"Eleanor Rigby"

An-other small thing I noticed when I listened to Revolver yester-day is that the phrase "Picks up the rice" in "Eleanor Rigby" ascends (G A B D), musically representing that "pick[ing] up."

"Taxman"

I listened to Revolver this evening and noticed a small thing about "Taxman."  The first line ("Let me tell you how it will be") is essentially the same as the first line in Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" ("I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be").  Buddy Holly certainly influenced the Beatles, and I think the resemblance between these two opening lines (whether conscious or not) is an-other example of that, despite "Taxman" and "Not Fade Away" being about very different things.

"There's a Place"

The most significant thing I noticed when I listened to Please Please Me a couple days ago is in "There's a Place."  For most of the song, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are singing in harmony, but McCartney drops out so that only Lennon sings the line "When I'm alone."  That this line lacks a harmony part (unlike the others surrounding it) illustrates that being "alone."

Similarly, the line "Like, 'I love only you'" is sung only by Lennon (with McCartney and George Harrison singing "ah"s behind it), and there's a connection between this single voice and the exclusivity of "only you" in the line.

"Chains"

In "Chains," the "free" in the line "'Cause I'm not free" is sung with a melisma (C Bb G Bb), so while the word's negated, there's a musical sense of its meaning.  It's not tied to a single pitch.

"Misery"

In "Misery," the word "drag" in the line "It's gonna be a drag" is sung with a melisma (B C B A B).  The word is somewhat literally "drag[ged]" through a number of pitches, giving a musical representation of the word's meaning (one of the word's meanings, at least).

"I Saw Her Standing There"

Over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to listen to all of the Beatles albums, plus the Past Masters compilations of the singles.  To-day I listened to Please Please Me and noticed a few things.  First, here's a small point about "I Saw Her Standing There."

The "fall in love" part of "I'd fall in love with her" in the second verse (and "fell in love" when this line is changed slightly to "I fell in love with her" in the third and fourth verses) is sung to a descending melody (F# E D), musically giving something of a sense of that "fall[ing]."

"When I'm Sixty-Four"

For more than a year, I've been working (now and then) on figuring out enough parts for "When I'm Sixty-Four" to make it worth recording.  Last July, I figured out the bass part for the verses and the tubular bells.  In April, I learned two of the clarinet parts at the beginning (it wasn't until recording this to-day that I realized that the same parts are repeated at the end), and over the course of the last few days, I learned the rest of the bass part (the bridges) and a bit of piano.  While recording this, I thought the clarinet phrase after the line "Sunday mornings go for a ride" (~1:19) sounded easy, so I figured that out too.

I never wrote down the two clarinet parts I learned, so I just filmed those in order to have some record of them.  I don't think the piano part is entirely accurate; mostly I was just playing along for fun.  The tubular bell sound on my keyboard isn't that great, so for my recording I actually used vibes.

The Beatles recorded "When I'm Sixty-Four" in C major, but sped it up a semi-tone, so for all of the parts that I recorded on my keyboard, I used the transpose function so I could play in C major and have it come out as C# major.  I did play the bass part in C# major though.

Here's the notation for the tubular bell parts.  I put them in C# major, but it's easy enough to disregard the key signature and play them in C major:

At ~0:58:

At ~1:54:

"You Won't See Me"

Yester-day, while drafting a post about the resemblance that the Electric Light Orchestra's "Heaven Only Knows" has with "You Won't See Me," I realized something about "You Won't See Me" itself.  Here's some notation I workt up for that post; this is just the first two lines of the vocal melody for the verses (I referenced the first verse, so there might be some slight differences between this and later verses; I also guessed on the key):

In the third verse (also repeated as the fourth verse), that first dotted half note (tied to an eighth note) is what "filled" is sung to in the line "Though the days are few, they're filled with tears."  It's the longest note value in the phrase, so - compared to the other note values - there's something of a musical sense of being "filled."

"Tell Me What You See"

I probably should have included this in the post with my recording of "Tell Me What You See" in order to substantiate my claim that the bass part is never the same twice, but here's the bass part (and guitar chords) for "Tell Me What You See."  As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:

"Like Dreamers Do"

In looking through a stack of papers recently, I found the notation of the bass part for "Like Dreamers Do," which I learned and wrote out back in January (in fact, it was the first part I learned in 2018).  As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:

The reason I started thinking about "Like Dreamers Do" (and ended up learning the bass part) is that I'd listened to a Roy Orbison album and discovered that the phrase "like dreamers do" is in "In Dreams."  This struck me as a unique phrase, so I assumed that "In Dreams" influenced "Like Dreamers Do," but yester-day I did some research and learned that "In Dreams" was released in 1963.  Since "Like Dreamers Do" was recorded 1 January 1962, "In Dreams" couldn't have had any bearing on it.

Regardless of that, this bass part has some rhythmic similarity with the bass part in "And I Love Her" (or, to get the chronology right, the bass part in "And I Love Her" has some similarity with this bass part), specifically the two dotted quarter notes followed by a single quarter note.

"The Fool on the Hill"

A couple days ago, I learned a flute phrase in "The Fool on the Hill," and as I was thinking about the song this morning, I realized something about the chorus.  "'Round" in the line "See the world spinnin' 'round" is sung with a melisma (D E D, I think), although only the first and last times (~0:39 and ~2:38).  This gives a musical sense of the movement of "spinnin' 'round."

While looking into that, I also noticed that the "sun going down" part of "Sees the sun going down" descends (Bb A G G), musically illustrating that "going down."

"Tell Me What You See"

Last week I learned most of the instrument parts for "Tell Me What You See."  Mostly, I wanted to learn just the electric piano part (because it's the Hohner Pianet!), but while listening to the recording in order to learn that, the bass part sounded easy too.  And then the chords (just I IV V in G major), and then the tambourine part.  I learned the claves part too, but since I don't (yet) have claves, I couldn't record that.  (As a sidenote, I think this and "And I Love Her" are the only Beatles songs with claves.)

I notated the bass part (thereby discovering that while a lot of sections of the song are repeated, the bass part is never the same twice), but the electric piano part is above my current skill level of notation, so I filmed those parts in order to have some record of it.  I think there are a few note pairs that aren't as simultaneous as they should be, and the tambourine rhythm lags a bit after the first electric piano part.  I tried doing the vocals too (twice, actually), but they were pretty terrible, so I ended up not using them.

For a (fairly) accurate sound, I used the Hohner Pianet sample on my Nord Electro 5.