Jun 04, 2004 01:54 am this is intense
beatles musicological analysis
Posted on Jun 03, 2004 11:45 pm
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
www.icce.rug.nl/~soundsca...p-notes_on.html
i've been aware of this for some time, but i don't know how many others have been exposed to it. it's interesting reading. this guy went through the beatles canon and dissected the songs using music theory. he claims that the beatles accidentally invented thier own harmonic system through willful ignorance of music theory.
the way he looks at it, its something with a diagonal tone grid or something, based on minor thirds. where, according to these unconsciously-created 'beatles rules' they were able to freely substitute strange chords for the diatonic ones through some system of related common tones. or something.
i dunno, i have glanced at it about a year ago and am about to have another go. prolly should have read it again before posting this, as i may be off. but, there you are, if anyone's interested.
p.s. here's where he explains the harmonic system (scroll down to the colored charts):
www.icce.rug.nl/~soundsca...es_Odyssey.html
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Jun 04, 2004 11:17 am I wonder if we can find this at amazon. I would buy a copy. Great site. Would love to sit back with the analysis of the songs and read through a book. How about a link db so we can support HRC?
Jun 04, 2004 11:30 am Hmmm, can't find 'em anywhere, if anyone finds them on amazon, post the link(s) here and I will get an affiliate link made out of it/them.
Jun 04, 2004 05:08 pm i dont think it exists as a book. but the complete analyses are on that webpage.
Jun 04, 2004 05:16 pm Ok...I scrolled down on the second link you posted and after spending about 1/2 hr. trying to understand what I was reading I heard this giant whooshing sound go over my head. There was a time back in 9th grade that I could have taken a music theory class but I took co-ed volleyball instead, cause at that time seeing girls jumping up and down with their arms in the air was more important to me than theory. Dang...what a mistake.
Jun 04, 2004 08:01 pm i think it means basically this:
1. any major key has seven chords.
2. the I, IV, and V chords are the major chords and the ii, iii, and vi chords are the minors. the vii chord is diminished.
3. the blues is based on the I, IV, and V because those are the strongest chords in a key, in some ways. theyre sort of archetypal, and they have the unique designation of being the only major chords in a key signature, so that's why they're highlighted in red on the chart.
4. each of them has a relative minor chord three half steps below it. yellow on the chart. the I's is the vi, the Iv's is the ii, and the V's is the iii. they're called 'relative' because these chords share two tones in common with thier major.
5. in normal theory, the I is the tonic--home--chord. you 'can't' change the I chord to a minor because it undermines the sense of key and sounds really weird. changing the I major chord to a minor chord would be called switching to the parallel minor. the beatles sometimes switched to this chord during a song and used it as a tonic, even though it was considered outlandish to do so.
6. they also treated the vi as the tonic sometimes, as it has two notes in common with the I. they'd start using this other chord as the occasional tonic as well, in the middle of a song. so thats two illegals they had.
7. then the tone grid shows how they branched out from there. they would take the parallel major of one of the relative minors from inside the home key. these are foreign chords, as far as the key is concerned.
i'm still trying to figure out what else the grid means. but so far, it's saying to me that they at some point noticed this principle of relative minor chords always being the distance of a minor third interval below the parent major chord, and then they apparently thought they might as well just extend it and do whatever they wanted with that little bit of info, maybe even going so far as to change a relative minor into its parallel major and then taking the parallel minor of that chord. thats two foreign chords away from the key center.
i dunno if i'm right about this. but if it's true, then i imagine the reason these foreign chords sound good is because they're kind of using logical paths to get to them. by using this principle of relation. i mean, if you could think that way, you'd know how to set up a foreign chord so it would sound cool instead of shockingly odd and bad.
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