The Beatles' Brilliance Explained...

[Teasing the Korean]

I never got what the big deal was about the Beatles. Until now:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME...ic_shifts.shtml

[John L]

And to think that those raised on Tin Pan Alley tunes accused groups like the Beatles of simplifying the harmonic structure of popular music. Little did they know...

[JSngry]

I doin't know about all that coded communication stuff, but anybody who paid attention and wasn't culturally predisposed to ignorance to the matter knew (& knows) that the Lennon/McCartney chord progressions were a subtly unique language.

[dave9199]

Has anyone read the book Can't Buy Me Love? I think the author likes the sound of his own voice. Some good sociological stuff in there.

[Van Basten II]

Is this site being sponsored by Tylenol, all i have is a freakin' headache after trying to read it.

[John L]

I doin't know about all that coded communication stuff, but anybody who paid attention and wasn't culturally predisposed to ignorance to the matter knew (& knows) that the Lennon/McCartney chord progressions were a subtly unique language.

OK, I plead cultural predisposition to ignorance (even though I used to be a big Beatles fan, and still like to hear them every now and again). What is special about the Beatles' chord progressions?

[BruceH]

Well, they were, like, cool 'n' shit.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I doin't know about all that coded communication stuff, but anybody who paid attention and wasn't culturally predisposed to ignorance to the matter knew (& knows) that the Lennon/McCartney chord progressions were a subtly unique language.

OK, I plead cultural predisposition to ignorance (even though I used to be a big Beatles fan, and still like to hear them every now and again). What is special about the Beatles' chord progressions?

Yeah, me too. (Though I WASN'T a Beatles fan, after "My Bonnie".)

MG

[flat5]

"all i have is a freakin' headache after trying to read it"

Me too. I find it easier to understand Coltrane's substitute chords.

[Teasing the Korean]

I couldn't get through that whole dissertation, but all the stuff about Beatles' chord progressions - I, IV and V going to relative and parallel majors and minors - is hardly unique. These are some of the most basic tools of harmonic composition.

[JSngry]

I doin't know about all that coded communication stuff, but anybody who paid attention and wasn't culturally predisposed to ignorance to the matter knew (& knows) that the Lennon/McCartney chord progressions were a subtly unique language.

OK, I plead cultural predisposition to ignorance (even though I used to be a big Beatles fan, and still like to hear them every now and again). What is special about the Beatles' chord progressions?

I doin't know about all that coded communication stuff, but anybody who paid attention and wasn't culturally predisposed to ignorance to the matter knew (& knows) that the Lennon/McCartney chord progressions were a subtly unique language.

OK, I plead cultural predisposition to ignorance (even though I used to be a big Beatles fan, and still like to hear them every now and again). What is special about the Beatles' chord progressions?

Yeah, me too. (Though I WASN'T a Beatles fan, after "My Bonnie".)

MG

I couldn't get through that whole dissertation, but all the stuff about Beatles' chord progressions - I, IV and V going to relative and parallel majors and minors - is hardly unique. These are some of the most basic tools of harmonic composition.

Ok, relative to the Entire World Before Them, no, not especially unique. But in the realm of Post-Swing Era Popular Music, their cadences often fell "unusually", they'd land somewhere you'd not expect. Not usually really radical, just...not all that common. The little bit of the linked article that I was able to stay awake through goes to unnecessary, er....great lengths to say just about the same thing.

A few early examples:

"I Want To Hold Your Hand" - The first part of the A-section: I V7 vi III7 That III7 is setting up the relative minor ( vi ) as tonic, but now, the phrase goes back to the I. And forget about the bridge, that thing just kinda floats around. never really landing anywhere concrete.

"If I Fell" - Most people with reasonably harmonically acclimated ears can tell that this one plays beacoup games with false/deceptive resolutions.

