"Fixing a Hole"

When I listened to the second disc of the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper a few days ago, I noticed something about "Fixing a Hole."  The version on the second disc is a different take from the one that ended up on the completed album, but both have this same feature: the "go" in the line "Where it will go" is sung with a glissando (Ab down to F), which gives a musical impression of "go[ing]."

"Good Morning Good Morning"

The second thing I noticed when I listened to the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper recently is the saxophone parts in "Good Morning Good Morning."  During most of the repeated "Good morning..." sections and throughout the "Ev'rybody knows there's nothing doing" and "People runnin' 'round; it's five o'clock" sections, the saxophones arpeggiate A major and D major chords.  Something like:

(I guessed on the key, and the rhythm of the eighth notes might not be strictly accurate.)

It seemed that arpeggiating the chords with saxophones like this was a relatively common feature of 1950s rock and roll, but I had to do some searching before I found any specific songs that do this.  Of the songs I found, the most well-known is probably Fats Domino's "Blue Monday" (which also seems to have inspired "Lady Madonna").  Like these sections of "Good Morning Good Morning," the saxophones in "Blue Monday" arpeggiate chords, playing the root, third, and fifth (although the root is played twice in succession and the rhythms of the two parts are different).

Of course, I'm not sure if the saxophones in "Good Morning Good Morning" are meant to be reminiscent of "Blue Monday" or even any song in particular, but they do have a certain similarity.

"Within You Without You"

I recently acquired the 2 CD Anniversary Edition of Sgt. Pepper, which I first listened to last night.  I noticed a couple small things, and I plan to write a few posts about them over the course of the next few days.

In "Within You Without You," the "away" in the line "When they pass away" is sung with a melisma (going back and forth between Gb and F).  This provides a musical sense of movement, namely that "pass[ing] away."

"All You Need Is Love"

"All You Need Is Love" was an answer on Jeopardy! to-day* (I'll admit that I didn't get it right), so I thought I would finally look into something I've been wondering about: whether the quotation of Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" near the end is in the same key as the original.  I have three different CD sets of Glenn Miller, and each has a recording of "In the Mood," but I think there are only two different recordings.  In both, that opening phrase is in Ab major (although it has quite a few accidentals; there's a chromatic phrase near the end that goes from Eb to Bb).  The quotation in "All You Need Is Love" is slightly different at the end (the chromatic phrase breaks off earlier), but the part that's the same is transposed down a half step to G major.  Based on the other parts I know so far (a cello phrase and some of the bass part), "All You Need Is Love" is in G major, so changing the key of that phrase from "In the Mood" isn't too surprising.

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*The category was "'You' Tunes," where all of the answers were songs with "you" in the title.  The clue (for $2000):  "'Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time, it's easy' sang the Beatles in this hit."  Feeling I should know this and forgetting the hint in the category name, I impulsively guessed "Strawberry Fields," thinking instead of the line "It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out."

"She's Leaving Home"

I was thinking about "She's Leaving Home" yester-day, and I realized that it's in 3/4.  I'm not sure if there's really anything to this, but there might be a connection between the time signature (three beats in each measure) and the three characters in the song: the titular "she" and her father and mother.  The song does also mention "a man from the motor trade," but he's not a main character and doesn't even do anything in the narrative.

"Getting Better"

A couple weeks ago, I watched Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years and Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution when they were broadcast on PBS.  I'm a bit skeptical of some of the assertions that Howard Goodall presents in Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution, but I did notice a small thing about "Getting Better" while watching it.  The "Filling me up" part of the line "Filling me up with your rules" ascends (D E F G), which musically represents the "filling... up."

While referencing the recording just now, I also discovered that "You're holding me down" (the first half of the preceding line) descends.  "Holding me down" is sung to the phrase E D D D C (with "down" sung to two syllables with the second at a lower pitch than the first, which emphasizes the effect).  Similarly, "Me hiding me head in the sand" descends (roughly diatonically from E to B), which almost represents the subterranean caching.

"Old Brown Shoe"

Last week I listened to all three of the Anthology albums (in two days).  One part during the bridge of "Old Brown Shoe" caught my attention.  In the demo version on Anthology 3, it's played on guitar alone, but in the single version, it's played on guitar and bass.  The phrase sounded familiar to me, and after some research, I discovered that it bears some resemblance to the bass part in Chuck Berry's "Go Go Go."

I learned enough of each part to be able to compare them.  Almost all of the bass part during the verses of "Go Go Go" alternates between these two measures:

And the bass part at the beginning of the bridge in "Old Brown Shoe" is something like:

There are two similarities between these two parts.  First, both phrases have triplets on the third and fourth beats of the measure (although this is in only every other measure in "Go Go Go").  Second, both phrase arpeggiate chords in the same way.  They're different chords, but the bass plays the root, third, fifth, and sixth.  The bass part in "Go Go Go" continues ascending to play the root an octave higher in the second measure, and the bass part in "Old Brown Shoe" plays a second when it descends, but they start out the same (although, admittedly, a root-third-fifth-sixth arpeggiation in the bass isn't that distinctive).

