (I think it's G F# E F# C the first two times and C# D C# the third), emphasizing the word and giving something of a sense of how long.

"I'm Down"

When I listened to Past Masters, Volume 1 yester-day, I noticed a couple things about "I'm Down."

The "every" in the second verse ("Man buys ring; woman throws it away / Same old thing happen every day") is sung with three syllables, giving a sense of number or frequency.

The backing vocals in the chorus ("I'm really down / Down on the ground / I'm really down") are sung to (generally) descending phrases that musically reflect that "down."  There are two parts there, something like:

"I've Got a Feeling"

When I listened to Let It Be yester-day, I noticed a small thing about a section near the end of "I've Got a Feeling."  I'm unsure about my transcription of one of the lines.  The first time (~2:32), it sounds like "Ev'rybody put the fool down," but when it's repeated (~3:06), it sounds more like "Ev'rybody put their foot down."  Anyway, it's something like:

Ev'rybody had a good year
Ev'rybody let their hair down
Ev'rybody pulled their socks up
Ev'rybody put the fool down

The melody goes up or down at the end of these phrases in order to represent musically the "down"s and "up" in the lyrics.  "Hair down" and "fool down" are both sung with descents (B F#), and "socks up" is with with an ascent (A B).

"Oh! Darling"

I listened to Abbey Road this afternoon and noticed a small thing about "Oh! Darling."  The "down" in the line "I'll never let you down" in the last verse is sung with a melisma (A to F#), so while it's negated, there's a musical sense of that "down."

"Sexy Sadie"

When I listened to The Beatles yester-day, I noticed a few small things about the vocal articulation in "Sexy Sadie."

Although it's a singular form, the melisma'd "ev'ryone" in the repeated line "You made a fool of ev'ryone" musically gives a sense of the span of "ev'ry."  (For the record, I think the notes are D B D E D B the first time and E D A G A F# the second.)  Near the end, it's articulated something like: E D D' B A G F# E D.  Here, it spans an octave, which also musically gives a sense of the span of "ev'ry."

The other thing I noticed is that "rules" in the first "You broke the rules" in the second verse is sung in such a way to represent that brokenness musically.  I think it's a melisma (E to D) combined with vibrato.  Whatever the technique, the word is sung in a broken manner to illustrate the lyric.

While picking out specific notes in order to write this post, I also noticed something interesting about the "Sexy Sadie"s that start each verse.  They're sung to the phrase A B G E, which - when the A is doubled (A A B G E) - is the same musical phrase to which "Eleanor Rigby" is sung at the beginning of the first and third verses in "Eleanor Rigby" (although the rhythms might be a bit different).  In both songs, the titular character's name is sung at the beginning of the verse and to almost the same musical phrase.

"Blue Jay Way"

When I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yester-day I noticed a small thing about "Blue Jay Way."  The "long" in the line "Please don't you be very long" is sung with a melisma (B A B, I think).  Since the word is stretched over a number of notes, there's a musical representation of length.  Near the end, when "Don't be long" is repeated over and over, there's the same feature with different melismas (A G F# E and F# E)

"Eleanor Rigby"

An-other small thing I noticed when I listened to Revolver yester-day is that the phrase "Picks up the rice" in "Eleanor Rigby" ascends (G A B D), musically representing that "pick[ing] up."

"Taxman"

I listened to Revolver this evening and noticed a small thing about "Taxman."  The first line ("Let me tell you how it will be") is essentially the same as the first line in Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" ("I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be").  Buddy Holly certainly influenced the Beatles, and I think the resemblance between these two opening lines (whether conscious or not) is an-other example of that, despite "Taxman" and "Not Fade Away" being about very different things.

"There's a Place"

The most significant thing I noticed when I listened to Please Please Me a couple days ago is in "There's a Place."  For most of the song, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are singing in harmony, but McCartney drops out so that only Lennon sings the line "When I'm alone."  That this line lacks a harmony part (unlike the others surrounding it) illustrates that being "alone."

Similarly, the line "Like, 'I love only you'" is sung only by Lennon (with McCartney and George Harrison singing "ah"s behind it), and there's a connection between this single voice and the exclusivity of "only you" in the line.

"Chains"

In "Chains," the "free" in the line "'Cause I'm not free" is sung with a melisma (C Bb G Bb), so while the word's negated, there's a musical sense of its meaning.  It's not tied to a single pitch.

"Misery"

In "Misery," the word "drag" in the line "It's gonna be a drag" is sung with a melisma (B C B A B).  The word is somewhat literally "drag[ged]" through a number of pitches, giving a musical representation of the word's meaning (one of the word's meanings, at least).

