Formal structure of [56] "Help!":
Intro (chorus/ind) 0:00-0:11* Verse 1 0:11-0:31 Chorus 0:31-0:51 Verse 2 0:51-1:11 Chorus 1:11-1:32 Verse 3 1:32-1:52 Chorus 1:52-2:10 Coda (chorus/ind) 2:10-2:20* Comments: Very clear structure - no ambiguity. Introduction is partly based on chorus and partly independent: It shares the same chord progression (reduced in duration by 50%), but the words are independent (not found anywhere else in the song). Coda functions as an extension of the chorus, but with unrelated musical components.
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The Beatles' debut album Please Please Me functioned as a recording of a live show – its purpose to recreate what the Beatles did on stage, but in the comfort a listener's own home. Of course, as the band grew, they would develop into a studio band, and the beginnings of that evolution are first discernible in their sophomore album, With the Beatles. Overdubbing is the process of recording different parts of the same song at different times. It would make absolutely no sense at all in a concert setting to have, say, Paul play his bassline to “Roll Over Beethoven” as a solo, then when he was done George could sing his lead vocals by himself, then when he done Ringo could play his drums alone, followed by John's rhythm guitar chords. It'd be the equivalent of eating a piece of cake but on the first bite you taste only flour, and on the next only eggs, and the next just sugar. Of course that wouldn't work – whether in music or baking, all of the ingredients must be combined to render the final product. But in the studio, you can do that because the tapes can be combined through overdubbing, the layering of these various components into the final product. While a few minor tracks were overdubbed on Please Please Me, on With The Beatles it was quite heavily. For example, the piano solo in “Not a Second Time” was overdubbed. The Beatles recorded the guitar, bass, and drums, leaving a space for a solo because they weren't sure what that solo would be. Overdubbing allowed the band to come back to the song later and add a solo, in this case played by George Martin. Another recording tactic used frequently on With the Beatles was double-tracking, which is a particular kind of overdubbing in which the exact same thing is recorded twice, then layering on top of each other so they are heard simultaneously. The Beatles used this trick almost exclusively for lead vocals because the technique supplies reinforcement to whatever was double tracked, and lead vocals need to be strong. Obviously a singer can't sing his lines twice at the same time during a live show, but in the recording studio you can, and double-tracking is how that is accomplished. For example, Paul's singing on “All My Loving” is double tracked. You can tell because there are slight differences between takes – even though he's singing the same lyrics and notes. This is most noticeable on the word “I'll” as in “tomorrow I'll miss you”. The Beatles used double-tracking on 8 of the 14 tracks on With the Beatles ("It Won't Be Long", "All My Loving", "Don't Bother Me", "Little Child", "Please Mister Postman", "Roll Over Beethoven", "I Wanna Be Your Man", and "Not a Second Time") and would continue to do so throughout the remainder of their recording career. Additionally, the covers of the two albums showcase this change. Please Please Me's cover shows the four Beatles in a rather creative though quite "standard pop cover shot" pose. The With The Beatles cover, by contrast, is much more stark and artistic - and heavily inspired by the photographs taken by Astrid Kirchherr in Germany several years earlier. It's very subtle, but With the Beatles does show a significant change in direction from Please Please Me – a change that would eventually lead to the technical sophistication that so characterized the later Beatles albums.
Formal structure of [55] "You're Going to Lose That Girl":
Chorus 0:00-0:09* E Major Verse 1 0:09-0:23 E Major Chorus 0:23-0:30 E Major Verse 2 0:30-0:45 E Major Chorus 0:45-0:56 E Major Middle 8 0:56-1:10* G Major Solo 1:10-1:25 E Major Chorus 1:25-1:36 E Major Middle 8 1:36-1:49* G Major Verse 3 1:49-2:03 E Major Chorus 2:03-2:12 E Major Coda 2:12-2:20 E Major Comments: Begins with chorus instead of an introduction (like [12] "She Loves You", [14] "It Won't Be Long", [23] "Can't Buy Me Love", [34] "Any Time at All", [36] "When I Get Home", and [48] "Another Girl"), though in this case sans drum set (but with hand percussion). Also like "Another Girl" is the Middle 8 - in which both songs modulate to the lowered submediant (A Major to C Major in "Another Girl"; E Major to G Major in "You're Going to Lose That Girl"). This is the same modulation that the Beatles often use, and will culminate in the Abbey Road Medley (which uses that particular modulation extensively). The White Album served as the perfect antithesis to Sgt. Pepper. What, after all, could have been more different from Pepper's collage cover than plain white? And what could have been more different from Pepper's “concept album” layout, in which the entire record can be viewed as a single large-scale product, than a series of rather aimless fragments?
