"A Hard Day's Night"

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When I listened to A Hard Day's Night to-day, the bass part for the title track seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to figure out.  I referenced the version on Live at the BBC too, although I'm not sure if that bass part matches the studio version exactly.

Even just in listening to it over the last few months, I noticed a little bass riff that occurs after "You know I work all day / To get you money to buy you things" (acting as an embellishment of the "things"?) and during the solo.  I think I have that figured out correctly, but - as with everything in this project - I might be wrong.

In order to play that riff, I have to play the preceding G note as an open string.  Before I figured that out though, I was playing the G note on the fifth fret of the D string.  In my recording, I sometimes go between the two, and because of the difference in the thickness of the strings, it sounds a bit weird at times.

A few years ago, I discovered this article/video/radio show clip that explains the opening crash.  According to that, the bass plays a D note at the beginning.  I haven't tried recreating it with the guitar parts, but I'll get around to it eventually.

"Tell Me Why"

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I haven't been doing much work on learning the songs (mostly because I've had difficulty distinguishing the parts), but when I listened to A Hard Day's Night yester-day, I thought the bass part to "Tell Me Why" would be pretty easy to figure out because it sounded pretty much like a scale with a few back-tracks.  It didn't take too long to figure out, and then I referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for the chords (although I played the opening part as just E minor chords, not E minor 7ths as the book says; it goes between E minor 7ths and A majors, and that's a difficult transition to make quickly).

I'm still suspicious about the last note in the bass part at the very end of the bridge ("Well, I'm beggin' on my bended knees…").  I played an E note, but the chord above it is a D major, so I probably have that wrong.

"Free as a Bird" CD Single

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Yester-day I found the "Free as a Bird" CD single at Half Price Books.  I wasn't aware of this, but it includes some other tracks.  There are alternate versions of "I Saw Her Standing There" and "This Boy," and there's also a Christmas song:  "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)."

So now I have an-other title to add to my listening schedule.

"Misery"

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When I listened to Please Please Me yester-day, I thought the piano part in "Misery" sounded pretty easy to figure out (and it was; it's pretty much just a C major scale, although it doesn't start on C).  So I figured that out, and then I got the chords too.

My guitar tone isn't the best here, and I think there's a slight tempo mistake in the second piano phrase, but it's close enough.

Please Please Me

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I listened to Please Please Me as part of my new(-ish) listening schedule, and I have a few things to say about it:

"Please Please Me"

In the bridge, there's the line "But you know there's always rain in my heart," which I'm pretty sure is a subtle Buddy Holly reference, specifically to "Raining in My Heart," where Holly uses the same image.  (This is one of the things I noticed while listening to Anthology 1 exactly a month ago.)

"Do You Want to Know a Secret"

I've been suspicious about this for awhile, but I'm now pretty sure that in the last verse, in between the "Do you promise not to tell" and the backing "Doo dah doo," someone (I'm not sure who) sticks in an "I" (or possibly an "ah," but "I" makes more sense).  So, the whole line becomes: "Do you promise not to tell (I do dah doo)."  The lead vocals ask a question that the backing vocals answer.

"A Taste of Honey"

I'm not sure if this is specific to the Beatles' version (I have three versions of "A Taste of Honey," but theirs is the only version I have with vocals), but there are two great elements in some lines in the second verse:

There lingers still though we're far apart
That taste of honey

It's inverted so that the verb ("lingers") precedes the subject ("taste"), which mirrors the actual lingering: the effect (the verb) remains although the actor (the subject) is gone.  Also, the verb and the subject are separated by a line break, which mirrors the "though we're far apart."