"I Saw Her Standing There"

Over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to listen to all of the Beatles albums, plus the Past Masters compilations of the singles.  To-day I listened to Please Please Me and noticed a few things.  First, here's a small point about "I Saw Her Standing There."

The "fall in love" part of "I'd fall in love with her" in the second verse (and "fell in love" when this line is changed slightly to "I fell in love with her" in the third and fourth verses) is sung to a descending melody (F# E D), musically giving something of a sense of that "fall[ing]."

"When I'm Sixty-Four"

For more than a year, I've been working (now and then) on figuring out enough parts for "When I'm Sixty-Four" to make it worth recording.  Last July, I figured out the bass part for the verses and the tubular bells.  In April, I learned two of the clarinet parts at the beginning (it wasn't until recording this to-day that I realized that the same parts are repeated at the end), and over the course of the last few days, I learned the rest of the bass part (the bridges) and a bit of piano.  While recording this, I thought the clarinet phrase after the line "Sunday mornings go for a ride" (~1:19) sounded easy, so I figured that out too.

I never wrote down the two clarinet parts I learned, so I just filmed those in order to have some record of them.  I don't think the piano part is entirely accurate; mostly I was just playing along for fun.  The tubular bell sound on my keyboard isn't that great, so for my recording I actually used vibes.

The Beatles recorded "When I'm Sixty-Four" in C major, but sped it up a semi-tone, so for all of the parts that I recorded on my keyboard, I used the transpose function so I could play in C major and have it come out as C# major.  I did play the bass part in C# major though.

Here's the notation for the tubular bell parts.  I put them in C# major, but it's easy enough to disregard the key signature and play them in C major:

At ~0:58:

At ~1:54:

"You Won't See Me"

Yester-day, while drafting a post about the resemblance that the Electric Light Orchestra's "Heaven Only Knows" has with "You Won't See Me," I realized something about "You Won't See Me" itself.  Here's some notation I workt up for that post; this is just the first two lines of the vocal melody for the verses (I referenced the first verse, so there might be some slight differences between this and later verses; I also guessed on the key):

In the third verse (also repeated as the fourth verse), that first dotted half note (tied to an eighth note) is what "filled" is sung to in the line "Though the days are few, they're filled with tears."  It's the longest note value in the phrase, so - compared to the other note values - there's something of a musical sense of being "filled."

"Tell Me What You See"

I probably should have included this in the post with my recording of "Tell Me What You See" in order to substantiate my claim that the bass part is never the same twice, but here's the bass part (and guitar chords) for "Tell Me What You See."  As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:

"Like Dreamers Do"

In looking through a stack of papers recently, I found the notation of the bass part for "Like Dreamers Do," which I learned and wrote out back in January (in fact, it was the first part I learned in 2018).  As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:

The reason I started thinking about "Like Dreamers Do" (and ended up learning the bass part) is that I'd listened to a Roy Orbison album and discovered that the phrase "like dreamers do" is in "In Dreams."  This struck me as a unique phrase, so I assumed that "In Dreams" influenced "Like Dreamers Do," but yester-day I did some research and learned that "In Dreams" was released in 1963.  Since "Like Dreamers Do" was recorded 1 January 1962, "In Dreams" couldn't have had any bearing on it.

Regardless of that, this bass part has some rhythmic similarity with the bass part in "And I Love Her" (or, to get the chronology right, the bass part in "And I Love Her" has some similarity with this bass part), specifically the two dotted quarter notes followed by a single quarter note.

"The Fool on the Hill"

A couple days ago, I learned a flute phrase in "The Fool on the Hill," and as I was thinking about the song this morning, I realized something about the chorus.  "'Round" in the line "See the world spinnin' 'round" is sung with a melisma (D E D, I think), although only the first and last times (~0:39 and ~2:38).  This gives a musical sense of the movement of "spinnin' 'round."

While looking into that, I also noticed that the "sun going down" part of "Sees the sun going down" descends (Bb A G G), musically illustrating that "going down."

"Tell Me What You See"

Last week I learned most of the instrument parts for "Tell Me What You See."  Mostly, I wanted to learn just the electric piano part (because it's the Hohner Pianet!), but while listening to the recording in order to learn that, the bass part sounded easy too.  And then the chords (just I IV V in G major), and then the tambourine part.  I learned the claves part too, but since I don't (yet) have claves, I couldn't record that.  (As a sidenote, I think this and "And I Love Her" are the only Beatles songs with claves.)

