Under The Influence: Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

This incredible music [A Day In The Life] just overwhelmed us. When it came to the middle of the song, where the orchestra rises, it sounded like a plane taking off in the room. It just killed us. And when it ended with that incredible chord, we all sat there stunned.

For me [While My Guitar Gently Weeps] was the song of the century. This may sound naïve now, but the Beatles were like gods to me as a kid. Not literally, of course, but it was like they were more than human in some way. This was the point where they embraced heavy blues-based guitar, which made musicians realise you could write modern songs with cool chords that weren't necessarily blues-based and still stick some heavy guitar in them. There were no credits on this album, so I didn't even know it was Clapton for a few weeks, and Eric literally makes his guitar weep at the end. Every guitar player loves this song – because every guitar player has a tear-stained guitar.

Gary Rossington: 'The Hour Of Music That Rocks My World' Guitar World Magazine

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10:52 What's Wrong With Sadie (pt 2) – The Melody/Harmony Disconnect

I don't think Sexy Sadie really works [if that makes you angry read this!]. Last time I looked at it's troubled origins. Now lets get to the main problem compositionally - it's almost entirely discordant and unresolved.

Main Hook

Our main hook (the title) is diatonic.

Sexy Sadie A B G E

So what's the problem? The three times we encounter it, it clashes with the underlying chords. This melody would sound great over C major, Em, Am, maybe even Bm. But we hear it first over G - F#7 then F#7 - F and finally C - A7 making this an example of ticket 9 (recycling melodic fragments) over bad chords. How bad? Let's analyse the intervals


A B G E notes over G F#7 chords (beginning of verse)

A and B are the 2nd and 3rd of G but G and E are the b2nd and b7th of F#7


A B G E notes over F#7 and F chords (end of verse)

A and B are the b3rd 4th of F#7 and G and E are the 2nd and 7th of F


A B G E notes over C and A7 chords (end of bridge)

A and B are the 6th and 7th of C and G and E are the b7th and 5th of A7


So to summarise – on the hookiest part of the song we have dissonance - a b2nd, and a b3rd over a major chord; and a lack of resolution - the phrase ends on a b7th and a 7th ; and all of the final chords in the 'hook' are out of key – F#7, F and A7 are the VII7, bVII and III7 respectively.

Having a melody that sounds like it was conceived with different chords in mind (Ticket 56) is something Lennon used sparingly to great effect (e.g. A Day In The Life 0:32) but here, Sadie's 'ghost chord progressions' create disorientation and fatigue.

Here Come The Drop or "Would You Like Some Dinner With Your Ketchup?"

Speaking of overuse - the verse employs the same '7 drop' chord progression (Ticket 60) that is a compositional highlight of I'm So Tired and Yesterday. Both of those songs use the move once per verse but in Sadie's verse G major is followed by an F# every single time. Appropriately, given it's unhappy genesis, the whole song is literally a 'downer'. The end of the bridge extends the reoccurring G - F# '7 drop' to an A7 - Ab7 - G – F#. 'OOKC's' (Out Of Key Chords - Ticket 28) are the special sauce the Beatles sprinkled on every meal, but here it's like the lid came off and smothered everything.

One of the Beatles melodic masterstrokes was delaying the moment the root note and the root chord meet, enabling them to write long flowing melodies but Sadie once again overdoes it. The verse melody never unites the root note and root chord for longer than one beat. And the bridge is not much better - even though it manages to stay in one key for a whole for 4 bars! The restless nature of the song is made even worse by the Lennon edits (Ticket 37) which result in a 7 bar verse and a 5 bar bridge that overlaps seamlessly back into the verse. If ever a song needed some breathing space, this is it.

To Wit?

To balance emotional (not to mention harmonic) stress a song needs some lightness in the delivery, some wit or humour or, to quote Tom Waits “beautiful melodies telling you terrible things”. Here the amount of repetition kills any humour and makes it feel much longer than it's 3:15.

Next time we'll look at why the recording works against the song.

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Jeff Beck: Even Better Than The Real Thing?

Here's the insanely talented Jeff Beck covering A Day In The Life - live. To say he makes the guitar sing is a ridiculous understatement...

Thanks to Jeffrey Burton on the BSA forum for the heads up

Under The Influence: Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains)

I always considered John Lennon the 'dark' Beatle, and I guess I always dig the dark horse guys. But there was always a lot of heart in his songs. [A Day In The Life] is a really magical one about how there are beautiful things in life, though it’s a journey through some heavy stuff. 

