"Another Girl"

I listened to Help! again on Tuesday and noticed something about "Another Girl" that I probably should have noticed a long time ago.  In the second verse, after the line "And so I'm tellin' you this time you'd better stop," the instruments drop out, apparently to represent that "stop" musically.

"I Need You"

I recently listened to Help! (and watched the movie), and yester-day I realized something about the structure of "I Need You."  The first couplet is:

You don't realize how much I need you
Love you all the time and never leave you

There really isn't a rhyme here (unless you count rhyming "you" with itself); instead, the lines are linkt through the assonance between "need" and "leave."  Both lines end with "you," though, which is significant.  The word is repeated as if to illustrate that the singer/speaker will "never leave you."

The beginning of the third verse has a similar feature:

Please remember how I feel about you
I could never really live without you

There's a mosaic rhyme here ("about you" rhymes with "without you"), and "you" is integral to both.  As in the first couplet, the word "you" is important in the structure in the same way that the person to whom the song is addressed is important to the singer/speaker.

"Two of Us"

I forgot to record this at least twice, but last month, I learned the electric guitar part in the coda of "Two of Us" (the Let It Be version, at least).

"Cry Baby Cry"

I'm not sure this lasts long enough to have been worth recording, but yester-day I learned the harmonium phrase near the beginning of "Cry Baby Cry."  I learned the chords beneath it too, although I also referenced The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook.  My keyboard doesn't really have a harmonium voice, so I used the pipe organ.

"Here, There, and Everywhere"

Yester-day I started reading the entry for 14 June 1966 in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.  This was the first session for "Here, There, and Everywhere," and just in reading the title, I realized something about the song.  At the end, the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" are all sung to different pitches: D B G in the line "I will be there and ev'rywhere" and D F# G in the line "Here, there, and ev'rywhere."  Because the syllables are all sung to different pitches (with spans of a fifth and a fourth, respectively), there's a musical sense of the breadth of "ev'rywhere."

"Got to Get You into My Life"

I recently read the entry for 18 May 1966 in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, which details the session at which the saxophone and trumpet parts for "Get to Get You into My Life" were recorded.  Yester-day, I figured out one of the saxophone parts (although, of course, I think I figured out the one that's least interesting to listen to on its own), so now I can put it together with the bass part, which I learned in March.  After I'd recorded both of those, I also figured out an-other phrase (which I think is trumpet), which makes this a little more interesting to listen to.  I don't know how to play saxophone or trumpet, so I used mellotron voices on my keyboard.

In the original recording, it sounds - to me, anyway - as if McCartney plays the first bass note simultaneously on two different strings: a G on the fifth fret of the D string and the open G string.  I'm not sure if that's really what's going on there, but that's what I did in my recording.  The longer the fade-out goes on, the less confident I am in my accuracy.  I think I flubbed a note there too.

"A Hard Day's Night"

I was thinking about "I Want to Hold Your Hand" this morning, and I realized that one of the musical phrases is re-used in "A Hard Day's Night."  After every other line in the verses of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," there's this chromatic phrase in the bass part:

I think this is even doubled on guitar an octave higher.

This same phrase (just shifted up pitch-wise) is also in "A Hard Day's Night":

It's present only once in the studio version (at ~2:10, in between the lines "But when I get home to you / I find the things that you do"), but I think it's in every verse in the live versions on Live at the BBC and Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

"Lovely Rita"

I recently listened to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper again and noticed a small thing about "Lovely Rita."  The two notes of "away" in the line "When it gets dark, I tow your heart away" are sung with a fairly wide interval (a fourth: C to F).  Musically, this gives a sense of the movement in "tow[ing]... away."

In comparing the take on the second disc and the final version on the album, I discovered that the final version is a half-step lower.  I referenced the liner notes, which confirm this:  the tape machine was run slower, dropping everything in pitch.

"Please Mister Postman"

I listened to the second disc of the Carpenters' Gold album to-day and noticed a few things about their version of "Please Mister Postman."  Of course, after noting those features, I referenced the Beatles' version to see if they're present there too.

I'd forgotten that I already wrote about a melisma'd "so" two years ago, so the only new thing I have to note is a melisma'd "by" (sung to the phrase C# B C# B A, I think) in the line "So many days you passed me by."  This gives a musical sense of movement, specifically, the postman passing by the singer/speaker without delivering "a card or a letter."

"Here, There, and Everywhere"

I learned a guitar phrase in "Here, There, and Everywhere" to-night, and I discovered that I'd neglected to mention something about the song on this blog.  Four years ago, after listening to Revolver, I realized that the line "But to love her is to need her" (sung over the guitar phrase I learned to-night, which starts at ~1:03) borrows the structure of the title line of "To Know Her is to Love Her," which was in the Beatles' repertoire.  It's included on Live at the BBC (recorded 16 July 1963, transmitted 6 August 1963).

"All My Loving"

A couple days ago (31 March), I was thinking about the guitar strumming in "All My Loving."  The guitar is strummed in triplets, and I think this has significance with regard to the title line.  Triplets are "a group of three musical notes or tones performed in the time of two of the same value," so it's as if the totality of "all my loving" is crammed into each beat.

"Strawberry Fields Forever"

The last thing I noticed while listening to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper a few days ago is in "Strawberry Fields Forever" (apparently included - along with "Penny Lane" - because it was recorded during the Sgt. Pepper sessions).  The "low" in the line "I mean it must high or low" is sung with a descending melisma.  Because the final version of "Strawberry Fields Forever" was creating by combining two performances in different keys (speeding up one and slowing down the other), there's always a question of tonality, but I think the notes to which "low" is sung end up as something like C Bb G.  As it's sung, the word itself descends, giving a musical impression of "low."