I notated the bass part (thereby discovering that while a lot of sections of the song are repeated, the bass part is never the same twice), but the electric piano part is above my current skill level of notation, so I filmed those parts in order to have some record of it.  I think there are a few note pairs that aren't as simultaneous as they should be, and the tambourine rhythm lags a bit after the first electric piano part.  I tried doing the vocals too (twice, actually), but they were pretty terrible, so I ended up not using them.

For a (fairly) accurate sound, I used the Hohner Pianet sample on my Nord Electro 5.

"Another Girl"

I listened to Help! again on Tuesday and noticed something about "Another Girl" that I probably should have noticed a long time ago.  In the second verse, after the line "And so I'm tellin' you this time you'd better stop," the instruments drop out, apparently to represent that "stop" musically.

"I Need You"

I recently listened to Help! (and watched the movie), and yester-day I realized something about the structure of "I Need You."  The first couplet is:

You don't realize how much I need you
Love you all the time and never leave you

There really isn't a rhyme here (unless you count rhyming "you" with itself); instead, the lines are linkt through the assonance between "need" and "leave."  Both lines end with "you," though, which is significant.  The word is repeated as if to illustrate that the singer/speaker will "never leave you."

The beginning of the third verse has a similar feature:

Please remember how I feel about you
I could never really live without you

There's a mosaic rhyme here ("about you" rhymes with "without you"), and "you" is integral to both.  As in the first couplet, the word "you" is important in the structure in the same way that the person to whom the song is addressed is important to the singer/speaker.

"Two of Us"

I forgot to record this at least twice, but last month, I learned the electric guitar part in the coda of "Two of Us" (the Let It Be version, at least).

"Cry Baby Cry"

I'm not sure this lasts long enough to have been worth recording, but yester-day I learned the harmonium phrase near the beginning of "Cry Baby Cry."  I learned the chords beneath it too, although I also referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook.  My keyboard doesn't really have a harmonium voice, so I used the pipe organ.

"Here, There, and Everywhere"

Yester-day I started reading the entry for 14 June 1966 in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.  This was the first session for "Here, There, and Everywhere," and just in reading the title, I realized something about the song.  At the end, the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" are all sung to different pitches: D B G in the line "I will be there and ev'rywhere" and D F# G in the line "Here, there, and ev'rywhere."  Because the syllables are all sung to different pitches (with spans of a fifth and a fourth, respectively), there's a musical sense of the breadth of "ev'rywhere."

"Got to Get You into My Life"

I recently read the entry for 18 May 1966 in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, which details the session at which the saxophone and trumpet parts for "Get to Get You into My Life" were recorded.  Yester-day, I figured out one of the saxophone parts (although, of course, I think I figured out the one that's least interesting to listen to on its own), so now I can put it together with the bass part, which I learned in March.  After I'd recorded both of those, I also figured out an-other phrase (which I think is trumpet), which makes this a little more interesting to listen to.  I don't know how to play saxophone or trumpet, so I used mellotron voices on my keyboard.

In the original recording, it sounds - to me, anyway - as if McCartney plays the first bass note simultaneously on two different strings: a G on the fifth fret of the D string and the open G string.  I'm not sure if that's really what's going on there, but that's what I did in my recording.  The longer the fade-out goes on, the less confident I am in my accuracy.  I think I flubbed a note there too.

"A Hard Day's Night"

I was thinking about "I Want to Hold Your Hand" this morning, and I realized that one of the musical phrases is re-used in "A Hard Day's Night."  After every other line in the verses of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," there's this chromatic phrase in the bass part:

I think this is even doubled on guitar an octave higher.

This same phrase (just shifted up pitch-wise) is also in "A Hard Day's Night":

It's present only once in the studio version (at ~2:10, in between the lines "But when I get home to you / I find the things that you do"), but I think it's in every verse in the live versions on Live at the BBC and Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

"Lovely Rita"

I recently listened to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper again and noticed a small thing about "Lovely Rita."  The two notes of "away" in the line "When it gets dark, I tow your heart away" are sung with a fairly wide interval (a fourth: C to F).  Musically, this gives a sense of the movement in "tow[ing]... away."

In comparing the take on the second disc and the final version on the album, I discovered that the final version is a half-step lower.  I referenced the liner notes, which confirm this:  the tape machine was run slower, dropping everything in pitch.

"Please Mister Postman"

I listened to the second disc of the Carpenters' Gold album to-day and noticed a few things about their version of "Please Mister Postman."  Of course, after noting those features, I referenced the Beatles' version to see if they're present there too.

I'd forgotten that I already wrote about a melisma'd "so" two years ago, so the only new thing I have to note is a melisma'd "by" (sung to the phrase C# B C# B A, I think) in the line "So many days you passed me by."  This gives a musical sense of movement, specifically, the postman passing by the singer/speaker without delivering "a card or a letter."