 Jerry Cantrell in Lava Magazine

Soundhog Interview

The whole purpose of Beatles Songwriting Academy is to tap the genius of the Beatles by taking their songs apart and using what we learn to create something new. With that in mind, let me introduce to you Soundhog, a self-described 'Beatles-obsessive of 35+ years standing' who is the creator of the wonderful Whole Lotta Helter Skelter mashup.

Who are you and what do you do?

My real name is Ben Hayes, and I'm a resident of a fairly small town in north Wales. I've done many things over the years, at the moment I work in a garage as a 'proper job', but still like to think that I'll be able to do something more creatively rewarding and make some sort of living from it, one day. I suppose everyone thinks that, though... get real, eh?

How long have you been creating mashups?

I started making things from other people's music a long, long time ago - back to cutting up 1/4" tape when I was 10 years old - but I've been doing stuff in the form of Whole Lotta Helter Skelter for about 12 years now.

Do play any conventional musical instruments?

I'm certainly not a virtuoso on anything, but I can play a bit of guitar, drums, keyboards, triangle etc. Occasionally this can be heard in my Soundhog work, and I also do other projects when I can find the motivation like Loose Capacitor ('70s analogue synth based) and The Secret Agent Five (my take on twisted '60s guitar instrumentals). I wish I could play one thing really, really well, but I do my best under the circumstances.

The Led Zep/Beatles mashup was something of a viral hit, yet you seem a bit down on mashups generally – why is that?

When I started out with this sort of thing, around 2001, you could count the number of other people doing it on your fingers and toes, and probably have the odd digit to spare. It was genuinely an underground thing. We called it 'bastard pop', or just 'bootlegging'. You couldn't find it very easily, the music press dismissed it as worthless novelty and only one or two UK radio shows gave it a platform. Visiting the one tiny club night in London dedicated to it genuinely changed the way I thought about music.

It only really went 'overground' when Richard X's welding together of tracks by Adina Howard and Gary Numan was re-recorded by The Sugababes. Once it went to number one in the UK singles chart suddenly everyone and their tone deaf dog started downloading cracked music software and making dreadful combinations of dreadful pop/rap records. Over-hyped nonsense like the Grey Album started clouding the waters and 10 years on, there's nothing clever or new about it and frankly it's all quite tedious. But it happens to almost all forms/genres of music eventually, I suppose.

The Beatles have a reputation for keeping tight control over their catalogue, yet they 'sampled', quoted or just plain ripped off other people's music. Led Zeppelin were even worse. Does old music need to be 'recycled' in order to create new music? Where do you stand on the whole copyright/intellectual property issue?

The biggest influence on music is the technology and tools available. It changed when new instruments were invented, when recording onto cylinder/shellac became possible, when multitrack tape machines appeared, when fuzz pedals and loud amplifiers showed up, then synthesizers, samplers, digital processing tools, etc. But you're still pretty much dealing with the same notes, scales and chords. There are very few musical forms around today which you can't trace back somehow to 50, 60, 70 years ago. I don't hear much today that I can't pick apart and identify where the various bits came from, or who they were influenced by.

As for copyright... erm... Obviously things like Whole Lotta Helter Skelter run roughshod over established copyright laws, however I've always been of the opinion that doing what I do doesn't actually harm the original works or their authors/performers at all, and it's not taking away a potential sale or whatever.  Nobody's going to stop buying The Beatles or Led Zeppelin II because they've downloaded my creation. I did get slapped with a nasty letter from the BPI (UK based record industry type thing) around 10 years ago, demanding that I removed certain stuff from my website but now if you're uploading your things to YouTube or Soundcloud you usually get knobbled before the file has finished uploading.

I'm surprised that Whole Lotta Helter Skelter' hasn't been wiped from the internet so far.  Perhaps some 'people who matter' actually liked it. Who knows? Jimmy Page's official website even featured the track on the front page a few months ago.  That was a big surprise.

In short, I believe in copyright, I think people's ideas and works in their original forms should be protected, and people should get what they're entitled to.  However, if other people can twist those works in other ways, with valid results, then they should at least be allowed to try.

Other than the two original tracks what were your sources? What was your actual process in terms of adjusting tempos, pitch shifting?

