Why The Beatles' 'Yesterday' is a MASTERCLASS in songwriting

Yesterday all my problems seemed so far away, so just this first line and it immediately evokes so much emotion and even though it's just a handful of beginner guitar strings, it's somehow extremely recognizable. Today we will go through each of the phrases one by one and We will see how the progression supports the surprisingly interesting Melody, we see some beautiful cadenzas, sheet music progressions that everyone, not just guitarists, should know and of course I am talking about what it was called

yesterday

, which was one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. I heard the first phrase well and we immediately heard something very interesting

yesterday

, all my problems seem very far away, okay, so this little court sequence is something that Paul McCartney uses a lot in many different songs, so after that G chord , the key of the song is something like this.

We got to that later, you play a 2 five 1 progression, so in G major you simply build a chord on the second note of a scale and the fifth note of a scale one 2, a 3, four, five and D, so we get a minor up to re7. 5 and a minor one D7 and G, but in the song Yesterday we are using the 251 as a vehicle to get to another chord, so the relative key in this case is E minor, so if you play a 251 in E minor to the typical would be F Shar Minor 7 flat 5 or half diminished to B7 to E minor and with the voice it would sound like this.

All my problems seem very far away, but instead of the half diminished chord, he plays a minor chord instead of F minor to B. B7 to E minor, which makes the vocal melody at the top become surprisingly interesting. Listen to this. All my TRs seem so far away, so it's so melancholy, so beautiful, and what's so interesting about this phrase is that Paul doesn't limit himself to just the dionic quarters and the G major skill. It alters the C and D to a C sharp and a D sharp, creating a pretty spicy melody if we were to play it above the G major chord, the key of the song, the chords underneath dictate the melody something like this F Shar minor C sharp is logical and over that B the D sharp is logical and secondly, it uses the E melodic minor scale over that 251 and the E minor melodic minor is just a minor scale with six deleted and seven deleted below.

We use the low D note to transition from E minor to C and there we have the classic progression C D7 G classic four 5 1 where the five is played as a dominant seventh chord, so depending on which version you listen to, He touches. a C major chord or a C major chord from 7th to D7 and of course that resolves beautifully into the tonic chord back to one that we all love that resolution right at 51, so in the G chord creates a bit of tension with your voice when you play it first. G sus4 which resolves to the note B from C to B to create a G major chord, transition notes because from that g we go back to E minor through that transition note G and then the bass note goes to F , so there is no F minor. chord just a Bass and then at the end of the verse something interesting happens, it's basically kind of a flip with a chromatically descending line woven into the chord so we get E minor 7 and we hear that D on top and then we go to A7 or higher, it depends on the version and that D goes to C sharp and then the chord goes to C, so it goes from d c sharp to C and then to G and that line is also heavily accented by the A section. strings that is below this interpretation.

It plays something like this, uh, that's cool, so with the vocals, oh, yeah, oh, do you hear that major from yesterday that doesn't sing? He sings it very flat and it actually sounds better that way in the interval of the major third in our western. The tuning system is called 12-tone equal temperament and it's always a little bit higher, so if you want it to sound better, tune it up a little bit, try this, play a G major chord with a B string on top and then I tune it down just a little bit, you see, this is what Paul does automatically, he tunes it up, but now you'll see the tuner says the B is too flat, but to be fair, it now sounds great with yesterday's chord.

John Frenti does the same thing by the way. the song Scar Tissue where he lowers the B string to accommodate the major third anyway it's fun let's tune it again okay so before we head into the chorus I'm sure some of you are dying to comment or already have . I'm playing it all in the wrong key and even among the Beatles themselves there is some confusion about the correct key, so here on yesterday's athology 2 version we heard the following: Yesterday will be an F for you. I'm in G, but it will be an F, so Paul is playing exactly what I'm playing on a guitar, but then his guitar is tuned to the D standard and to make this video fit all of his guitars, which are probably tuned to be like mine.

I've raised Paul's voice a whole step instead of tuning my guitar a whole step. I would always recommend playing it with these chord shapes and if you want to play it along with the song, just tune your guitar to standard D, it's not that difficult. doing everything one step down and you're there and also I'm not going to lie. I do this to try to avoid any copyright issues I may have for this video, which could lead to demonetization or even blocking of this video. and so here is a word from my acoustic guitar course. I mean, this is the course I get messages about every day.

People love to follow along, so it all starts with this interactive map where you can navigate between the different locations at the Finger Picking Saloon, where we do take a deep dive into finger picking, from swampy Style Blues to typical playing technique by John Mayor, or maybe you want to check out House of Rhythm or Flat Picker Saloon where we do a lot of amazing strumming and melodies. and exercises, and we go over techniques with these fun lessons gradually introducing more complex ideas, all with downloadable tabs and detailed, high-quality instructions that show you everything you need to know to become a great, accomplished acoustic guitarist.

Check it all out at Acoustic Adventure.com. Thank you very much for your time, let's move on, now it's time for the chuses where again we see not one but two 25 ones, so from the bet we start with one that we have seen before in F minor why go, I don't know. she wouldn't say M really pretty, so we play 251 F minor F minor, the foring does it two ways, by the way, in one video I see him play it with his thumb like this and in another video I see him play it like this. It doesn't really matter, they're both great for B7 to five and back to an E minor and from that E minor we immediately have this counter movement which Paul also emphasizes by playing it on the guitar so that the Bass note descends from E to D to C where the melody Essence from E to F sharp to G and playing together sounds pretty good, especially after that 251 is classical and then we have this little transition from base notes to B, so we continue d descending Baseline e d c and then a in minor, for which plays the melody on the top of the top string F sharp and E and then we go to probably the most obvious one in the key of G major, minor, D7 and G, but listen to what note Paul sings on that minor, why that? she had to go, I don't know, she means he sings in F sharp, so he actually plays the sixth, not so minor, from 6 to D7 to G major, it's really satisfying, so if you play it together it sounds like this , it's pretty good and then we repeat everything again now we end up the same but again in a minor 2 to five yes, it's a nice little melody that's not in the original, I think, or the strings play it, but he doesn't play it he sings, but sometimes when he plays it alone with the guitar, he sings it but anyway a little more in tune and that is the beautiful song that is Yesterday by the Beatles, who the Beatles, what and this song shows that the perfect song can exist only with the guitar. and voice, a beautiful song doesn't have to be difficult, the magic is in writing something that flows as beautifully and elegantly as yesterday by Paul McCartney, thanks for watching, until next time, have a beautiful day, greetings.