"In My Life"

Twice recently I heard a little bit of "In My Life," and I realized that "life" in the lines "There are places I remember / All my life though some have changed" is sung with a melisma (B C# B A), musically giving a sense of that "all."

"Misery"

I listened to the first disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 yester-day and noticed a small thing about "Misery" (which is also present in the studio version).  "More" in the line "I won't see her no more" is sung with a melisma (A C).  Because it's sung to more than one pitch, there's something of a sense of the word's meaning (although it's negated).

"A Hard Day's Night"

A couple days ago, the Beatles' various social media accounts posted about Paul's singing the bridge of "A Hard Day's Night" because John couldn't reach those higher notes.

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“The only reason Paul sang on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ was because I couldn’t reach the notes - ‘When I’m home, everything seems to be right. When I’m home…’ - which is what we’d do sometimes: one of us couldn’t reach a note but he wanted a different sound, so he’d get the other to do the harmony.” - John ➿ #TheBeatles #1960s ➿ Photo © Apple Corps Ltd.

A post shared by The Beatles (@thebeatles) on May 24, 2019 at 7:06am PDT

Just by reading the lyrics there ("When I'm home, ev'rything seems to be right..."), I realized a small feature:  the three syllables of "ev'rything" are sung to different notes (G F# E), musically giving something of a sense of breadth.

"Blue Jay Way"

This morning I was thinking about something I noticed in "Blue Jay Way" about a year ago but which I never wrote about (I was reminded of it because I recently found a similar feature in Badfinger's "Suitcase," which George Harrison produced).  The specific technical explanation is beyond my skill level, but I think some change in the meter or in the syllabic stress causes the repeated "Don't be long" at the end to morph into "Don't belong."

"Tell Me What You See"

I got a pair of claves for Christmas, and yester-day, I finally got around to updating my recording of "Tell Me What You See."

Since the last time I recorded this, I figured out that turning on the velocity filter on my Nord Electro 5D makes the Hohner Pianet sample sound a bit better.  While recording this, I actually discovered a few notes I'd missed last time:  at the end of the first two phrases, there's a B, and at the very end, there's a G in the bass register.

The parts sound a little bit out of sync for the first twelve seconds or so, but this is better than my last version.

"Carol"

Yester-day, I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC and noticed a couple things about "Carol," specifically about the line "Well, I've a-gotta learn to dance if it takes me all night and day."

First, "day" is sung with a melisma (B A), musically giving something of a sense of duration (for "all").  Second, "night and day" is a merism.

I referenced Chuck Berry's original and found that the Beatles changed the lyrics slightly (from Berry's "I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day") and that they added the melisma to "day."

"I'll Get You"

I listened to the second disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 this morning and noticed a small thing in "I'll Get You" (which is also in the studio version).  The first line of the second verse is "I think about you night and day," and "night and day" is an example of a rhetorical device called a merism in which two points of a range are named as a way to refer to the entirety.  While the description here is "night and day," the sense is really "all the time."

"Crying, Waiting, Hoping"

The last thing I noticed when I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC a few days ago is that "long" in the line "Tears keep a-fallin' all night long" in "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" is sung with a melisma (A C#, I think), which musically gives a sense of duration.

I referenced Buddy Holly's original, but it doesn't contain this feature.  Evidently, it's something the Beatles added.

"Soldier of Love"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC a few days ago is in "Soldier of Love."  The "so" in the lines "Use your arms to squeeze and / Please 'cause I'm the one who loves you so" is sung with a melisma (C# E), musically giving a sense of degree.

When I referenced the song again in order to find those specific notes and write this post, I noticed that "more" in the line "Baby, I don't wanna fight no more" is also sung with the same melisma, but here there's a (negated) sense of extension or continuation.

"I Got a Woman"

I listened to the first disc of Live at the BBC yester-day and noticed a few small points.

In the verse at the very end of "I Got a Woman," both "way" and "town" in the line "Way 'cross town" are sung with melismas (C# C# and D# C# B respectively).  Since both of these are drawn out, there's a musical sense of that distance.

This feature is also present in the version on On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2.

I referenced the versions by Ray Charles (who wrote the song) and Elvis Presley.  The Beatles' version follows Elvis' version (in E major rather than Charles' A major, with the last verse at a slower tempo, and with "Way 'cross town" in place of Charles' "Way over town" [although Elvis does go back to "Way over town" for the last verse]), but Elvis' version doesn't have these melismas (not at the end at least; he does occasionally sing "town" to the notes A B).

"Good Morning Good Morning"

Last year, I wrote a post about a section of the saxophone part in "Good Morning Good Morning" and how it seems to have been inspired by 1950s rock and roll songs.  Even at the time, I was a bit unsure of the accuracy of the rhythms in my notation.  Yester-day, I was thinking about this part again, and I realized that it's a dotted rhythm.  Where I had:

it's actually more like:

What I have still might not be exactly right, but it's certainly a lot closer.

"Glad All Over"

I listened to the second disc of On Air - Live at the BBC, Volume 2 yester-day and noticed a small feature in "Glad All Over," specifically in the line "My temperature's low; fever is high."  "My temperature's low" is sung almost entirely to C# notes (I think "low" is sung with a descending glissando from C# to A), and "fever is high" is sung to a group of ascending notes (C# C# D E, I think).  The first half of the melody for this phrase descends, and the second half ascends, musically giving a sense of the "low" and "high" in the lyrics.

This is also present in the version on Live at the BBC and in Carl Perkins' original (although Perkins' is a half-step lower, and this particular line might have some slight differences in articulation).