The sources were copies of the Helter Skelter and Whole Lotta Love multitracks - one came from a video game, the other from a bootleg CD. I didn't use anything else apart from a few bits of Beatles studio chat, as far as I can remember.

A lot of people probably assume I just slapped McCartney's vocal over some loops from the original Led Zeppelin record, but there was a hell of a lot more to it than that as you can see from the screengrab.

The thing was constructed on a PC using an old version of Ableton Live. Both original songs are in the same key, which helps massively as you don't end up with awkward sounding vocals through pitching up/down. Helter Skelter's a fair bit slower than Whole Lotta Love, so the Beatles audio parts were sped up to Zep tempo - as the latter track forms the backbone of the thing, it was important to keep time-stretching artifacts (i.e. horrible glitchy noises) to a minimum. Ableton allows one to do this fairly easily, but you've got to keep an eye on the details, which means a lot of manual work - because I was working with a lot of separate multitrack parts they all had to be carefully tweaked to keep them in sync with each other. Then there's stuff like having to EQ the bass parts from the two songs so they matched up as closely as possible sonically and replicating the panning of the guitar feedback noises in the middle section.

Are mashups brand new pieces of music?

Good question. I think it varies from track to track. The best examples, are the ones which sound like they could always have existed if the course of pop music had been different. If Jimmy Page had actually been in The Beatles, or the two groups had actually recorded together, rather than "this vocal" being put over "that music" by someone in his bedroom. Not really something 'new', therefore, but something from a history which didn't exist. (That all probably sounds very pretentious, sorry).

Is there anything conventional songwriters can learn from mashup artists?

A big part of it in the early days for me was mixing up styles, putting things together which normally wouldn't fit.  I do honestly think that what we did in the early 2000s has had a significant impact on pop music today in various ways, for better or worse. I'd just say, don't be afraid to get outside of the box.  Music's always been at it's most interesting, for me, when it goes blundering around trying out new things.


You can find Soundhog on Soundcloud or at his own website. You can download Whole Lotta Helter Skelter here and I'd highly recommend you also check out Ben's beautiful mashup of A Day In The Life and the Kid Loco Mix of Tracy by Mogwai. And if that's not enough Beatles related remixing for one day, take a look at my interview with the brain behind the Beastles DJ BC.

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Lennon, McCartney and Taylor? - The Beatles Uncredited Co-Writers

We were the biggest nickers in town. Plagiarists extraordinaire.
Paul McCartney
(Musician Magazine, Feb 1985, p.62)

Though they were not as bad as Led Zeppelin the fab four's back catalogue has more than it's share of music and lyrics that were begged, stolen or borrowed. For the most part the boys have been ready to admit it in print. But just not the kind of print found on royalty cheques. Here's a long overdue tribute to the unsung backroom boys (and girls). Maybe you'll be amazed...

A Day In The Life

(Lennon/McCartney/Doran)

Lennon said “I knew the line had to go 'now they know many holes it takes to ____ the Albert Hall'. It was a nonsense verse really, but for some reason I couldn't think of the verb. What did the holes do to the Albert Hall?” Terry Doran, the Beatles favourite 'man from the motor trade' (and the maraca player on Strawberry Fields Forever) said “fill the Albert Hall”
(The Beatles: Davis p.299)

All You Need Is Love

(Lennon/McCartney/Bach/Rouget de Lisle/Manone/Unknown)

Both the intro and the outro quoted from previous written music - The French National Anthem (La Marseillaise), composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, Greensleeves, J.S. Bach's Invention No. 8 in F major and Glenn Miller's arrangement of In The Mood, which in itself was a wholesale theft of Wingy Manone's Tar Paper Stomp.

Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite

(Lennon/McCartney/Sousa/Unknown)

The lyrics, taken almost wholesale from an advertisement Pablo Fanque's Circus, were probably written by someone in the circus and chopped up 'samples' of John Phillip Sousa marches featured in the middle section.

Can't Buy Me Love, Help, She Loves You

(Lennon/McCartney/Martin)

George Martin displayed his unerring genius for musical development and pop catchiness by composing the intro sections for each of these songs.

Come Together

(Lennon/McCartney/Berry)

The line “Here comes old flat top” and the general melody were consciously stolen from Chuck's song Catch Me If You Can. Though Paul McCartney attempted to disguise this by changing the feel, Berry's publisher, Morris Levy, sued Lennon anyway and won.

