10:43 Yer Blues (pt. 1) John Got (No) Rhythm

...Or The Art Of The 12.333 Recurring Bar Blues

John was a brilliant rhythm guitarist, despite the fact that he didn't have any real sense of timing

Ringo Starr: Rolling Stone

I dig the people that notice that I have a sort of strange rhythm scene, because I've never been able to keep rhythm on the stage. I always used to get lost. It's me double off-beats

John Lennon: Rolling Stone

John Lennon was too much of a free spirit and had too short of an attention span to be locked down to anything as mundane as a time signature. And for someone like that the only options are to function largely as a solo artist (in the Robert Johnson/John Lee Hooker mould), where you're free to add or subtract beats as you feel, or hope you find a band charmed by your talents and technically able to follow and interpret your whims. Every rhythmical idiot savant needs a group of geniuses with the patience to spot and interpret his genius. In the Beatles Lennon found his perfect support group. Johnny Lennon and the Enablers would have been a great name for the band.

Yer Blues, like Happiness Is A Warm Gun, is an important song because it reveals what Lennon's maverick approach to counting could produce when indulged

The 'fake' count in reveals* Lennon envisioned the song as a very slow 12/8 time. Making it a 6 bar blues. But the 5th bar has two extra 8th notes

12/8   E | E | A | E |
14/8   G B7 |
12/8   E A E B7 |

How you subdivide that 5th bar is up for grabs – 6/8 and 8/8? 12/8 then 2/8? But the genesis is clear. Lennon's just delaying the next bar to allow the guitar lick and the vocal line to finish. This is the essence of the Lennon Extension (Ticket 52). There is a way to keep to 12/8 by slightly overlapping the guitar and vocals. And many bands would have forced their rhythmically challenged singer into it. But all credit to the Beatles for having the guts to their wayward genius be.

So if this is a 6 bar oddity, why does it feel like a 12 bar blues? Well, if you hear it as 6/8 instead of 12 you can immediately see the standard progression take shape.

6/8   E | E | E | E |
6/8   A | A | E | E |
6/8   G |
8/8   B7 |
6/8   E A | E B7 |

Four bars on the tonic (I) chord two on the subdominant (IV) back to the tonic for two (I) then a four bar turnaround. Replace G - B7 with B7 - A and lose the rhythmic shenanigans and we could be playing any of a million blues songs. As it is Lennon adds a 3rd of a bar making this a 12 and 1/3 bar blues, or if you prefer 12.333 recurring bar blues.

In the 3rd and 4th verses Lennon introduces more rhythmic weirdness. The first four bars (sticking to our 12 bar template) switch to double time. Millions of songs double (or halve) time with no sense of crunching gear change.

So 1  +  2  +   3  +  4  +

becomes 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

but in 12/8 or 6/8 each beat is divided into three

1 + a 2 + a 3 + a 4 + a

so the new double-time beat is falling in between the + and the 'a'. This makes the switch from one to the other very tricky to pull off - kudos to Ringo here who uses his fills in bar four to ease the band back into the half time feel of bars 5-12. In the 5th verse the band never switches back, remaining at the double-time tempo right through the solos.

All this makesYer Blues an important song for using polyrhythms (Ticket 29) and changing time signatures between sections (Ticket 15).

PS

The Ocean by Led Zeppelin has a number of things in common with this song.

• Odd time signatures
• A change in feel to straight ahead shuffle after a very noticeable tape edit
• A reference to old timey music connected with the shuffle (Lennon: “Even hate my rock and roll” Plant: “Doo-wop be dooby dooby”)
• Ending in a fade out (rare for Zep – very rare for Beatles)
• A vocal count in

Listen to The Ocean here

* Lennon's count in is the third fake one we've come across – both I Saw Her Standing There and Taxman have count-ins spliced in from different takes just for effect.

More on Yer next time...

Links

70+ Songwriting Tips From The Beatles
The BeAtletudes
About Beatles Songwriting Academy
Let's Build An Airport EP

Ticket 57: Use Rhythmic Displacement

Repeat a melody fragment or riff, but start on a different beat. The 3 over 4 hemiola (see Ticket 29) is a small example of this approach.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

also

Black Dog – riff (Led Zeppelin)
Cult Of Personality – riff (Living Colour)
Fascinating Rhythm (Gershwin)
Kashmir – riff (Led Zeppelin)
Little Wonder – bridge vocals (David Bowie)
Monkey Doodle Doo (from The Cocoanuts) (Berlin)
Something's Coming – West Side Story (Bernstein)
Something's Gotta Give (Mercer)
Walk This Way – riff (Aerosmith)

See also

Ticket 9: Recycle Musical Cells
Ticket 15: Change Time Signatures Between Sections
Ticket 29: Use Polyrhythms
Ticket 37: The Lennon Edit

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

Further Reading: Afro Impro: Rhythmic Displacement

Ticket 52: The Lennon Extension

Create a momentary time signature change by simply adding a beat (or bar), especially if you need extra space to fit more words into the vocal line. This is the opposite trick to the The Lennon Edit (Ticket 37) and is common in the same genres of music – solo blues, folk, TV themes and advertising jingles.