One of the most common sentiments regarding The White Album is that it should have been whittled down to a single album instead of a double album; but that means omitting half of the songs, and which ones go and which ones stay is a point of tremendous contention. In fact, if you want to start a fight among Beatles fans, this might be the surest way to do so. One major reason for the album being a double is that the three songwriting Beatles all wanted their songs to be included - they all felt that their material was worthy of the album. Thus, the album grew because neither John nor Paul nor George wanted any of their songs cut. This insistence, however, was only the tip of the iceberg - the symptoms of a much greater, more fundamental problem: All four Beatles were growing apart, and wanted to spend progressively more time pursuing their own individual projects rather than unified Beatles projects. In fact, when asked when the Beatles broke up, John Lennon indicated The White Album, because, “Every track is an individual track – there isn't any Beatles music on it. … It was John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band” (Cott, page 88). Here again, what could be further from Sgt. Pepper? CITATIONS Cott, Jonathan, ed. and Christine Doudna, ed. The Ballad of John and Yoko. Rolling Stone Press, Dolphin Books, Double Day & Company, Inc, Garden City, NY, 1982. Formal structure of [54] "Tell Me What You See":
Intro (ind, verse) 0:00-0:04* Verse 1 0:04-0:32 Verse 2 0:32-1:00 Ext & trans 1:00-1:14* Verse 3 1:14-1:42 Ext & trans 1:42-1:56* Verse 4 1:56-2:25 Ext & Coda 2:25-2:38* Comments: The intro is similar to the backing of the verses, but all on the tonic chord (which is different from the verse's chord progression). Thus, the intro is somewhat based on the verse, but also somewhat independent. All but the first verse is followed by an extension and transition. This may be considered a middle 8 (it is, after all 8 measures long), but it uses the same chords as the verse and thus does not provide the harmonic contrast that usually defines a middle 8. And given that the lyrics “Tell me what you see” are used in each verse, when they reappear immediately after the verse they feel more like an extension of the verse rather than a contrast to it. An abbreviated version of extension functions as the coda. After A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles entered “artistic adolescence”, for just as the band grew up as people during their Hamburg residencies, so too the band matured as composers and recording artists from late 1964 through 1965, over which time they released three albums: Beatles for Sale, Help!, and Rubber Soul.
These albums include two basic types of songs: those that reflect the band's previous work (songs like “Rock 'n' Roll Music”, “I Need You” and “What Goes On”, which are rather retrospective in nature); and those that break from their recorded past work and chart new artistic territory by exploring different sounds and musical possibilities (songs like “Ticket To Ride”, “Norwegian Wood” and “Nowhere Man”) Many songs of this period blur those two classifications by employing aspects of both. “I Feel Fine”, for example, is rather retrospective rock 'n' roll number, but it also features the first ever intentional use of feedback on a recording. Similarly, the body of “Eight Days a Week” is more similar to their previous recordings than to their later work, but it was the first recording ever to use a fade-in as the introduction. A great many recordings used fade-outs, but “Eight Days a Week” was the first to use a fade-in. One major catalyst for this artistic maturation was Bob Dylan. The Beatles discovered his music through his second studio album Freewheelin', and they met in person for the first time on 28 August 1964 at the Delmonico Hotel in New York City. Dylan impacted the Beatles in two primary ways: First, although they had taken Preludin in Hamburg, and had a history with alcohol (with Lennon more so than the others), Bob Dylan furthered the Beatles drug use by introducing them to marijuana. Legend has it that Dylan misheard the lyrics to “I Want to Hold You Hand” (“And when I touch you I feel happy inside, it's such a feeling that my love I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide”) as “I get high, I get high, I get high”. It's called the gateway drug for a reason, and thereafter the Beatles' drug use escalated exponentially. The second major influence Bob Dylan had on the Beatles was that he freed them from the conventions of pop music. This resulted in an increased use of acoustic rather than electric instruments in Beatles recordings, as well as a dramatic rise in their compositional