"Here, There, and Everywhere"

I learned a guitar phrase in "Here, There, and Everywhere" to-night, and I discovered that I'd neglected to mention something about the song on this blog.  Four years ago, after listening to Revolver, I realized that the line "But to love her is to need her" (sung over the guitar phrase I learned to-night, which starts at ~1:03) borrows the structure of the title line of "To Know Her is to Love Her," which was in the Beatles' repertoire.  It's included on Live at the BBC (recorded 16 July 1963, transmitted 6 August 1963).

"All My Loving"

A couple days ago (31 March), I was thinking about the guitar strumming in "All My Loving."  The guitar is strummed in triplets, and I think this has significance with regard to the title line.  Triplets are "a group of three musical notes or tones performed in the time of two of the same value," so it's as if the totality of "all my loving" is crammed into each beat.

"Strawberry Fields Forever"

The last thing I noticed while listening to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper a few days ago is in "Strawberry Fields Forever" (apparently included - along with "Penny Lane" - because it was recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions).  The "low" in the line "I mean it must high or low" is sung with a descending melisma.  Because the final version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" was creating by combining two performances in different keys (speeding up one and slowing down the other), there's always a question of tonality, but I think the notes to which "low" is sung end up as something like C Bb G.  As it's sung, the word itself descends, giving a musical impression of "low."

"Fixing a Hole"

When I listened to the second disc of the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper a few days ago, I noticed something about "Fixing a Hole."  The version on the second disc is a different take from the one that ended up on the completed album, but both have this same feature: the "go" in the line "Where it will go" is sung with a glissando (Ab down to F), which gives a musical impression of "go[ing]."

"Good Morning Good Morning"

The second thing I noticed when I listened to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper recently is the saxophone parts in "Good Morning Good Morning."  During most of the repeated "Good morning..." sections and throughout the "Ev'rybody knows there's nothing doing" and "People runnin' 'round; it's five o'clock" sections, the saxophones arpeggiate A major and D major chords.  Something like:

(I guessed on the key, and the rhythm of the eighth notes might not be strictly accurate.)

It seemed that arpeggiating the chords with saxophones like this was a relatively common feature of 1950s rock and roll, but I had to do some searching before I found any specific songs that do this.  Of the songs I found, the most well-known is probably Fats Domino's "Blue Monday" (which also seems to have inspired "Lady Madonna").  Like these sections of "Good Morning Good Morning," the saxophones in "Blue Monday" arpeggiate chords, playing the root, third, and fifth (although the root is played twice in succession and the rhythms of the two parts are different).

Of course, I'm not sure if the saxophones in "Good Morning Good Morning" are meant to be reminiscent of "Blue Monday" or even any song in particular, but they do have a certain similarity.

"Within You Without You"

I recently acquired the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper, which I first listened to last night.  I noticed a couple small things, and I plan to write a few posts about them over the course of the next few days.

In "Within You Without You," the "away" in the line "When they pass away" is sung with a melisma (going back and forth between Gb and F).  This provides a musical sense of movement, namely that "pass[ing] away."

"All You Need Is Love"

"All You Need Is Love" was an answer on Jeopardy! to-day* (I'll admit that I didn't get it right), so I thought I would finally look into something I've been wondering about: whether the quotation of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" near the end is in the same key as the original.  I have three different CD sets of Glenn Miller, and each has a recording of "In the Mood," but I think there are only two different recordings.  In both, that opening phrase is in Ab major (although it has quite a few accidentals; there's a chromatic phrase near the end that goes from Eb to Bb).  The quotation in "All You Need Is Love" is slightly different at the end (the chromatic phrase breaks off earlier), but the part that's the same is transposed down a half step to G major.  Based on the other parts I know so far (a cello phrase and some of the bass part), "All You Need Is Love" is in G major, so changing the key of that phrase from "In the Mood" isn't too surprising.

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*The category was "'You' Tunes," where all of the answers were songs with "you" in the title.  The clue (for $2000):  "'Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time, it's easy' sang the Beatles in this hit."  Feeling I should know this and forgetting the hint in the category name, I impulsively guessed "Strawberry Fields," thinking instead of the line "It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out."

"She's Leaving Home"

I was thinking about "She's Leaving Home" yester-day, and I realized that it's in 3/4.  I'm not sure if there's really anything to this, but there might be a connection between the time signature (three beats in each measure) and the three characters in the song: the titular "she" and her father and mother.  The song does also mention "a man from the motor trade," but he's not a main character and doesn't even do anything in the narrative.