"She Loves You" - At first, a I vi iii (instead of the usual ii or IV) V cycle is sly enough, but when it comes time to say "she says she loves you", things start getting a little clever, going I vi ii7(b5) V - the ii7b5 "should" be found in a minor progression, not a major one. the symmetry here is nice too - in the first part of the phrase, the use of the iii chord, with its major 7th of the home key built into it, in the third bar adds extra "sunniness" to the feel, whereas the use of the ii7b5 in the second half - again the third chord in the sequence, but this time in the 6th bar instead of the 3rd, because the harmonic movement has suddenly slowed down, changes coming every two bars now, instead of every one bar as it started out - adds a very minor feel to an other wise typical major progression. So here you have a case of two four chord progressions in the same A section of the same song, and in each of them, the third chord adds accented harmonic "identity" to the progression, one major, one minor, the "irony" being that they both resolve major. And if you want to look at the form as A-B-Chorus instead of A1-A2-Chorus, then both the A & B sections are 8 bars in length, both use variants on the classic I-vi-ii-V progression, variating the 3rd chord of the sequence each time, only the A section uses its 8 bars to go through he sequence twice, but the B section only uses it once.

No, none of this was "new", but for a Rock/Pop band, it was a significant opening up of the "space" available in which to put your progressions. The symmetry became less inevitable, and the tonic chord no longer had to come about with redundant monotony. "Unpredictability" was now a desirable option, not something that the A&R man scratched out at every opportunity. You take all those Lennon/McCartney soundalike songs/records, what really seals the deal on them is the changes, and it usually involves some minor chord being used in an "unexpected" place and/or function. Jazz, the better Tin Pan Alley types, and of course, classical composers had all gotten to this before, this opening up of the playing field. But it was Lennon/McCartney who brought it to rock (with maybe a spirit in the dark nudge from Bacharach, maybe).

The list of examples could go on quite a long time, and even long after they all went solo, three of the four still showed an ability to craft those progressions that would throw you for a little loop here and there.

For those of you for whom this is all gobbledygook, sorry, but this is the language being used in the music. If you want a totally "non-technical" explanation, the best I can offer is "longer and/or different ways to get to the tonic chord".

[mikelz777]

Tonic chord?

Edited June 23, 2008 by mikelz777

[7/4]

Wow!

Real music talk...theory!

.

[John L]

Thanks, Jim S.! I wish I knew enough to rattle stuff like that off.

One question: Back in the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" days, do you really think that teenage Lennon and McCartney, who had never studied music, sat around and said, "OK, we will go to the III7 to set up a resolution to the VI. But then we will freak everybody out by not going there." My own inclination would be to think that they learned a bunch of chords and decided to mix it up in unusual ways, and it just came out.

That is not to say that there can't be genius at work here, but I wonder how conscious it was.

[JSngry]

Well, show me when "genius" is "conscious", and I'll show you where it's probably not genius.

But no, I don't think that they "knew" what they were doing in the way that you describe. I do know, though, that they both, McCartney in particular, were serious about "music as music" if only as a matter of attitudinal disposition. So although I don't think that they really "knew the theory" behind what they were doing, I do think that they knew enough to hear changes that did what their's did and had enough of a musical instinct to follow that instinct rather than either find themselves painted into a corner and just giving up or else just thinking that it sounded weird and leaving it on the floor.

Keep in mind, also, that Lennon & McCartney were of the last generation, more or less, who came to Rock & Roll songwriting from a world where there was no Rock & Roll, which meant that they were hearing, and absorbing the influence of, musics more "harmonically involved" than the idiom in which they themselves worked. But whereas so many "wrote to the medium", they took it upon themselves to bring other things to the table, and thus the difference.

I've also heard it posited, and rather convincingly, that what they did was distinctly "British", that so many of their devices were rooted in English folk songs, madrigals, ballads, and the like, which, this sense of "intuitive recognition", is why large portions of the British audience instinctively reacted to their music positively, where American audiences initially found them "weird". "Conventional wisdom" likes to focus on how they and all the other British Invasion bands lifted from American sources, and that is very true, but with Lennon/McCartney, you have to look at a fundamental "British-ness" as well, something that set them apart, and a quality which only some of their followers could fully indulge in themselves, requiring as it did some "musical sophistication" outside of just copping old Chess sides.

[JSngry]

Tonic chord?

The home chord, the one that is the key of the song. Everything else springs from that, where it "goes" & how it "returns".