Eleanor Rigby

(Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Martin/Shotton/Starr)

The only song (apart from Dig A Pony and Flying) that features all four Beatles as co-writers, George and Ringo contributed “all the lonely people” and “darning his socks” respectively. School friend and Quarrymen washboard player, Pete Shotton suggested bringing Eleanor & Father McKenzie back in the last verse and George Martin came up with singing the bridge over the final chorus.
(Revolution In The Head p.204)

Golden Slumbers

(Lennon/McCartney/Dekker)

Paul used 17th century dramatist Thomas Dekker's words almost unchanged for the Abbey Road track.

If I Needed Someone

(Harrison/McGuinn)

When George Harrison heard The Byrds cover version of The Bells of Rhymney he loved Roger McGuinn's 12 string riff so much he lifted it entirely for his Rubber Soul track.

George was very open about it, he sent [the record] to us in advance and said, 'This is for Jim' - because of that lick.
Rolling Stone magazine 


I Saw Her Standing There
(Lennon/McCartney/Berry)

McCartney admits the bassline was 'borrowed' from Chuck Berry's song I’m Talking About You
Many Years From Now (p.94)

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

(Lennon/McCartney/Taylor)

Beatles publicist Derek Taylor brainstormed lyrics with Lennon for the first section contributing the “lizard on the window pane” and “velvet hand” lines.

The Inner Light

(Harrison/Li)

The lyrics are taken wholesale from chapter 47 of the Tao Te Ching, written c400 BC by Lao Tzu (The philosopher formerly known as Li Er)

Michelle

(Lennon/McCartney/Martin/Vaughan)

Ivan Vaughan, the man who introduced Paul McCartney to John Lennon, also introduced Paul to french via his language teacher wife Jan who co-wrote the lyrics with Paul at Jane Asher's family home in 1965. Paul said “Years later I sent her a cheque around. I thought I better had because she's virtually a co-writer on that. From there I just pieced together the verses”.

During the recording session George Martin composed the melody that George Harrison played in the solo.
Paul McCartney: (Many Years From Now)

Ob La Di Ob La Da

(Lennon/McCartney/Scott-Emuakpor)

Journeyman Jimmy on the floor with his pet dog

“Ob la di ob la da - life goes on bra” was conga player Jimmy Scott-Emuakpor's catch phrase. So he understandably miffed when it surfaced in a hit song (especially as Jimmy had played on an early version). He sued McCartney, but after being taken to prison for unpaid alimony, Scott agreed to drop his case in return for McCartney footing his huge legal bills.
MTV, Power Pop, Marco On the Bass

Piggies

(Harrison/Harrison/Lennon)

George's mum Louise came up with the lyric, "What they need's a damn good whacking" and John added "Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon".
Beatles Bible 

Run For Your Life

(Lennon/McCartney/Gunter)

Arthur Gunter wrote Elvis' hit Baby Let's Play House which contained the lyrics “I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man”. 11 years later so did John Lennon's Run For Your Life. Coincidence? Nope.

Savoy Truffle

(Harrison/Taylor)

When he wasn't holding John's hand, Derek Taylor also helped out George with the bridges adding "You know that what you eat you are".

She Said She Said

(Lennon/Harrison)

Curing writer's block with acupuncture?

Harrison said “I was at [John's] house one day and he was struggling with some tunes. He had loads of bits, maybe three songs, that were unfinished, and I made suggestions and helped him to work them together so that they became one finished song - She Said She Said. The middle part of that record is a different song”.

Following an argument with Lennon, Paul stormed out of the studio, leaving the band to record the final Revolver song without him. Meaning Paul is credited as a co-writer on a song that he neither wrote nor played on while Harrison isn't!

Something

(Harrison/Taylor)

...but a different Taylor! American singer/songwriter James Taylor released Something In The Way She Moves in 1968 on his self titled debut album, which appeared on a small indie label called Apple. In 1969 George Harrison appropriated it as a title and opening line. Ironically Taylor had intended to call his song I Feel Fine, after the final line in the chorus, but didn't want to nick someone else's title!

Taxman

(Harrison/Lennon)

John helped George finish off the lyrics to this song “[throwing] in a few one-liners to help the song along” and name-checking prime minister Harold Wilson and opposition leader Edward Heath.
David Sheff: All We Are Saying 


We Can Work It Out
(Lennon/McCartney/Harrison)

Harrison provided one of the highlights of the track - the idea of doing parts of the bridge in waltz time.

 Yellow Submarine

(Lennon/McCartney/Donovan/Krier/Helmer)

Donovan wrote the line, “sky of blue, sea of green” at Paul's request and Geoff Emerick and George Martin chopped up a recording Georges Krier and Charles Helmer's brass band tune Le Rêve Passe beyond recognition.

(Revolution In The Head p.206)

The Band Who...Stated Their Name Clearly For The Record

Pop Quiz! What do all the following songs have in common?

Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
Space Oddity – David Bowie
Sympathy For The Devil – Rolling Stones
The Weight - The Band
Paranoid – Black Sabbath
Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
Song 2 – Blur
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
The Scientist – Coldplay

Answer: None of the titles listed above appear anywhere in the lyrics.

Some bands are serial offenders, taking 'Title Avoidance Syndrome' to the extreme, like My Chemical Romance

You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison
Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For The Two Of Us
It's Not A Fashion Statement, It's A F***ing Deathwish

or employing it in a tasteful minimalist way like U2

Bad
Wire
Gone
Exit

But these bands are exceptions. One of the most foundational principles for making a song memorable is combining the title with a hooky melody and repeating it enough times for it to worm it's way into your subconscious. Now perhaps if your chorus lyrics are

“I need your love, I need your love, God speed your love to me”

“Woo hoo, well I feel heavy metal”

or even

“Argh argh aaaaaaaaargh....ARGH”*

you might be wise to write something else on the label. But successful songs with obscure titles are a rarity, if for no other reason than people can't buy a record if they have no idea what it's called. The Beatles understood this principle.


Of 211 tracks released by the Beatles, 
199 feature the title prominently.


Of the 12 exceptions, 1 is an instrumental (Flying, the incidental music from Magical Mystery Tour). Five more feature fragments of the title, but not the whole -

Revolution 9 - Number 9, number 9
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill - hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill?
She Said She Said - She said, I know what it's like to be dead
Love You To - I'll make love to you, if you want me to
Wild Honey Pie - (the only title that's longer than the lyrics) Honey pie, honey pie

This leaves a grand total of 6 songs that never mention the title

For You Blue
The Inner Light
A Day In The Life
The Ballad Of John And Yoko
Tomorrow Never Knows
Yer Blues

They are almost all album tracks (apart from Ballad Of.., and b-side, The Inner Light). But what's most interesting about this list is that every one is a Lennon or Harrison song. There is not one genuine McCartney song among them**.

If you want to understand Paul's success as a commercial pop writer this is one small, but undeniable, key.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers), Song 2 (Blur) and Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin) respectively.

**McCartney was a co-writer on Flying, and let's be honest Wild Honey Pie is a weird outtake rather than a song in any traditional understanding of the word.



Read more about the Band Who...

...Kept Expanding
...Lived Outside
...Needed No Introduction
...Were Men Of Few Words

10:4 Julia (pt. 3) Melody

Last time we saw that Julia is a seething mass of non-diatonic chords. So it's surprising to see that, apart from the key change in the bridge, there is only one out of key note in the melody - the Bb that occurs on the Calls ME section of the verse. This song is a good example of ticket 14 - 'write an key melody over out of key chords' – which gives you the interest of unusual chord progressions while avoiding the complexity of an atonal melody.

So although we have an F# in the melody it never occurs at the same time as the F natural within the chord progression (as part of the Gm7 and G9 chords). It's the same for the C# and C, D# and D and B and Bb. The only point where the harmony alters the melody is the aforementioned Bb which is supported by the Bb within the Gm7 chord.

That same point in the song also contains a nice instance of contrary motion (ticket 12). The chords drop from G9 to Gm7 (B falling to Bb, and A falling to the already present F) but the melody rises from A to Bb.This combination of an out of key note, contrary motion, and interruption the 3 note rhythm makes this reoccurring phrase (calls me/touch me) really stand out.

The melody through out really has a sense of ebbing and flowing, perfect for a song with so much water imagery (we'll look at that in a future post).


Take Me To The Bridge


When we get to the bridge we have a true key change (like the bridge of I Want To Hold Your Hand or the chorus of Penny Lane) rather than remaining in the same key but using one or two out of key chords (like With A Little Help From My Friends). Here we head from D major to C#m minor and then C# phrygian.

The three scales involved in the song are as follows

D major – D E F# G A B C# D C#
minor – C# D# E F# G# A B C# C#
phrygian - C# D E F# G# A B C#

Bizarrely, the chord that establishes the C# phrygian tonality is D major. Why aren't we back in D major at this point? Because the melody is repeatedly using a G# note.

In fact the melody in the shimmering, glimmering part of the bridge has a distinctly japanese flavour, a subtle touch, appropriate for a love song to Yoko Ono. If we take D as the root note and select only the notes that actually appear in those 4 bars we get

D F# G# A B
R 3    #4  5  6

which is a lydian pentatonic scale but not the lydian pentatonic

Write Like Lennon

Creating a melody from chord tones is one of the simplest way to write. Just choose each melody note from the chord that supports it. So over a D major you could sing a D (the root), an F# (the third), or an A (the fifth). Extend the chord to a D9 and you could also pick the C (b7th) or E (9th). Many of Paul McCartney's melodies seem to function somewhat independently from the chord progression but John Lennon seemed to write from the chords, creating tension either by using chord movement to against monotonal melodies (the verses of I Am The Walrus and Help!) or by deliberate clashes between melody and harmony such as the repeated E sung over a Bm in Help's chorus or the I just had to laugh line in A Day In The Life where, instead of singing over a G chord as in the previous lines, Lennon introduces and F major chord which scrapes against the B natural in the melody to wonderful effect.

What has this got to do with Julia?

Lennon's melody as we've already seen is almost entirely chord tones. And yet it has none of the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star banality because his focus once again is on the chord progression rather than the melody. Once you have a chord progression this oddly compelling, almost any melody you can construct will be interesting.

--------

Can't get enough Beatles-style songs about mysterious women? Check out Sadie's Sister, my collaboration with Stuart Kidd – free to download here.

Under The Influence: Radiohead

Thom Yorke: [Paranoid Android was written] in three different sections at different times in different states of mind, and then put together. Our working model for it was Happiness Is A Warm Gun. [I] Walked into the rehearsal room one day, 'Well you know Happiness Is A Warm Gun, you know that's like three songs put together? Let's do that.' And I didn't obviously think it was going to work, until we put it together finally, which was a f***ing shock”

Colin Greenwood: [We had become interested in] brutal editing, where you just splice bits of music together, like the Beatles on Magical Mystery Tour or whatever.

Thom Yorke: What can you say about the IMF, or politicians? Or people selling arms to African countries, employing slave labour or whatever. What can you say? You just write down “Cattle prods and the IMF' and people who know, know. I can't express it any clearer than that, I don't know how to yet, I'm stuck. That's how I feel about A Day In The Life, Lennon was obviously stuck and said, 'I'm going to write a song because I've got to get this down' and it's everything he didn't say by doing that...That was what I dreamed of doing on [OK Computer]

Exit Music: The Radiohead Story by Mac Randall (p.150, 151, 159)


(And for further evidence you could always check out the similarities between Sexy Sadie and Karma Police).

11:17 I've Got A Feeling

Everybody had a good time????*

I've Got A Feeling is a pleasant enough song that punches a little above it's weight and appears slightly better than it really is.

Part of that is down to the feeling that this is a return to the Lennon/McCartney duets of old. Many Beatles tracks prior to Help have a shared lead vocal making it almost impossible for transcribers to discern who is singing melody and who is harmonising.

The reality is that this is another patchwork song like A Day In The Life, only in reverse - Lennon supplies missing 'bridge' for Paul. So despite appearances there is little emotional connection between the two and this is as much a true duet as Free As A Bird.

That said the song works because luckily the two parts fit together perfectly. They have the same chord sequence (though my guess is that Lennon's melody sat nicely on Paul's chords rather than both having come up with the same (admittedly simple) chord progression. The overlapping of parts isn't on a level with Paul's brilliant descant on Help (they both start on the 'and' after the one here) but John's low 'regular' line sits nicely under Paul's high meandering one. Paul's parts are all about 'I' but John's are about 'Everybody'. And John's wit shines against Paul's slightly lazy and vague lyrical offering. (He spends far more time telling us he has a feeling than what the feeling 'is').

There are a few nice lyrical moments in Paul's verse (please believe me/if you leave me) and bridge (wandering around/wondering how) but the latter get lost in the screaming, where as John's hair down/socks up/foot down gives a strong sense of shape to his part.

Predictably enough for blues screamer the melody uses lots of b3rd and b7ths, with Lennon's part employing the major pentatonic. There's some cool nods to the blues in the distorted chromatically descending 7th chords (0:29) that reminds me of Led Zeppelin channelling Robert Johnson on Celebration Day.

Perhaps the most interesting song tip to take away is how the band places the title in the verses.

This is the title,
The title one more time,
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
This is the title,
The title with a rhyme,
Oh no, oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.

In the second verse McCartney develops the idea with less repetition


The second verse,
Is nothing like the first,
oh yeah, oh yeah.
A straight repeat,
Might even make it worse,
oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.

But then the third verse (after the bridge) returns to the original scheme.

Maybe that's something you can take away.

*Andy Warhol - incase you were wondering. You're welcome.

   

The Band Who...Kept Expanding

Long Long(er) Long(est)

The ever increasing Beatles running time

Love Me Do (1962) - 2:23
The average pop song in the early 60's was well under 3 minutes. Some bands would even print fake shorter running times on their labels to ensure airplay.

I Saw Her Standing There (1963) - 2:56
Two bridges and guitar solo pushed this bluesy rocker to epic lengths.

You Really Got A Hold On Me (1963) - 3:03
A Smokey Robinson cover pushes the boys over 3 minutes.

She's A Woman (1964) - 3:03
McCartney pens his first B side over 3 minutes

Ticket To Ride (1965) - 3:10
And the first A side. A rave-up outro added 20 seconds

You Won't See Me (1965) - 3:23
It's a slow tempo that extends this album track.

Strawberry Fields Forever (1967) - 4:07
A experimental coda/jam session and post fade out drum solo adds over 1 minute.

Within You Without You (1967) - 5:05
mid tempo song with 30 second intro and over 1 minute instrumental section

A Day In The Life (1967) - 5:35
this time it's fade out piano chords, a dog whistle, then a loop originally recorded in the playout groove of the vinyl disc which add over 1 minute

Hey Jude (1968) - 7:08
3:03 of song plus 4:00 of coda

Revolution 9 (1968) - 8:22
nearly 81/2 minutes of atonal ego stroking by John and Yoko doesn't really count as a song. 

So the longest Beatles song is -

I Want You She's So Heavy (1969) - 7:48
4:37 song plus 3:10 non fading fade out


 It's interesting that in many of the Beatles fattest songs there's thin song trying to get out. Rather than a truly epic song like Bohemian Rhapsody, from Ticket To Ride onwards we have short songs with something tacked on the end.

Golden Ticket: Madrigalism

In my post about The Long And Winding Road I introduced a rather abstract songwriting tip (Ticket 49) which was to have the music reflect the theme of the lyrics in some overarching, profound or hidden way. At the simplest level this is called word (or text) painting or, in broader terms, madrigalism.

Here's a few exploratory thoughts on this with examples from other artists.

Word Painting

The simplest way to make your music reflect your lyrics is word painting - including a few notes or a sound effect that illustrates your lyrics at that point. Think of the keyboard part that follows "visible shivers running down my spine" (1:16) in Watching the Detectives (Elvis Costello) or the cymbal/bell/chime after “sends shivers down my spine” (2:05) in Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen). Pink Floyd have a little bell sound after "Just a little pin-prick" (2:49) in Comfortably Numb  and A Day In The Life's “woke up, got out of bed” is preceded by the sound of an alarm clock.

All of these could be classed as icing on the cake and are usually little 'post production touches' (with the exception of Paul's alarm call which was on the original track).

Groove, Timbre, Range

More fundamental to the start of the songwriting process is the letting the lyrics dictate the whole groove of the song.

Iron Maiden give two good examples with the galloping rhythm of Run To The Hills (0:48 onwards) and The Trooper (strangley enough also 0:48 onwards) accompanying tales of Crimean calvary battles and Native American warriors.

Trains also suggest a particular groove as Elvis Presley (Mystery Train) and Johnny Cash (Folsom Prison Blues) can testify. And lyrics can even suggest the timbre and range. Spinal Tap found the perfect way to accompany Big Bottom – play it on THREE bass guitars!

Mood

Next, what about ways to embody the mood? Eminem's Lose Yourself captures the claustrophobic battle against obscurity by a constantly pushing rhythm that never escapes the driving D bass note.

Private Investigations (Dire Straits) on the other hand is about a world weary private detective. The track is painfully slow and the always descending, always modulating chord progression (0:53) is like puzzle to be solved.

One Season by The Roches is a tale of love gone sour. Though the tune starts rationally enough but, as the relationship becomes more dysfunctional, so do the backing vocal harmonies (starting around 2:23).

In my own song [Everything Is] Broken I tried to reflect brokenness not only in the lyrics (which are full of broken things from coffee cups and plumbing, to peace treaties and marriages) but in broken vocal phrases and odd time signatures with missing beats. Even the very last word of the song is missing.

Melody Shape

More fundamental than mood or groove, the lyrics can shape the very melody that supports them. The ever rising "Love lift us up where we belong" in the Nitzsche/Sainte-Marie/Jennings hit is one technique that's been around at least since Handel wrote “Every valley shall be exalted...”, but one of the smartest examples must be Roger's and Hammerstein's Do-Re-Mi from The Sound Of Music.

Everyone knows the chorus

Doe- a deer, a female deer
Ray- a drop of golden sun
Me- a name I call myself
Far- a long long way to run
Sew- a needle pulling thread
La- a note to follow so
Tea- a drink with jam and bread
That will bring us back to do oh oh oh

but not everyone knows the context. The song is about musicians practicing their scales. So we have a song about scales using the solfège words for the intervals (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do) where you sing the very intervals you are singing about. Genius.

Chord Progression, Structure

That same kind of literalism can shape the chord progression or even the overall structure. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) describes the chord progression he is playing in the lyrics - “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift” just as Cole Porter had done 40 years earlier in Every Time We Say Goodbye, "How strange the change from major to minor". Natasha Beddingfield went for a similar, though less accurate, effect in These Words “Threw some chords together, the combination D-E-F”. (The chords are actually Bb/D, C/E and F but that doesn't quite sing as well!). At the subtle end of the spectrum you have The Long And Winding Road's weary trek to the 'home' chord. At the other end the song becomes a musical in-joke as in 10CC's, I Bought a Flat.

I bought a flat
Diminished responsibility
You're de ninth person to see
To be suspended in a seventh
Major catastrophe
It's a minor point but gee
Augmented by the sharpness of your
See what I'm going through
Ay to be with you
In a flat by the sea


and Matching Mole's (Robert Wyatt) Signed Curtains doesn't so much break the fourth wall, as demolish the whole house.

Opposites

Lastly, you can deliberately do the opposite of what your lyrics say. This works best in humour songs or when it serves to reveal something about the subject. Gilbert and Sullivan's pirates bellowing about how quiet and sneaky they are in With Cat-Like Tread (The Pirates of Penzance) only confirms how useless they are. And Mary Poppins, who sings lullabies entitled “Stay Awake” and slides up bannisters, natural goes UP when singing “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go DOWN”.

Conclusion and application

The great thing about this approach is can work in several ways and be employed at different stages of writing and recording.

First it can function as a way to beat the blank page. Rather than just strumming aimlessly with a set of lyrics or a title, ask yourself what kind of groove would suit the concept, what instrumentation, what tempo? Or what melodic shape would the key individual lines naturally take?

The method can also serve to function as what some authors call a 'spine' for your story (or song). Some key idea that give your song a sense of internal logic or identity. Whether it's plain to the listener or not isn't so important. Some things are obvious, some things only reveal themselves on the 10th (or 100th listen) but they do give a unity to the song.

Finally you can just use it as inspiration to add little finishing touches to a mix with sound effects or momentary overdubs.

So to recap, cheat sheet style, consider working on

• Word Painting/sound effects – 'shivers', alarm clocks
• Groove/Timbre/Range – Horses, Trains
• Mood – Lose Yourself, Private Investigations
• Melody Shape – Do Re Mi
• Chord Progression/Structure – Hallelujah, Every Time We Say Goodbye
• Opposites – A Spoonful Of Sugar

Know any other examples of these techniques?
Have you used them successfully in your own songwriting?
Leave me a comment!


Thanks to everyone on FAWM, MattBlick.com and Twitter who suggested ideas and songs for this post, especially Ashley Chittock, Cheekmeat, Rod Johnson, Nancy Rost
, David Hendricks, Thomas Spademan of Cookiefinger and, of course Wikipedia.