Back In The USSR - second chorus
Don't Let Me Down
Helter Skelter – at 0:30 the G chord is delayed while McCartney sings 'tell me” four times (compare 1:10 where he sings the line three times and the G is a bar earlier)
Revolution 1- at 3:24 (due to a mistake in tape editing)

also

Coney Island Baby – chorus (Tom Waits)
I'm Shakin' (Jack White)
Let Me Roll It (Paul McCartney) (again, due to a mistake in tape editing)
Soundcheck Song – 'keyboard' verse (Matt Blick)
The Key - 3rd verse (Sonny Boy Williamson)

See also

Ticket 2: Put Your Song On A Diet
Ticket 15: Change Time Signatures Between Sections
Ticket 29: Use Polyrhythms
Ticket 37: The Lennon Edit
Ticket 53: Write A 'Jazz-Style Intro' Verse
Ticket 57: Use Rhythmic Displacement

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

Ticket 29: Use Polyrhythms

There is a lot of crossover and grey areas between what constitutes polyrhythm, polymeter, cross rhythm, hemiola or sesquialtera. For practical purposes I'm using 'polyrhythm' to mean any musical idea where two rhythms work against each other.

In the Beatles music that plays itself out in one of three ways

1) Constantly switching between two meters

e.g. Here Comes The Sun (Sun. sun, sun, here it comes) or America (Bernstein/Sondheim)

2) A pattern that goes against the underlying pulse

e.g. Here Comes The Sun (the guitar melody at the end of the chorus) or Something's Gotta Give (Johnny Mercer)

3) An instrument playing in one time signature while others play in a different time signature

e.g. Happiness Is A Warm Gun (“When I hold you...” – drums in 4/4 band in 3/4) or When The Sun Goes Down – verse riff (Arctic Monkeys)

Rhythm-wise the most popular combination is a 3:2 polyrhythm or cross rhythm, also known as a hemiola. This is a rhythmic figure in sets of 2 placed over (or next to) one grouped in sets of 3 (or vice versa). America is a good example.

I like to / be in A /me / ri / ca = 123 / 123 / 12 / 12 / 12

The hemiola is common in Sub-Saharan African music, ragtime, gamelan and Chuck Berry style 'double stop' licks.

Happiness Is A Warm Gun (Mother Superior... / When I Hold You...)
Here Comes The Sun (end of chorus/bridge)
I've Got A Feeling (guitar fill)
I Will (final percussion)
Mean Mr Mustard (verse 1)
She's Leaving Home (string part)
Something (bridge)
The End (final verse)
Why Don't We Do It In The Road? (melody)

Also

Achilles Last Stand (Led Zeppelin)
America – melody (Bernstein/Sondheim)
Black Dog – E riff 9:8 (Led Zeppelin)
Carol Of The Bells - melody implied (Mykola Leontovych/Wilhousky)
Crags And Clay – piano (Gungor)
Cult Of Personality - riff (Living Colour)
Fascinating Rhythm – melody 7:4 (Gershwin)
Henriette – verse two “and I got/and I got sort of bored besides” (Lake Street Dive)
 
I Fought the Law – verse two drums (Crickets / Bobby Fuller Four / The Clash)
Kashmir – first two riffs (Led Zeppelin)
Kiss Like Judas – keyboard intro (It Bites)
Quit Hatin – keyboard riff (Aaliyah) 
Something's Coming – melody (Bernstein/Sondheim)
Something's Gotta Give – melody (Johnny Mercer)
The Entertainer – melody (Scott Joplin)
The March of the Black Queen (Queen)
Till The World Ends (Britney Spears)
Walk This Way - riff - 5:4 (Aerosmith)
When The Sun Goes Down – riff (Arctic Monkeys)

See also

Ticket 15: Change Time Signatures Between Sections
Ticket 19: Different Bar Blues
Ticket 20: End With A Couple Of Triplets
Ticket 37: The Lennon Edit
Ticket 39: Don't Start The Melody On The First Beat
Ticket 52: The Lennon Extension
Ticket 57: Use Rhythmic Displacement

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

Further reading

Hemiola
Polyrhythm

 Thanks to Nancy Rost & Bo Danerius on the BSA forum for examples

Ticket 15: Change Time Signatures Between Sections

E.g. verse in 3⁄4, chorus in 4/4.