[AllenLowe]

Beatles had a good sense of form - wrote a lot of bridges for rock and roll tunes - even a blues with a bridge (You Can't Do That) - though I still think Lennon, pre-Yoko, was the greater of the two writers - George, however, was a mediocrity (according to Geoffrey Emeric, most of those great guitar parts were played by Paul) -

[BruceH]

Mmmm....tonic.

[AllenLowe]

yeah, too bad they closed it down -

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've also heard it posited, and rather convincingly, that what they did was distinctly "British", that so many of their devices were rooted in English folk songs, madrigals, ballads, and the like, which, this sense of "intuitive recognition", is why large portions of the British audience instinctively reacted to their music positively, where American audiences initially found them "weird". "Conventional wisdom" likes to focus on how they and all the other British Invasion bands lifted from American sources, and that is very true, but with Lennon/McCartney, you have to look at a fundamental "British-ness" as well, something that set them apart, and a quality which only some of their followers could fully indulge in themselves, requiring as it did some "musical sophistication" outside of just copping old Chess sides.

I wouldn't want to argue the point about madrigals, ballads etc, but I suspect it may be a bit over-egged in what you've read. I think there were other reasons why the Beatles were as successful as they were so quickly in Britain.

First you have to look at the contrast they presented to their British predecessors. Most were the British equivalent of the Philly "teen idols" - which doesn't necessarily mean that some of them didn't have talent and some weren't producing pop records that were very good indeed, as pop records, y'understand. But there was a clear sense that those guys were there for their looks. (The same was true of the female singers - Elkie Brooks is the same age as me and, at 18, my tongue was hanging out when she was on TV, even though I knew that, by any standard, Etta James' version of "Somethin's gotta hold on me" was THE version.) There was a definite sense that the Beatles weren't there for their looks - though lots of girls liked Paul. But they were a tailor-made creation for the market - in much the same was as I think late sixties Miles Davis' image was tailored to the market. Their clothes were extremely Mod. And they were purposefully irreverent, which was another thing people in Britain were coming to then, with Private Eye magazine and "That was the week that was" - and coming from the Left; I dont think it was a coincidence that Labour won the 1964 election (not that the Beatles affected that outcome, but Britain was moving in that direction anyway and they were part of it).

Second, it was noticeable that the Beatles songs were hard to sing. This is, I thnk, how a layman like myself - and many others - would describe the exegesis you made on the chord changes earlier. You could sing along with the records. But try singing them as you walked down the road! (And that isn't true of folk songs, ballads etc - those are, and are SUPPOSED to be, easy to sing.) There was definitely some fascination with that; the Beatles were perceived to be interesting.

I think that trying to pick out some elements of what made them successful is kind of fruitless - they were a whole package, made up of bits that were natural talent, education, style, political consciousness, attitude and so on, and with no apparent contradictions between these elements. I mean that everything contributed positively to the end result.

MG

[Shawn]

Nice post MG!

[Aggie87]

I posted this in the DVD Corner, but thought it might catch some eyes over here too.

For any Beatles fans, Amazon has the Deluxe Edition of Help! on sale as a "Gold Box" special today for $29.99. Normal retail is $135.00. This is the big box version with a reproduction of the script, lobby cards, poster, 60 page book, and slipcase.

Link

A good deal, as the regular DVD edition of Help! retails for about $30 anyway.

Gold Box deals are only good for one day, for a certain amount of copies I believe. If anyone's interested in this, I don't think you'll find it cheaper.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

have any of u downloaded that 82-cd set of the abbey road session tapes, its something like 92 hours of audio.

[Teasing the Korean]

have any of u downloaded that 82-cd set of the abbey road session tapes, its something like 92 hours of audio.

I never even made it through the Anthology CDs.

[RDK]

have any of u downloaded that 82-cd set of the abbey road session tapes, its something like 92 hours of audio.

Bo-ring. Way too much of a mediocre thing. There are gems to be found in the Abbey Road tapes, of course, but the unabridged version is a waste of time imo.

Overall, though, the Purple Chick remasters/compilations are excellent.