How much music theory did The Beatles know?

Over the last two years I have made several videos using

music

theory

to analyze the works of the Beatles and every time I do this I inevitably receive many comments saying that the Beatles knew nothing about

music

theory

but at the same time many argue the opposite of that. The Beatles mastered music theory, for example, composer Howard Goodall describes Paul McCartney as a composer who really

know

s what he is doing now, whether or not it is relevant whether or not the composer knew music theory when he was analyzing a piece of music is a completely different question.

What I want to see today is how true that statement is. Did the Beatles

know

music theory? Over the past few weeks I've been looking at countless interviews, biographies, and even live footage of the Beatles. band playing To try to get a better idea of ​​how

much

theory the Beatles actually knew, let's start by addressing the fact that the Beatles couldn't read or write sheet music. I don't read music, well, music, none of us intervened. With the Beatles we did some good things, but none of it was written by us, it's basically notation, that's what I can't, because I don't see music like that, so the Beatles didn't read the sheet music properly, so I probably didn't understand well music theory not reading sheet music is only part of what it means to understand: music theory, even if you don't write your music like traditional sheet music, music theory can still be the foundation of how you learn to properly arrange and perform music so, What did the Beatles know and what didn't they know about theory?

Well, let's start with some of the most basic concepts of music theory, for example, did the Beatles know how to count beats and bars correctly? A piece of evidence that can help us. Answering this question is how the pull counts in all my love, why does the pull count one, two, three, four, one and not just one, two, three, four? Well, it's because the Beatles knew that all my love begins on the third beat of the measure, so to count. In Paul you can't just say one, two, three four, you have to count a full measure and then the first beat of the next measure, this ensures that the whole band is on the same page rhythmically when the song starts and they are.

This is the case for all my loves, every time the Beatles count a song, they take into consideration what beat the song starts at. Also in interviews, the Beatles often talk about their music in terms of rhythms and time signatures when the Beatles were recording one day in. life still didn't come up with an idea for the 24 bar section in the middle they decided to temporarily fill the gap with a 24 bar count will be counted, we'll just do our song and leave 24 bars so the Beatles knew the bars and the rhythms , but how about something a little more advanced?

What about time signatures? Did the Beatles know about time signatures? Well, the Beatles may not have called them by their proper names, like 4 4 ​​or 3 4, but they had their own ways of describing them. How many beats were there in the measure, for example? We can solve it. The middle section of eight changes from 4/4 to a 3/4 fill and, although Paul does not describe this as 3/4 or triplets, he does describe it as a waltz. At the time, it was George Harrison's idea to put the middle eight in the time signature of a waltz like a German waltz when it comes to more advanced measures, although it seems that way, since a trained musician could count the beats in the time signature closely to make sure they stayed.

Over time, Ringo at least had to trust his parting intuition, for example, Here Comes the Sun features many different time signatures, but as you can see in this interview, Ringo preferred to fill in time rather than count it, Comes to me because I had been in India regarding him he said: I have this song, it's like seven and a half beats, yeah, so you know, it must be father, talk to me in Arabic, you know what I mean and that's how I came out. I had to find something. way I could physically do it and do it every time so that it came out at the moment I had no way to get close to one two three four five six seven I would say not my brain, so as long as it's good, it's seven Okay, I got it , so we looked at the rhythm, but how

much

did the rhythm know about the chords?

Well, it seems pretty evident that George Paul and John were naked in the major minor standard and seven chords on the guitar. It seems like they got their education in guitar. chords from various sources in his childhood, for example Paul tells this great story about how they traveled through Liverpool on a bus just to learn about the core of b7. In fact you know sometimes we traveled all over Liverpool just to go see someone who knew a chord we didn't know, I remember hearing once about a guy who knew b7, now we knew it and we knew it was pretty easy but no We knew how to reset, we didn't know b7, that was missing a part and the link of the other chord.

The Lost chord so we got on the bus we toured Liverpool we changed a couple of buses we found this guy and he showed just b7 we learned it from him we got back on the bus we went home to our friends and he left Shing got it George Harrison maybe he had made the best knowledge of guitar tracks, after all, John claimed that George was asked to join the band because he knew more chords than us on this date. George describes when he discovered how investments work. I remember discovering investments suddenly. I realized how all shapes transform. the neck with the same chords inverted higher and higher, but what about some slightly more advanced chords like 6, 9 and 11?

She Loves You ends with a G 6 chord sung between the vocal harmonies. Paul has described this G 6 as that tight little Buster sixth. that we had at the end, this is a pretty sophisticated description since Paul not only correctly identified that this is a sixth chord, but he is also aware that because the fifth and sixth of the chord are expressed at only one tone of distance from each other, they create What can be called a group of tones, one of the most iconic chords in the Beatles catalog, is this one. The best way to name this chord has been debated for years, but when George Harrison was asked in 2001 what he was playing for this chord, he said F. with a G on the top string, but you'll have to ask Paul about the note of low to get the right story.