A Taste Of Honey, Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Here Comes The Sun, Mean Mr Mustard, She Said She Said, The End, Two Of Us, We Can Work It Out

Also Paranoid Android (Radiohead), Take The Time (Dream Theatre), Over The Hills And Far Away (Led Zeppelin)

See also

Ticket 37: The Lennon Edit
Ticket 45 Change Keys Between Sections
Ticket 52: The Lennon Extension
Ticket 57: Use Rhythmic Displacement
Ticket 63: Use Polyrhythms

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

10:23 Happiness Is A Warm Gun (pt.2) - You Can Count On Ringo

Rhythmic Shenanigans in Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Last time we broke down this song into four sections and noted that throughout there are interesting things going on with the beats, bar length and time signatures

Section 1 (She's not a girl) is in 4/4 but when we get to the second half (She's well acquainted...) the length of the phrases change.

She's well acquainted – 5 bars
Man in the crowd – 4 bars
Lying with his eyes – 4 bars
A soap impression 4 1/2 bars (the 2/4 bar happens on the words "donated to the").

In section 2 (I need a fix) we switch to 3/4 for an 11 bar pattern played twice.

Section 3 (Mother Superior) alternates a 9/4 bar with a 10/4 bar or (if you prefer a pattern of 6/8, 3/4, 3/4 alternating with 6/8, 3/4, 4/4). And again, lest that's too normal for you we get the entire pattern 3 times instead of the more usual 2 or 4 times.

Section 4 (Happiness is a warm gun) comprises of a four bar sequence (C, Am, F, G) played twice in 4/4. Then the same sequence is played three times in 3/4 before switching back to 4/4 for two more times. Following a pause for a false ending (ticket 47) we get the 4/4 two more times.

John Lennon Likes To Be In America

Dropping or adding beats (tickets 37 and 52) and alternating time signatures (ticket 15) are something that Lennon did in his sleep from She Said She Said to All You Need Is Love. In fact I think it took more effort for him to confine himself to 4 beats in the bar (see the outtake of I'll Be Back and last weeks post). But the rhythmic monkey business takes a step up in section 3.

You could look at each riff in the Mother Superior section as one long bar with 9 beats followed by an even longer one with 10 (a Lennon extension- ticket 52). But the first 3 beats have a double time feel – a 3 over 2 hemiola (see ticket 29). That's very hard to count, not to mention play! How did Lennon (and Ringo and the boys who undoubtedly forced him to play it the same way every time) 'feel' such a complex rhythm?

It is probably easier to look at it as a bar of 6/8, followed by two bars of 3/4. For this you could count

(fast) 123456 (half speed) 1-2-3-1-2-3

then for the '10/4' bar

(fast) 123456 (half speed) 1-2-3-1-2-3-4

The question remains: where did Lennon get such a bizarre rhythmic idea from?

He got it from America. The time/tempo change is EXACTLY the same rhythmic figure that appears in Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story. If you have any doubts try singing “I like to be in America, merica” over the Mother Superior bit and you'll see what I mean. Did Lennon know this song?

The West Side Story film soundtrack occupied the UK top 20 album charts from Mar 62 to Nov 65. It was up there when the band performed in suits for the first time in a small Jazz Club near Liverpool and was still in the charts when they filmed the video for We Can Work It Out. It rubbed shoulders with every album from Please Please Me to Help! Lennon must have been aware of it.

But it's Ringo, not John, who pulls off the most impressive rhythmic feat, in section 4. Beatles guru Alan Pollack says “poor Ringo particularly sounds like he's struggling” - but he's wrong. Misunderstood genius Ringo is introducing true polyrhythms to the Beatles and he's doing it like a Boss. When the band switch to 3/4 ("when I hold you...") Ringo ignores the time change and carries on playing in 4/4, meaning the beat is constantly turning around. The clever part is Ringo's 9 bars of 4/4 and the band's 12 bars of 3/4 both add up to 36 beats, so at the end they all come back together perfectly in sync.

Ringo was more than used to handling time changes, having switched between 3/4 and 4/4 in Lucy In The Sky, Mr Kite, Bungalow Bill and Mr Mustard (what is it with songs named after people & time changes?) so it's a little patronising to assume he plodded along because he couldn't switch gears. No one ever accused John Bonham of that when he barged his way though Black Dog and others.

There's a nod to this polyrhythmic approach earlier on. In section 1, Ringo is playing the bass drum on 1st beat and the snare on the 3rd beat. When he hits the 2/4 bar mentioned above we should get a bass drum on the one followed by another bass drum. But Ringo plays right through as if the 2/4 bar never happened. So the drum part on the last few bars are the wrong way round. The bass guitar also helps the mask the weirdness because, playing the root and fifth of the chords on the 1st and third beats Paul should play the 5th of Dm (which is an a) but actually plays the root note of Am (which is still a!).

So I think Ringo deserves his own ticket to write. Ticket 63: Use polyrhythms.

Next time we'll look at what ties this mad piece together and pick out a few more cool songwriting tips.

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...