"Any Time at All"

I listened to A Hard Day's Night last week and noticed a couple things about the title line of "Any Time at All."  First Lennon sings the line, and then McCartney sings it, and then Lennon sings it again.  Because more than one voice sings this line, there's a sense of the breadth of possibility of "any."

The "all" is sung with a melisma (I think it's E D B in Lennon's part and A F# E in McCartney's).  This too gives a sense of the breadth of possibility (note, though, that since "all" is in the construction "at all," it functions adverbially).

"Any Time at All"

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I listened to A Hard Day's Night this morning, and I noticed a few things that I've been oblivious to, even though I've been listening to the album weekly for months.  Mostly, the things I noticed were just piano parts I hadn't realized were there.  (They're in "Tell Me Why," where I think it just doubles the bass part, and in "When I Got Home."  A few months ago, I discovered that there's one in "Things We Said Today" too.)  I'm pretty sure the CD copy I have of the album is in mono, which makes it a bit more difficult to distinguish the individual parts.

The other thing I noticed was in "Any Time at All."  Almost the entirety of the verses have doubled-tracked vocals except for the beginning of the fourth line.  In the first verse, the "If you're feelin'" part is just a single voice, but there's a second for the "sorry and sad."  Way back in March, I noted that alliteration, but the double-tracked vocals there emphasize it, since there's a second pair (a pair of words beginning with S and a pair of vocals).

In the second verse, the "When you need a" has a single voice, and "shoulder to cry on" has two.  The single/double-tracked voice feature here is more interesting.  There's a single voice for the part of the line that indicates a lack ("When you need"), and a pair of voices for the part that offers assistance.

"Any Time at All"

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Early in this project, I started wondering why Paul McCartney sings the second "Any time at all" in "Any Time at All."  It seemed incongruous because John Lennon sings the whole song except for those lines.

Listening to it this time though, I remembered something that I read in The Beatles Anthology (or at least I think it was in The Beatles Anthology).  I can't seem to find it again (and I don't really want to re-read large sections in an effort to find it), but it was John Lennon's explaining that Paul McCartney sings the "When I'm home" sections in "A Hard Day's Night" because he (McCartney) has a higher voice.  I'm pretty sure that the McCartney-sung "Any time at all" is even higher, so that switch might be just because of the register.

"Any Time at All"

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I forgot to mention a tiny thing about "Any Time at All" that I noticed when I recorded a version yester-day: there's a bit of alliteration in the first verse:

If you're feelin' sorry and sad
I'd really sympathize

"Any Time at All"

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Yester-day, I figured out the piano parts in "Any Time at All."  During the solo, there are actually some chromatic phrases - A A# B and B C C#.  I'm not sure if I fully realized this until learning the parts, but the phrase at the very end of the solo is the same as the guitar phrase that recurs throughout - G F# E D F#.

I figured out most of the chords for myself, but I had to reference The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook for a few.  I also have some of the guitar phrases, but I'm not too sure about one of them.

I'm still confused about the two chords at the end.  I think they're both on electric guitar, but since the rhythm guitar is acoustic (I think), that would require an overdub.  So…?

In any case, the piano parts were what I was focusing on, and I'm fairly certain of those.

"Any Time at All"

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[link to original on tumblr]

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An-other thing I noticed while listening to A Hard Day's Night last week is that "Any Time at All" begins in the same sort of way as "A Hard Day's Night."  "A Hard Day's Night" is well-known for its dissonant beginning, and while "Any Time at All" begins with just drums, it has the same immediacy.  Interestingly, on the original vinyl, "A Hard Day's Night" started side one, and "Any Time at All" started side two.  I don't know how much influence (if any) the Beatles had on the sequencing of the album, but those two songs' beginning each of the sides helps make a more consistent album - each side starts with that suddenness.