craftsmanship. “I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing pop songs,” said John Lennon. “We would turn out a certain style of song for a single... I'd have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market, and I didn’t' consider them (the lyrics or anything) to have any depth at all … Then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively. … I'd started thinking about my own emotions. … Instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would try to express what I felt about myself. … It was Dylan who helped me realise that” (Anthology page 158). The difference is clearly discernible in their recorded output from that time. Lennon's “I'm a Loser” off Beatles for Sale, “You've Got to Hide Your Love Away” off Help!, and “In My Life” off Rubber Soul are the obvious examples. Though Dylan's influence was most noticeable in John Lennon, Paul McCartney's songs of the same albums show similar progress. Songs like “I'll Follow the Sun” off Beatles for Sale, and especially “Yesterday” off Help!. These Dylan-influenced songs lack the youthful “yeah, yeah, yeah” enthusiasm and energy so prevalent in the Beatles early recordings and clearly delineate the band's development from teenybopper pop phenomenon to the true artistic leaders of their generation. CITATIONS Beatles. The Beatles Anthology. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 2000. Formal structure of [53] "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away":
Intro (verse) 0:00-0:02 Verse 1 0:02-0:39 Chorus 0:39-0:55 Verse 2 0:55-1:32 Chorus 1:32-1:48 Coda (ind) 1:48-2:09 Comments: Very straight-forward structurally - no ambiguity at all. Formal structure of [52] "You Like Me Too Much":
Intro (coda) 0:00-0:10 Verse 1 0:10-0:31 Verse 2 0:31-0:53 Middle 8 0:53-1:04* Verse 3 1:04-1:26 Solo 1:26-1:42* End of verse 1:42-1:48* Middle 8 1:48-1:58* Verse 4 1:58-2:25 Coda (intro) 2:25-2:35 Comments: In a Beatles first, the Middle 8 has two distinct sub-sections: I really do. And it's nice when you believe me. If you Leave me, In a Beatles fourth (after [10] "From Me To You", and [31] "A Hard Day's Night", and [51] "The Night Before"), the solo section replaces the first half of a verse, with the end of that verse remaining as previously heard. In the early Sixties, black was the most significant color for the Beatles. They wore black leather stage outfits, wrote the song [37] "Baby's in Black", and Paul even admitted "Our favorite colour was black" (Anthology, page 160) But by the mid-Sixties, however, that changed. The spread of color television helped, and no doubt psychedelic drugs (which inhibit the brain's ability to process colors) played a role, as well. In the late Sixties, though, that changed yet again - at least for John Lennon. Yoko Ono, whose color preference was white, gradually and progressively began to occupy Lennon's thoughts from their first meeting in November 1966 through the realization of their romantic relationship in 1968. She once created an exhibition of all white objects – including an all white chess set, accompanied by the instructions, “Play it for as long as you can remember who is your opponent and who is your own self.” Chess is a game of war – strategic war rather than violent war, but war nonetheless. Furthermore, white is a symbol of innocence (which is why brides wear white dresses) and in the context of war, white is the color of surrender – meaning the end of violent conflict. Yoko was a pacifist long before she ever met John Lennon, and in creating an all-white chess set, what she is doing is pointing out the fact that despite humanity's differences we are all human and we all share the same planet (just as all pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings, and queens all share the same chess board), and we all need to find a way to get along peacefully, i.e. without war or violence. She found a fresh way to illustrate the cliche "more alike than different" while simultaneously advancing her pacifist principles. How different, after all, would an all-black chess set be? Yoko's influence on John Lennon - and particularly her affinity for the color white - is discernible as early as 1968. The album The Beatles is more commonly known as The White Album because of its stark plain white color with white embossed letters. How different would the album The Beatles be if its cover was plain black? Moreover, there are a great many pictures of the couple wearing all-white clothing: Additionally, Lennon owned an all-white piano - not coincidentally on which he composed the song "Imagine". CITATIONS
Beatles. The Beatles Anthology. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 2000. |
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