Wednesday, May 9, 2018

"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.