This quote is quite revealing for two reasons: First, the pitch George plays is an F in nine chords, but it seems that George didn't know that this chord is called F at nine, instead of describing it as F with G above it. , but secondly, this quote from George shows that he is aware that regardless of what chord he is playing on his guitar, the bass note that Paul plays. playing is going to change the quality of that pitch in the case of this hard day night pitch when Paul plays this D below George's F in nine, the chord that sounds between them is now a D minor 11 even though Neither instrument is actually playing in D minor, this is a pretty advanced concept that George should be aware of, so even if he didn't know how to name the F AB 9 chord, he is aware of the more important idea that the note bass can change depending on the nature and therefore the name of the chords that Paul is playing also seems to be aware of this concept, for example in an interview with David Leaf in 1990, Paul describes how he realized that On Beach Boys Pet Sounds the bass often played more than just the root note of The Chord, what really made me sit up and pay attention were the bass lines.

You get a completely different effect if you play a G, when the band plays a C, there is a kind of tension that creates one of the musical elements of the Beatles' music. is best known for his key changes, but did the Beatles really know that their music was changing keys? Various sources seem to indicate that the Beatles were at least aware of the key, for example look at this quote from Paul describing how he wrote here there and Everywhere I sat by the pool with my guitar and started playing in E and soon I had some chords.

We can see in this quote that Paul is aware that chords can belong together in a key and that if you write a song using these chords together, your song will be in that key, in particular he seems to have a good handle on this concept when described Michelle's writing process, she said it started as an instrumental in C and in the same way, when asked how the beat was constructed, the Abbey Road medley. Paul described the challenge of fitting his different segments together due to the fact that they were in different keys; However, although it seems that Paul McCartney was aware that his songs were in one key, he may not have been as aware when they changed keys.

From Me to You was one of the first Beatles songs to feature a key change during the middle eighth. The music modulates briefly from C major to F major. It is the G minor and the C here that are creating the two five cadences. perfects that are modulating us to F, although Paul does not describe this as a change in key, he knew that this G minor and this C were harmonically taking us to a new place, that middle eighth was a big change for us, let's say you are in C and then you go to a pretty common C minor change it to G and then a pretty common F but then it says I have arms and that's a G minor that goes to G minor and a C takes you to a whole new world.

It was exciting in this quote that Paul is literally just describing the way he changed the key from C to F, the only thing he doesn't do is use the term key change and this seems to be a common thread in understanding music theory of the Beatles; They often seem to have a conscience. of these concepts, but they simply do not use the standardized terms to describe what is happening, perhaps due to a lack of formal education and music, it seems that George Harrison was perhaps more aware of when songs changed key, for example in this quote that George is describing.

The challenge of adapting Indian instrumentation to a song like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds due to the fact that Lucy in the Sky modulates that wouldn't work on a Western song like Lucy, which has chord changes and modulations. What about something more advanced like modes? I actually made a video before about how Beatles songs use modes, but where the Beatles themselves actually knew they were using these modes at the time. I'll tell you what the B side of She Loves You was. from the mixolydian mode a winter change in other words, this minor chord briefly changes us to the mixolydian mode.

Paul may not have been aware that this chord change was mixolydian, but he certainly knew that something was happening here beyond the standard major scale, it's like that went to minor, which is unusual, normally you'd go from re As an adult, it is a change that has always fascinated me, so I included it. I'm not saying this is evidence that Paul McCartney understands the ways, but it does show that Paul knew. That this chord change introduced something different and interesting to the key of the song and although I didn't have a name for it I could hear the modal exchange at play, it seems that of the four Beatles it was perhaps Paul McCartney who had the best knowledge of music theory McCartney was apparently aware of many basic music theory concepts and terms, such as scales, semitones, and arpeggios, when talking about how he wrote Lady Madonna.

Paul describes his left hand as if he were playing an arpeggio chord and when he was talking about the riff at the beginning of Please Please Me, that he descends from the major scale. Paul refers to it as the scaled riff at the beginning, as many have noted before me, someone who had a major role in turning the Beatles' ideas into musical reality was their producer George Martin. George Martin was fine... Well-versed in music theory, he had studied at the Guildhall School of Music and his knowledge and skills often served to plug gaps in the Beatles' own musical knowledge.

