"A Hard Day's Night"

A couple days ago, the Beatles' various social media accounts posted about Paul's singing the bridge of "A Hard Day's Night" because John couldn't reach those higher notes.

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“The only reason Paul sang on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was because I couldn’t reach the notes - ‘When I’m home, everything seems to be right. When I’m home…’ - which is what we’d do sometimes: one of us couldn’t reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he’d get the other to do the harmony.” - John ➿ #TheBeatles #1960s ➿ Photo © Apple Corps Ltd.

A post shared by The Beatles (@thebeatles) on May 24, 2019 at 7:06am PDT

Just by reading the lyrics there ("When I'm home, ev'rything seems to be right..."), I realized a small feature:  the three syllables of "ev'rything" are sung to different notes (G F# E), musically giving something of a sense of breadth.

"Blue Jay Way"

This morning I was thinking about something I noticed in "Blue Jay Way" about a year ago but which I never wrote about (I was reminded of it because I recently found a similar feature in Badfinger's "Suitcase," which George Harrison produced).  The specific technical explanation is beyond my skill level, but I think some change in the meter or in the syllabic stress causes the repeated "Don't be long" at the end to morph into "Don't belong."

"Tell Me What You See"

I got a pair of claves for Christmas, and yester-day, I finally got around to updating my recording of "Tell Me What You See."

Since the last time I recorded this, I figured out that turning on the velocity filter on my Nord Electro 5D makes the Hohner Pianet sample sound a bit better.  While recording this, I actually discovered a few notes I'd missed last time:  at the end of the first two phrases, there's a B, and at the very end, there's a G in the bass register.

The parts sound a little bit out of sync for the first twelve seconds or so, but this is better than my last version.

"Carol"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC and noticed a couple things about "Carol," specifically about the line "Well, I've a-gotta learn to dance if it takes me all night and day."

First, "day" is sung with a melisma (B A), musically giving something of a sense of duration (for "all").  Second, "night and day" is a merism.

I referenced Chuck Berry's original and found that the Beatles changed the lyrics slightly (from Berry's "I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day") and that they added the melisma to "day."