"Happiness Is a Warm Gun"

When I woke up to-day, I was thinking about part of "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" (although I don't think I've listened to The Beatles for well over a year).  It occurred to me that the "down"s in the lines "I need a fix 'cause I'm goin' down" are sung with melismas and that the series of notes to which they're sung descend.  Both times, the "down" is sung to the phrase D C A, so there's a musical representation of the "goin' down."

"Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby"

A few times over the past month or two, I've been paying special attention to the vocal on "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" while listening to Beatles for Sale.  According to Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, the vocal is treated with STEED (single tape echo and echo delay), so it's a bit difficult to be sure, but I think that the vocal is doubled-tracked for all of the "Ev'rybody's tryin' to be my baby" lines.  If that's the case, it's something of a representation of the "ev'rybody" since it's not just one voice singing there, but two.

"Strawberry Fields Forever"

At the end of last month, I learned the mellotron part at the beginning of "Strawberry Fields Forever."  I had to use the version on Anthology 2 because the final version is either sped up or slowed down (I don't remember which), meaning that the pitches are out-of-tune compared to standard tuning.

I made a video for this one because that's easier than writing down what I played.  My framing isn't very good, and my fingering could probably be better too, but I think I have the right notes, which is the important thing.

I haven't been recording songs unless I know at least two parts, but I'm making an exception in this case.  Keyboard parts seem to be in their own category.

"All My Loving"

Last night, I learned the bass part for the first two verses and the first chorus of "All My Loving."  The bass part in the third verse isn't the same, and the second chorus transitions into an ending tag so that's not the same either.

I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords but only after I had a go at figuring them out myself.  Mostly, I just lookt at the book to confirm what I already had (although I disregarded the B7 the book has in favor of a regular B major).

Re-Establishment

About two years ago, I started a project in which the goal was to learn every part to every song by the Beatles.  I don't think I ever thought I would actually achieve this (and I still don't), but I thought it a worthy objective all the same.

I started this project on tumblr, but recently I've started to feel dissatisfied with it.  I felt I should have a cleaner, more professional-looking platform.  (I found some aspects of tumblr's interface less than ideal too.)  Initially, I went with tumblr only because I could directly post audio files of my own recordings of the songs, as a way to demonstrate that I had in fact learned the parts I said I had.  But I can achieve the same thing just with embedded YouTube videos.

So essentially, I'm jumping ship.  I'm going to continue doing everything I would normally do for this project, just on Blogger rather than on tumblr.  I'll be going back and copying my old posts over to this blog, so I'll have the complete archive, but it'll take a while to transfer everything.

"One after 909"

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A couple days ago, I learned the bass part for the verses of the Let It Be version of "One after 909."  I decided that it's not really worth it to record anything unless I know at least two simultaneous parts, so I won't be posting a version, but I did notate as much as I know.

I referenced the recordings of "One after 909" on Anthology 1, and I discovered something interesting.  In the bridge in the first partial take in track 25, Paul McCartney starts to play the same bass figure that he took from Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You" and used in "I Saw Her Standing There" (which I wrote about back in November).

In "Talking about You," the figure is:

In "I Saw Her Standing There":

And in "One after 909":

The only difference is the key.  I should note that all three songs play this figure raised to different pitches too.  At the beginning of the bridge in "One after 909," it's actually played a fourth higher because it's underneath an E major chord, so it's exactly the same as what's played for the majority of the verses of "I Saw Her Standing There."

The "complete" take of "One after 909" on Anthology 1 (which the liner notes explain is an edit of takes 4 and 5) doesn't have this feature.  Apparently, McCartney elected to play a simpler bass part because he didn't have a pick with him.  This figure isn't present in the version on Let It Be either.

For what it's worth, here's some chronology:

11 February 1963 - "I Saw Her Standing There" recorded

5 March 1963 - "One after 909" [takes on Anthology 1] recorded

16 March 1963 - The Beatles' cover of Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You" (in E major, rather than the original's C major) broadcast live on the radio show Saturday Club.

"You're Going to Lose That Girl"

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I listened to Help! last week, and a couple days ago, I realized something about "You're Going to Lose That Girl."  There's the recurring line "Yes, yes, you're gonna lose that girl" in the backing vocals, and since it's sung by both George Harrison and Paul McCartney, that double affirmation ("Yes, yes") is present in the lyric itself and the number of voices singing it.

"I'm a Loser"

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A couple weeks ago, I learned the bass part for the choruses of "I'm a Loser," and I noticed something about the fifth and sixth measures:

This is the same phrase that starts the verses in "Tell Me Why."  The only difference is the key.  "I'm a Loser" is in G major, and "Tell Me Why" is in D major.  So the phrase in "Tell Me Why" is a fourth higher, but the intervals are the same:

"You Can't Do That"

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I got the Live at the Hollywood Bowl album for Christmas, and I finally listened to it to-day.  I discovered something about "You Can't Do That" that should have been obvious when I listened to A Hard Day's Night every week a couple years ago:  the "down"s in the lines "I'm gonna let you down" and "I think I let you down" have descending melismas.  I referenced the studio version and found that each "down" in "I'm gonna let you down" is sung to the phrase C Bb G, but the "down" in "I think I let you down" is just C Bb.  However, in both instances, there's a musical representation of the "down-ness."

"Hello Goodbye"

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Yester-day I learned the bass part in "Hello Goodbye" (although there are a few notes I'm not that confident about and I learned it only up until the tag).  I don't think any of the verses are the same because McCartney puts a lot of variation into his part, so in order to be accurate, I had to notate the whole thing.

After practicing it, I noticed that one phrase sounded familiar to me.  It's the phrase that links the chorus to the next verse (although it's different between the second chorus and third verse):

Excluding that first half note, the notes here have the same intervals (and at least a similar if not the same rhythm) as a phrase in George Gershwin's "Someone to Watch over Me," specifically the line, "There's a somebody I'm [longing to see]."  I don't think I've come across anything that says that the Beatles even knew about Gershwin, much less quoted him, so I think this melodic similarity is just a coincidence.  Still, I thought it was interesting.

"Every Little Thing"

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When I listened to Beatles for Sale a couple days ago, I noticed that the electric six-string part in "Every Little Thing" is just two phrases and (I think palm-muted) chords at the end.  That seemed pretty easy to figure out, so I did that yester-day, but then I also got the entirety of the twelve-string part (which I'd tried to figure out months ago with no success).  I knew about half of the piano part (the four notes during the verses) although I don't remember quite when I learned it (I knew it last April at least), so I figured out the other part too.  There's timpani at the same time, so I'm not entirely sure those notes are accurate (I might be playing the timpani part instead, although it's entirely possible that the piano part just doubles the timpani).

I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords, although I didn't follow exactly what they have.  Like I mentioned before, I think they try to incorporate other elements of the arrangement into the guitar chords rather than just listing what was played in the original recording.

I'm not sure if I have the last half of the twelve-string solo right as far as where I played it on the fretboard.  The top two pairs of strings on a twelve-string guitar are tuned to the same note where the other four pairs are the same note an octave apart, so depending on where on the fretboard something is played, there's a difference in sound.

"Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby"

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I figured out the chords for "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" to-day.  It's just a three-chord song in E major, and since the chords are all I know, I'm not going to record it.  I just wanted to note that I learned them and - more significantly - that I referenced Carl Perkins' original and found that it's in the same key (or, rather, that the Beatles' version is in the same key as Perkins').