Whenever outside musicians were hired to record a Beatles song, such as string players or trumpet players, it would be George Martin's job to transcribe the Beatles' ideas into sheet music that could then be given to the musicians yesterday was the first Beatles tune to feature a string quartet to capture Paul McCartney's ideas about what strings should do. Paul sat at the piano with George. Martin and he discovered what he would like. George Martin often showed Paul a traditional way of writing for strings, typical of the war, and Paul often opposed these ideas. I remember suggesting the seventh that appears on the cello.

George said you definitely wouldn't. I have that there, it would be a very stringless quartet. I said, well, hit him, George. I have to have it. George Martin often used his knowledge of music theory to refine the Beatles' ideas, for example, You Can't Buy Me Love, just originally released. directly into the verse section, however, George Martin felt that he needed an introduction and suggested using part of the chorus but adapting the chords tothat led into the verse after only six bars instead of eight. I thought we really needed a label for the song. ending and a tank for the beginning, kind of an intro, so I took the first lines of the chorus and changed the ending and said: let's just have these lines and by altering the end of the second phrase we can get back to the verse pretty quickly. and they said that's not a bad idea, we'll do it that way.

The Beatles apparently gained a number of musical insights from their time working with George Martin, for example, in this clip Paul describes how George Martin suggested increasing the tempo of Please Please, but The Beatles actually weren't sure what the tempo. George Martin said: could we change the tempo? Well, sure, what is it? They should do it faster. Oh well, we won't let me, let me try, please, nurse. It is said that 9 said it is fine. Okay, yes, okay, not bad, but he is embarrassed that he found a better temperament than strange. In this interview of John, he describes George Martin's role as musical advisor.

He had great musical knowledge and experience, so he could translate and suggest for us. A lot of things Bowie said B, what can we do? well, I went and EE and he said well, look guys, I thought about this this afternoon last night. I thought I was talking to whoever he used, oh, and I came up with this, you know, and we were like, oh, cool, cool, I'll put it on. Here you know, yeah, I mean, he told us a lot of things and I'm sure we told him a lot of things, but our kind of primitive musical ability, which is all I have, you know, I still have to have something to translate it. what I'm trying say all the time, so looking at all this evidence, what can we conclude?

How much music theory did the Beatles know well? John summed it up pretty well in that last clip when he said and I have yet to have something to translate what I'm trying to say all the time that one of the best uses of music theory is as a language, a set of terms and concepts that allow musicians to communicate with each other about what they are listening to and it was this aspect of music theory that the Beatles seemed to lack. The band certainly had a basic understanding of the fundamental ideas of music theory, key chords and rhythm, but they lacked confidence with the correct terms and descriptions for the different musical concepts they heard, meaning they couldn't use the theory musical as language.

That's why George Martin was the perfect galvanized emergency room for the Beatles. They could be the one to translate the rhythm you wanted to hear in their music, meaning they were never held back by what they did or didn't know about music theory and going back to Something I mentioned at the beginning, many people claim that because the Beatles didn't They knew the theory in great depth, analyzing their music using the theory is arbitrary and looks for a meaning that is not, they are looking for an intention that was not. there, but it is not understood why we analyze songs.

One of the many things music theory is useful for is as a toolkit for looking under the hood of our favorite songs if you want to get an idea of ​​what makes your Beatles favorites. the song sounds the way it does and why doesn't your music sound like that the best way to do it is to look at the chords they used look at the key look at the rhythm look at the beat are those types of things that will give you the ideas that will make your music sound closer to his music. I've heard time and time again that music theory is just a set of rules or that music theory limits creativity, but this couldn't be further from the truth and if you think that way you probably haven't been taught theory in a very constructive way. , even if you don't realize it, if you don't know music theory and you don't know how to use it, then your songwriting and your musicianship are probably trapped in a box, you're probably playing the same old chords the same way all the time and every song.

What you write is probably just a variation of the same four chords, but if you know how to get out of that, how do you know? what chords you are using and how you can vary them, if you can learn to change the jar types you are using or change the mode then it opens up a whole world of possibilities and you by no means have to. it's the right way, there is no right way, that's not what music theory is, music theory is just a way of describing what can be used and a huge thank you, as always, to everyone who has fun with me on Patreon, they really do it all. of the difference, particularly during these difficult times and I hope you don't mind, but I thought today, instead of reading the comments, we could listen to this little joke about beetles that I discovered during my research was wrong.

Very sorry. I feel so stupid, look Terrence, what you wanted, you gave up math, put in a lot of money and thought about the hill thing, yeah, but let's face it, you're shit, right? When it's okay, it's okay, you're just doing Waterlogic. I got the hallway first I just dream about walkers and now you're farting on them oh Christ with a kiss from above and Ronnie's don't grab his tie means yeah okay let's go from there then