"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: