Five Unusual Songwriting Tricks from The Beatles

[Originally published on Sharon Goldman's Songwriting Scene blog 17 Nov 2010].

The Beatles were songwriting Ninjas, but they employed many tricks that anyone can add to their songwriting tool box. Here are five less obvious examples:

1. Mutate Your Chorus

As well as starting songs with the chorus, some of The Beatles greatest hits open with a chorus hybrid that previews the title and hooks.

The intro to Help has the same chord progression as the chorus but moves twice as fast and features the title 4 times (to the chorus's 3). Use this trick and by the time you reach your chorus the listener will be hooked by the reassuring feeling that they've heard your song somewhere before.

Also used on: She Loves You, Can't Buy Me Love. 

[Read more]

2. Bluesify Your Melody

We expect to hear blue notes like the b3rd, b5th and b7th in rockers like Back In The USSR but the Beatles often added these notes into more melodic material too.

In Blackbird the final phrase uses the b7th on inTO the LIGHT and the b3rd on dark BLACK night. This trick will add a soulful edge to your melodies but it's hard to pull off unless you're a confident singer. Inserting the blue note into your chord until you've can pitch it correctly is a smart move.

Also used on: Ticket To Ride, From Me To You.

[Read more]

3. Delay The Root Chord

Starting a song on the tonic chord is a rut the Beatles managed to avoid a surprising number of times.

Eleanor Rigby starts on C major (the bVI of Em) before heading to the home chord. It's one of the things that gives the track such a sense of tension. Using this trick will give your progressions more forward momentum.

Also used on: All My Loving, Hello Goodbye.

[Read more]

4. Utilise The Outside Chord

Many of us employ out of key chords (whether we realise it or not!). But out of 186 original Beatles compositions only 16 stay in key!

In Strawberry Fields Forever, Lennon pulls the rug from under the Bb major tonality by replacing the F major chord with an F minor.

Bb Let me take you down cos I'm going Fm to

Its like the stomach drop you experience on the crest of a rollercoaster. Later he creates a disorientating momentary high by replacing the Gm with a G major.

Eb Nothing to get G hung about

Outside chords will surprise your listeners and freshen your melodies.

Also used on: I Am The Walrus, Fool On The Hill. 

[Read more]

5. Restate Your Lyrics

The Beatles didn't make their lyrics memorable just by repeating sections wholesale. They also repeated and adapted words, phrases and sentence structures.

Take A Day In The Life. 4 verses, a middle 8 and only one repeated line. And yet it's memorable (in part) because of lyrical links like these -

I - read the news/saw a film - today, oh boy
and though the - news was/holes were - rather - sad/small
found my - way downstairs/coat/way upstairs
I just had to - laugh/look

Using this subtle trick will make your lyrics sticky and give a sense of unity to a track.

Also used on: Fixing A Hole, The Long And Winding Road. 

[Read more]

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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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10:50 Hey Jude (pt.4) More Melody

Last time we looked at how Paul constructed wonderful wandering melodies but there's more than one source of melodic stickiness.

Fragments

Paul uses a fragment of the verse to craft the melodies in the bridge and coda (Ticket 9).

The opening motif ('Hey Jude') reappears in the bridge over a Bb chord. In the verse it's C - A (the 5th to 3rd of the F chord) in the bridge F - D (the 5th to 3rd of the Bb chord). Similar two note descending motifs appear all through the bridge

Hey Jude (F - D) refrain (F - Bb) don't car- (F - D) - ry the world upon (D - C) your should- (Bb - A) - ders

This “Hey Jude” motif occurs in all three sections of the song, moving in the same direction and by the same amount - dropping down a minor 3rd (or one and a half tones). The only variation is the coda slurs the 'He-ey' over two notes.

Verse – C A
Bridge – F D
Coda - Eb D C

The childlike simplicity of the chord progression

F C C F Bb F C F

and the melody's 'conversational' rhythm perfectly represent the subject matter and intention of the song. Note also Paul's gift for placing words - the way he goes down on the words 'bad' and 'sad' but then lifts up on 'song'. It really makes the melody 'sing' (pardon the pun).

How much of this is conscious or premeditated? Probably very little. We're witnessing a genius at work. But, for lesser mortals like us, the more we consciously emulate great techniques the more likely we are to become instinctual artists. (hey, I can live in hope!)

The verse is notable for it's use of anacrusis. Look at the number of syllables that precede the first beat of each bar.

Hey 1
don't make it 3
Take a 2
and make it 3
Re 1
to let her into your 6
Then you can sta 4
to make i-t be 5

Constrasts

Another point is the contrast between the three sections (Ticket 5). There's is no repetition in the 8 bar verse melody, but the bridge is a 4 bar melody which is repeated and the coda melody, short and simple though it is, consists of 3 one bar phrases with only the 'middle' bar repeated

FAC – Nah nah nah
GFGF – na na nah nah
GFGF – na na nah nah
EbDC - He-ey Jude

This contrast between verse and bridge (unrepeating melody vs. tune played twice) is exactly the same as Mother Natures Son and the coda's melodic structure (ABBC) is the same as the chorus of Carry That Weight.

Boy you're gonna
Carry that weight
Carry that weight
A long time

The verse has a solid root inversion chord progression that is almost hymn-like compared to the bridge's elegant descending bassline that moves at twice the speed.

Bb Bb/A Bb/G Bb/F C/E C F

The symmetrical verse contrasts with the bridge's odd shape - an extra bar of F7 serves as a transition between the two sections (0:52) but then reoccurs in the middle of the bridge (a Lennon Extension - Ticket 52).

Lastly there's a key change (of sorts). The verse is solidly in F major but the transitional F7 seems to imply we've transposed to Bb major (Ticket 45) or at least to F mixolydian (Ticket 51). My money's on the latter, as the coda is clearly mixolydian.

Ambiguity

The bridge sections ends with F7 to C7 which implies McCartney loves tonal ambiguity. He continually messes with our heads by switching between E natural and Eb throughout the song. The aforementioned F7 (containing Eb) fools us we're heading into a Bb major bridge. But a few bars later we get a C/E (E natural) which remains in effect for a 2 bars till we get the F7 (again) followed by the C/E (again). This F7 segues awkwardly into C7 which gets us safely back to the verse.

The Eb to E natural clash is highlighted in the ascending melody at end of the bridge (nah nah – I know, quoting the lyrics is not that helpful... [1:23] and by the descending chromatic piano lick going into the bridge (Ticket 3).


Another cool hook involving chromatic movement is the transition into the coda

(better, better, better...) E - F, G# - A, B - C, E - F, G# A, B - C, F.

Paul is simply singing the intervals of the F major chord (F A C) but approaching each one from a semitone below. Again this hook is an extension of a smaller melodic motif. In just the same way Paul used the opening 'Hey Jude' tune to create more ideas, here he takes the closing note of the verse (better E - F). John Barry (or Monty Norman) used the same thing to create the ending of the James Bond Theme (Ticket 4).

Just like The Long And Winding Road all the out of key chord (Ticket 28) action is due to one note. Eb is the common denominator in the melodic weirdness, the F7, and the coda's Eb major chord, where it is part of a trip backwards through the circle of fifths (Ticket 43) or if you want to get grandiose 'double plagal' cadence (Eb Bb F).

The modest attempts at a descant at 1:42 and the way Lennon switches from low to high harmony (just like the old days) show flashes of brilliance and togetherness (Ticket 58).

That wraps up Hey Jude. I'm working on the second episode of the podcast (get on the mailing list now if you want to receive it) and next up on the blog will be Sexy Sadie!

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Ticket 74: Keep The Tonics Apart Till The End

One way to write compelling, yet non-repetitive melodies is to delay the point where the tonic (or root) note lands on the tonic chord till the very end of the section. In the key of C major this would mean not letting your melody rest on a C when the chord progression is on a C major chord. This helps the melody maintain a strong forward momentum and seems to work best on slower ballads.This songwriting tip is covered in more detail here.

Hey Jude
Mother Nature's Son
The Long and Winding Road

Also

I'll Never Fall In Love Again (Bacharach/David)
Manhattan (Rodgers/Hart)
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (Bacharach/David)
This Guy's In Love With You (Bacharach/David)

See also

Golden Ticket: Keep The Tonics Apart Till The End
Ticket 3: Create catchy, melodic, rhythmic or sonic 'hooks'
Ticket 6: Avoid the root chord
Ticket 7: Avoid using all three major chords early in the song
Ticket 10: Finish on the 6 (vi) chord
Ticket 13: Make the vocal line stay on non-chord tones
Ticket 16: Finish a minor key song on the major tonic (I) chord
Ticket 22: Incorporate 'blue notes' (b3, b5 and b7) into a major key melody
Ticket 46: Finish on an unexpected chord in a major key song
Ticket 50: Keep your melody off the root note
Ticket 56: Write a melody over a chord sequence, then completely change the chord sequence

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Golden Ticket: Keep The Tonics Apart Till The End (Ticket 74)

How to write a McCartney-style flowing, non-repeating, melody

I'm going to interrupt the regular (ha!) Hey Jude posts to look at one way McCartney manages to write such memorable, yet non-repetitive melodies.

In the musical language the tonic note and the tonic chord function as a 'full stops' [US – 'period'] in the music. The effect is particularly strong when they happen at the same time. Here are three examples (all verses) where McCartney cleverly uses the tonic and it's chord sparingly and delays them occurring together till the end of the section. In this way McCartney uses our inbuilt longing for resolution to keep us hooked till the very end.

Hey Jude

Hey Jude starts on the tonic chord (F) with the melody moving from 5th to 3rd (Hey Jude). Landing on the third is just enough to give an open ended feel and keep a sense of forward motion. Try singing Hey Jude on C to F (5 to 1) or A to F (3 to 1). Lands with a thud doesn't it?

Next comes a tonic NOTE, the high F on sad SONG AND make but far from resolving this sits very unstably on top of a C7 chord.

The next time we hear the tonic CHORD the melody descends through D C Bb to A (a 6th to the 3rd) on Be - te - e - er. Again landing on the 3rd feels unfinished.

There are some 'blink and you miss them' tonic NOTES over a Bb chord (let HER inTO) before we land on the tonic CHORD again but this time the word HEART is sung on the 5th.

Another fleeting F, this time low (THEN you can start), before finally melody and harmony unite on the tonic to make it BettER. But then we're off again on another delayed gratificational mystery tour as we launch into the next section.

Mother Nature's Son

Here we're in the key of D.

Line one starts and ends on the tonic chord but the melody starts and ends on the 5th.

On MOTHER naTURes son we get the (high) tonic NOTE over the Bm (vi) chord giving us a partial resolution.

Fast moving 3rd, 5th and 6th's appear over the tonic CHORD in line three (all day long), though the tonic chords are D/A's and feel slightly less resolved in themselves than straight D major chords.

We conclude with high D notes over a D major (tonic) chord on EVeryONE.

Again Paul is delaying the point that the tonic chord and tonic note coincide to the very end of the section.

The Long and Winding Road

Here we're in the key of Eb major.

Though the second note is a high Eb (the LONG and) we start on a Cm chord (vi).

By the time we hear our first fleeting tonic CHORD (Eb maj) the melody lands on a Bb (the 5th) (that LEADS to your door) this only lasts for 2 beats anyway before twisting round with an Eb7 (I7) giving the false impression that we're about to change key to Ab major*.

The next time we hear the tonic NOTE (will neVER disappear) it's sitting unstably on a Gm chord (iii). This idea repeats exactly on alWAYS leads me.

Between these twin motifs the melody descends C Bb G F Eb on the word BEFORE. This time the low tonic note is sitting on top of a Db/Eb chord, which functions in exactly the same way as the Eb7 chord - pulling strongly towards an Ab major chord.

Finally, as I have written about before, the melody ascends directly to the tonic note C C D Eb Eb (lead me to YOUR DOOR) at the same time as the chords move in a very strong 'circle of fourths' movement** (Fm Bb7 Eb) towards the tonic chord.

Practical Application

Many melodies never 'get off the ground' because they are rooted (literally) to the ground, returning to the 'root note' over the 'root chord' again and again through their course. With this method of melody writing, both tonic note and tonic chord can appear - but not together (or at least for any length of time). Keeping them apart till the very end of the section builds suspense.

*This is the same V of IV move recognisable in the link between the verse and the bridge in Hey Jude.

**This is often referred to as circle of fifths which is something of a misnomer as the chords are travelling BACKWARDS through the circle of fifths, thus from Fm we move up a fourth to Bb7 and then up a fourth again to Eb major.

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Ticket 58: Write a Descant

A descant is second contrasting vocal melody, often with more or less the same lyrics, but with a different rhythm, that happens at the same time as the main vocal. Writing and performing one takes a lot of skill to make it work, but it's worth it. You can achieve a similar effect but layering the vocals to one section over another (e.g. Eleanor Rigby, Djimi Traore)

Eleanor Rigby
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Hello Goodbye
Help
It Won't Be Long Now
She's Leaving Home

also

California Dreaming (Mamas And The Papas)
Djimi Traore (Matt Blick)
Good Vibrations (Beach Boys)
Ignorance Is Bliss (Jellyfish)
Sloop John B (Beach Boys)
The Ghost Of Number One (Jellyfish)

See also

Ticket 3: Make Everything A Hook
Ticket 4: Recycle Your 'O's
Ticket 11: Play The Vocal Rhythm
Ticket 23: Write Fewer Lyrics
Ticket 24: Use Parallel Lyrics


See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 56: Write Your Melody Over Phantom Chords

Create musical tension by writing a melody over a chord or progression and then sing it over a different one. It will push you into new melodic territory.

A Day In The Life (verse – I just had to laugh)
I Want To Hold You Hand (bridge - and when I touch you)

also

Frank Zappa used a variation of this technique by literally taking the solo from one live song and overdubbing it onto completely different song. He called this approach Xenocrony or “the Ampex guitar”

See also

Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords
Ticket 27: Place Your Main Lyric On The Highest Point Of The Melody

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 51: Use The Mixolydian Mode

The Mixolydian mode is a major scale with a b7th. In the key of A

A B C# D E F# G

Chords

Amaj Bm C#dim* Dmaj Em F#m G maj

A 'happy' scale but not as saccharine as the major scale (Ionian mode). The relative freshness of the scale often frees up songwriters to use just two or three chords to make their point.

*In practice the C#dim is often replaced by A/C#

Paperback Writer
Rain
She Said She Said
The Inner Light
Tomorrow Never Knows
Within You Without You

also

All Right Now (Free)
Best Of Both Worlds (Van Halen)
Celebration - Verse (Kool And The Gang)
Ever So Lonely (Monsoon)
Highway To Hell (AC/DC)
In The Light – intro (Led Zeppelin)
Summer Song (Joe Satriani)
Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

And much Indian and Country Rock music.

See also

Ticket 28: Use At Least One Out Of Key Chord
Ticket 40: Don't Use All Seven Notes Of The Scale
Ticket 63: Write With The 'Other' Scale
Ticket 68: Use the R b7 6 b6 Progression

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 50: Keep Your Melody Off The Root Note

This can give a restless, unsettled quality to your song.

Get Back

also

Keep Yourself Alive - verse (Queen)

See also

Ticket 6: Stay Off The Root Chord
Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 22: Bluesify Your Melody
Ticket 27: Place Your Main Lyric On The Highest Point Of The Melody
Ticket 39: Don't Start The Melody On The First Beat

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 48: Static Melody/Changing Chords

Repeat the same melodic idea over a changing chord progression. This can be great for building up tension. Many blues songs use this trick.

1958 Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

1968 Dear Prudence (0:43)
1968 While My Guitar Gently Weeps - verse

1969 The Long And Winding Road - verse

See also

Ticket 9: Recycle Musical Cells
Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords
Ticket 56: Write Your Melody Over Phantom Chords
Ticket 58: Write a Descant

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 40: Don't Use All Seven Notes Of The Scale

Create some deliberate ambiguity by what you DON'T play. Let people assume they're hearing notes and then mess with those assumptions.

Come Together
Love You To
Rain

also

The Riddle (Steve Vai)

See also

Ticket 6: Stay Off The Root Chord
Ticket 7: Avoid Using All Three Major Chords Early In The Song
Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords
Ticket 45: Change Keys Between Sections
Ticket 50: Stay Off The Root Note In The Melody
Ticket 51: Use The Mixolydian Mode
Ticket 56: Write Your Melody Over Phantom Chords

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 39: Don't Start The Melody On The First Beat

Use an anacrusis (starting the melody with a 'pick up') – e.g. the "hey" in Hey Jude. This requires some confidence as a vocalist to pull off. Alternatively start the melody after the 'one' – e.g. Come Together. This is much more common, as hearing the chord before you sing provides a 'safety net'.

Before

A Hard Day's Night
All My Loving
Blue Jay Way
Can't Buy Me Love
Dear Prudence
Don't Let Me Down
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
Hey Jude
No Reply
Penny Lane
Strawberry Fields Forever - chorus
Yellow Submarine
You're Going To Lose That Girl


After

Come Together
Here Comes The Sun
We Can Work It Out
You Never Give Me Your Money


also

Before

Angels – chorus (Robbie Williams)
Beauty And The Beast (Ashman/Menken)
They Can't Take That Away From Me (Gershwin/Gershwin)
You Do Something To Me (Paul Weller)

After

Great Balls Of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis) 
Imagine (John Lennon)

See also

Ticket 11: Play The Vocal Rhythm
Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 22: Bluesify Your Melody
Ticket 50: Stay Off The Root Note In The Melody


See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 27: Place Your Main Lyric On The Highest Point Of The Melody

The most important lyric is usually your title but it could be an emotional point instead ('Ah, look at all the lonely people' rather than 'Eleanor Rigby'). This songwriting tip will cause your lyrical highpoint to stand out more effectively, and that will go a long way towards making your song unforgettable.

Carry That Weight, Come Together, Eleanor Rigby, Get Back, It's Only Love, She Loves You

also Be My Baby (The Ronettes), Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel), Rolling In The Deep (Adele), Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Judy Garland)

See also
Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords
Ticket 36: Emphasise Key Lyrics By Changing Chord On Every Syllable Or Word
Ticket 39: Don't Start The Melody On The First Beat
Ticket 50: Stay Off The Root Note In The Melody

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

See also Where Should You Put a Song Melody’s High Point? 

Ticket 22: Bluesify Your Melody

Most people are familiar with the concept of singing notes from the minor pentatonic scale over major chords in a 12 bar blues, but why not do it over non blues structures too? Make your vocal lines spicier by adding the b3, b5 or b7 to major key melodies. Be bold dahling! (If you're struggling to pitch the b5 you might want to try it over a IV7 chord).

Because
Come Together (and here)
Drive My Car
From Me To You
Get Back
Golden Slumbers
Hey Bulldog
Honey Pie
I'm So Tired
Oh! Darling
Old Brown Shoe
One After 909
She Loves You
The Long And Winding Road

You can also hear this in some instrumental sections as well notably Piggies, She Loves You and Yesterday

Also Suffragette City (David Bowie)

See Also

Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords

and

The Band Who Lived Outside

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write


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Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords

If your chord progression contains some out of key chords you can navigate through it by writing a melody that shifts between several keys, but a more listener-friendly (not to say singer-friendly) option is to construct a tune that simply avoids any notes that clash. So if you are in the key of C major and shake things up with a D major chord (D F# A) why not avoid singing an F or an F# over that chord. Use something else from the C major scale instead. Once it's passed you can go back to the original scale as if nothing happened. That way you get the freshness of the chord change without the hassle of having to tweak the melody.

Golden Slumbers, Here Comes The Sun, I'm So Tired, Julia, Martha My Dear, There's A Place

See Also

Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones
Ticket 28: Use At Least One Out Of Key Chord

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

Ticket 13: Make The Vocals Stay On Non-Chord Tones

Hanging out on the 2nd 4th 6th or even 7th in a melody creates tension as they long to resolve to nice 'safe' root, third or fifth chord tones. And as most songwriters automatically camp out on the root, 3rd & 5th any melody that avoids overusing them has an instant advantage in trying to be original.

Day Tripper, Get Back, Golden Slumbers, Help, I'm So Tired, There’s A Place, She Loves You, You Never Give Me Your Money

See Also

Ticket 14: Write An In-Key Melody Over Out-Of-Key Chords
Ticket 22: Bluesify Your Melody
Ticket 50: Stay Off The Root Note

See the full list of songwriting tips here - Tickets To Write

10:27 Piggies (pt. 3) – Recycling On The Farm

Let's finish up our discussion of Piggies.

The highlight of the song for me is the way Harrison and Producer/Arrangers Chris Thomas and George Martin recycle and develop themes both large and small. Ticket 4 is in full effect -the intro, outro and solo are all fashioned from the verse melody - and the bridge, constructed from a three note melodic cell, is a primer in Ticket 9.

The intro is little more than the first 5 notes of the verse. The solo is largely the verse melody inverted and 'pedal-pointed' – the verse melody

C Db Eb C, Bb C Db Bb etc

becomes the solo pattern

Eb Db C Eb, Db C Bb Db

Things get really clever in the Coda. First, they restate the intro idea (1:42) before converting the major key tune into the minor (1:44). Then they restates the first bar of the melody exactly in the new minor key (1:47). But there's more clever stuff to come.

The melody finishes with a five note ascending harmonic minor scale (Ab Bb Cb D Eb) over a Bb to Eb chord progression (1:50). Though the Bb is 'out of key' it fits right in under the D note and having 'borrowed' Bb major throughout as the V of V ( Bb is the 5th of Eb which is the 5th of Ab major – the original key) it feels normal. But ending this way gives the impression we've changed key just in time for the final chord. Are we now in Eb major?

No. It's a false ending (Ticket 47) and the icing on the cake is yet another cadence (Eb, Ebmaj7, Eb6, Bb), this time IV – I in the final key of Bb (1:55).

So in the last few bars we changed key three times from Ab major to Ab minor to Eb major to Bb major! And none of it felt forced or disorientating. Genius.

Micro Recycling (Ticket 9)

In the bridge Harrison creates the opening melodic material from 3 notes, each a tone apart (Db Eb F)

F Eb Db F (in their sties with)

While the chords move up a tone, from Bbm to C7, the cell moves down a semitone

E D E C (all their backing). He extends the idea further in the second half

F Eb Db F – in their eyes there's
E D E C - something lacking
F Eb Db F – what they need's a

with the final line becoming an inversion of the initial cell (F Eb Db F becoming Eb F G Eb)

Eb F G Eb – damn good whacking

Pork Scratchings

There's plenty of other things to love here, both 'ticketed' and not

Though the melody is mostly comprised of chord tones the chromatic run up to III7 (0:45) is cheeky as is the fact that it leads to a ii rather than the more common vi or VI.

There's a nice contrast between the sections (Ticket 5) in the way the hooky harpsichord parts (Ticket 3) are kept for 'special occasions' and the bridge's effected vocals and stabbing keyboard chords. Madrigalism (Ticket 49) rears it's piggie head with grunting instruments (and sfx) throughout.

There's contrary motion (Ticket 12) at the end of the harpsichord solo (1:19) and with a 2:04 running time there's definitely no fat on this hog (Ticket 2).

There's an AABA 'no chorus' structure (Ticket 26) and we don't blow all three major chords early (Ticket 7) as you don't hear the IV till the bridge (0:51).

Lyrically good points abound (though verse 1 seem to contradict itself - surely things are getting better if clean clothes are provided?). We have parallel lyrics (Ticket 24) -

have you seen the little/bigger piggies and in their eyes/sties

internal rhymes -

lives/wives with knives

and there is strongly unified lyrical imagery (Ticket 54) because the song isn't really about pigs – remember?

I'll try to fit in one more Beatles song before the new year and a special video. But if I don't see you before then – HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

10:21 Honey Pie (pt.2)

Last time we saw how well McCartney wears the 1920's clothing of Honey Pie but for me the most impressive songwriting element is the way he rams together odd ill fitting chords but then smooths them over with an elegant melody.

How Strange The Change...

The odd chords may be old Beatles standbys - the Cm (m4 - ticket 8), the Eb7 (bVI - ticket 1) and the chords derived from going backwards through the circle of fifths (ticket 43) but Paul gets them in early (ticket 61) with the Cm (iv) in the 3rd bar of verse and the Eb7 (bVI) in the 3rd bar of the chorus and stays off the C maj (IV – ticket 7) till half way through the song (1:13 “thought of meeting you”). Though this sounds like a recipe for atonal disaster the reverse circle of fifth (or circle of fourths) movement actually keeps us grounded.

A7 D7 (G) - 0:24 end of verse “and if she...”
E7 A7 D7 G – 0:44 end of chorus A section “I'm in love...”
E7 Am D7 (G) – 1:14 end of chorus B section “makes me weak..”

The magic happens combining Eb7 and E7 – both the bVI and the VI are common substitutions but putting them next to each other (0:42) is a really arresting chord change.

You Can't Do That

Paul bluesifies his melody (ticket 22) as you might expect in a jazz style number but most of the out of key b3s are supported by chords

eg “Crazy” (Bb G Bb) over Eb7 (Eb G Bb Db)

and the melody is chord based with a few cool exceptions.

“North of England” (0:05) - b c a b over a Cm chord is a very spicy morsel. Though the the G major scale melody is fighting the out of key chord, Paul boldly goes for it.

The end of the B section is even more daring. Here the D# E F melody is not demanded by the key or the chords underneath (C E7 Am) yet Paul goes atonal for a few bars (1:13-1:18) “thought of meeting you makes me weak in the knee” and pulls it off with ease. I think we're afraid of dissonance in the west and could use it a lot more than we do, but you have to be a confident singer to pull it off. Remember – semitones are you friend!

He Got Rhythm

Another element that holds the tune together is the rhythmic cell of accented notes on the first beat and the “and” after the second beat. This is normally expressed as a three note phrase with notes either on

1 and (2) and
 or
1 (and) 2 and

- the loose phrasing means it's not always easy to say which is which!

You can hear this in action when Paul sings “working girl/ honey pie /crazy /lazy /you became /silver screen /thought of meet /makes me weak” and the same 'pushed third beat' rhythm is picked by the whole band through the song (1:36, 1:44, 1:49, 2:29, 2:37).

Something In The Way He Moves

But the most effective tool in wrangling unruly chords is the way Paul uses melodic fragments (ticket 9). Faced with tying together G - Eb7 with E7 - A7 and having almost no commonality with notes, Paul uses the same melodic shape* on the second and third lines. Here's the notes -

A Honey Pie - B D G
B You are making me crazy – D E G E D Bb G Bb
B I'm in love but I'm lazy - Bb B E B A G E G
C So won't you please come home - D B C D Bb A G

Notice we're not talking about repeating the notes or supporting chords, which are all totally different, but the shape -

A Honey Pie - 1st note up down
B You are making me crazy - 1st note up up down down down down up
B I'm in love but I'm lazy - 1st note up up down down down down up
C So won't you please come home - 1st note up up up down down down

The middle two lines also rhyme in the same place for emphasis and the last three intervals are an exact copy - note, drop a minor 3rd, return to first note. Has to be deliberate!

I guess the big takeaways from this song are

• Listen to other genres of music and try to play them. For every fruity song that Paul wrote there are 10 'regular' Beatles tracks that were spiced up with a weird chord or progression that they discovered banging out show tunes in Hamburg. John and Paul didn't learn C#m7b5 or Daug5 from Chuck Berry songs.

• Practice singing odd intervals over chords till they feel comfortable. Don't always go for the root third and fifth of everything.

• Pay attention to and repeat shapes in your melody, not just notes. Especially when you're trying to sing over weird chords.

Next up. Happiness Is A Warm Gun. Oh boy. They just keep getting more challenging...

*I hadn't pulled apart Honey Pie at the time, but I used this approach to navigate the crazy chords in the verse of The Ballad Of NDC - though obviously Paul get's better results! In fact, nobody does it better...

10:17 Martha My Dear (pt.5) Cells And Rugs

So far we've seen that Martha My Dear is an incredibly complex song rhythmically and structurally key-wise, yet it doesn't descend into prog-rock indulgence. How come?

One of the reasons it remains accessible is the way McCartney uses melodic cells – creating different melodies by reusing the same 3 note fragments (Ticket 9).

So the first (and probably most memorable) cell is the Bb C G that occurs twice in the melody

Mar-tha my dear, 
though I spend my days

in interval terms that movement would be described as up a tone (to C) and down a fifth (to G)

this exact same interval also occurs in the phrase

Silly girl

at the end of every bridge

(F) up a tone (to G) and down a fifth (to D)

But what our ear instinctively picks up on and finds pleasing are not the notes or even the intervals as much as the overall shape.

So the SHAPE could could be described as - take three notes, play the middle, then highest, then lowest.

Bb C G - middle, high, low
F G D - middle, high, low

Inverting this pattern (middle, low, high) gives us the second cell, which occurs three times in quick succession in bridge 2

You're bound to see - F D G
That you and me - A G C
Were meant to be - F D A

different notes, different intervals, even different rhythms but the same shape – middle, low, high. The fact that the motif is repeated in an ascending pattern really helps the bridge section take off.

Is this some kind of musical Da Vinci Code? Am I seeing patterns where there are none?

Possibly.

Surely Paul wasn't consciously using patterns?

Probably.

But in random song like this with so little direct repetition something is making it catchy. One thing that distinguishes great songwriters is the instinctive ability to craft a melody with a pleasing shape. Like the Dude's rug melodic cells really tie the song together.

Another thing that ties the song together is the way McCartney ends both bridges with the same line “silly girl” (ticket 41) McCartney did this with Golden Slumbers, Let It Be and the guitar part of Blackbird and Lennon used it on Julia.

And speaking of bridges – did I mention that this song has two? That's gotta be worth a new ticket (T62). Why have one bridge when you can have two? Tricky to pull off without looking like you don't know what you're doing, but the Beatles did it on I'll Be Back. Do you think it works? Any thoughts on when a song might benefit from two distinctly different bridges?

Leave me a comment.

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.

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