After I realized this similarity, I thought about the bass part in "I Saw Her Standing There," which, adjusted for key, consists of the same phrases as the bass part in Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You."  Initially, I thought Paul McCartney nicked an-other bass part from a Chuck Berry song, but then I lookt in the liner notes of Anthology 3 to find that all of the parts in the demo of "Old Brown Shoe" (so, obviously, including this phrase) were played by George Harrison.  Evidently, it was he who came up with this phrase.  I'm not sure whether the bass part in Berry's "Go Go Go" was any influence, but the two parts do have a certain similarity and the Beatles were obviously familiar with other Chuck Berry songs.

"The Long and Winding Road"

"The Long and Winding Road" was the subject of a Jeopardy! clue yester-day (the correct response was "What is Let It Be?"), so last night I decided to figure out a part from it.  I think I got the electric piano solo from the version on Let It Be... Naked (I might have only the right hand of a two-handed part though). In any case, I noticed something about it.  I think it's something like:

As with all the parts I've figured out and my notation, there's the disclaimer that I might be wrong about something.

The first few notes sounded familiar, and it didn't take me too long to place them.  Bach's Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645 (which I'd listened to the day before) begins with these same notes (in the same key and with the same upbeat):

(notation found here)

I'm not sure if the beginning of this part is intended to sound like the beginning of Bach's piece, but there is a certain similarity.

"Eight Days a Week"

Since last November, I've been slowly reading Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions.  A couple weeks ago, I read the entry for 6 October 1964 (p. 49) in which Lewisohn claims that "Eight Days a Week" was "the first pop song to feature a faded-up introduction."

Yester-day was Chuck Berry's birthday, so I listened to some of his music and rediscovered that the introduction in "Down Bound Train" also fades in.  "Eight Days a Week" is from 1964, but "Down Bound Train" is from 1956.

Here are screen clippings of the wave forms:

"Down Bound Train"

"Eight Days a Week"

I'm not sure if "Down Bound Train" could be classified as a "pop song," but it's certainly a song with a faded-in introduction that predates "Eight Days a Week."  Likewise, I'm not sure if the Beatles were familiar with this particular song (although they certainly were familiar with other Chuck Berry songs) or if the faded-in introduction of "Down Bound Train" had anything to do with the faded-in introduction of "Eight Days a Week."

"Sun King"

Last night I learned one of the guitar tracks and the bass part for the first section of "Sun King."  Of course, I learned the guitar part that's easier; the other one is probably more interesting.

I'd tried learning this guitar part one other time, but I got confused by the double stop.  I think I have the right notes now, but I'm not sure I play it very well.

"You Know What to Do"

I learned the chords for "You Know What to Do" earlier this month, so - when I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago - I recorded a version.  Because I used the Beatles' demo (which is a bit rough) as a template and because I'm not as familiar with "You Know What to Do" as I am with some other Beatles songs, my version isn't the best (it doesn't help that I'm not a very good tambourine player).  Still, I don't think it turned out too badly.

Their version just sort of trails off, but I resolved mine.

"You Know What to Do"

A couple days ago, I learned the chords for "You Know What to Do."  According to the liner notes of Anthology 1, it's a demo of a George Harrison song that the Beatles never properly recorded.  In any case, I noticed some connections between the chord progression and the lyrics in the bridge.

To start with, here are the chords (with the disclaimer that - as always - I might have something wrong).  There's an initial D major before the first verse.

Verses:
|: A major | E major :|

Choruses:
|: A major | E major :| A major | D major

Bridge:
B minor | D augmented | A major | D major

The chord progression is comprised of major chords until the bridge, which starts with a B minor.  Appropriately, the mood in the lyrics also changes here:  "Just call on me when you're lonely."  Following that B minor is a D augmented, with an A# accidental that also contributes to the desolate feeling of loneliness.

There's a parallelism (of sorts) between the first and last lines of the bridge, both lyrically and musically.  The lyrical parallelism is obvious:  "Just call on me when you're lonely" is only a few words different from "I'll call on you if I'm lonely too."  The "too" emphasizes the similarity.  The musical parallelism is a bit obscure (and less exact).  There's a B minor played for the entire first line, and there's a D major at the very end (corresponding to the "too" in "I'll call on you if I'm lonely too").  These are closely related chords:  B minor is the relative minor of D major, and D major is the relative major of B minor.  So in the bridge, there's a close relationship between the first and last lines and between the first and last chords.  Accordingly, the speaker/singer wishes for a close relationship between himself and the girl to whom he addresses the song.