That's well put. What raises the Beatles above all other bands is their almost casual display of originality. They throw things away, just tossing something astonishing over their shoulder as if it was routine and unremarkable. Other bands find something interesting, and then they make a fetish of it. It keeps popping up in all kinds of places. But the Beatles never repeated themselves. They'd do something once, an exotic chord, an unexpected key change, and they'd never do it again. Next time they'll astonish you with something else. It's the reason there's no such thing as a typical Beatles song. Every one comes out of left field.
Xose - I can't guess what George did to the tuning. You can change the relative tuning of two strings either by raising one or lowering the other. I can't tell from the sound of this (Spanish) guitar which it was he did. I doubt that it's a common practice, except in the studio. It would be okay to do it live at a gig, provided you didn't have to re-tune it afterwards. That is, if you use a particular guitar for a particular song, and then don't use it again. I'm sure it happens now and again. But I'd guess the most common one is to de-tune the sixth to get e.g, a low D instead of an E.
Hello Pilz -
"... and make a fetish out of it...". So very true, I guess that 's why almost every band has a "sound" associated with it, very few are like the Beatles where the range of sonic signatures ranges from I'm Down to Yesterday (recorded the same day!), Julia to Why Don't We do it in the Road. For example: "Yardbirds" - yup, typical sound. Deep Purple? ... ditto, etc. (Stones too, of course!).
Acknowledging that there were some "one-time" gems that the Beatles threw out never to use again (like that C augmented in the "Oooh" backgrounds in All My Loving - where'd that come from, some alien came down and told them to sing it or what?...), and at the risk of sounding pedantic, (
), I might amend that to say
once or a few times. What I'm thinking of here is the use of an idea for a
few songs, THEN it's discarded. For example:
- The key change to the minor 5th for the middle eight - From Me to You ... I Want to Hold Your Hand.
- Flipping back and forth from the major key to it's minor key - ... "Things We Said Today" ... "I'll be Back", maybe some others (last chord on "And I Love Her"?).
- Using the minor 4th to get back to the tonic chord, instead of the 5th. John did this a lot around the time of AHDN, though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head :B
- The identical chords used in "Sexy Sadie" and "Here, There, and Everywhere": G-Am-Bm-C ... John "borrowing" from Paul!
And then, just like you say, these little stylistics gems are discarded, never to be seen again!
It would be fun to make a list of true "1 and done" throwaways like you describe ... I'll start it, can we add to it?
Thanks!
One and Done Musical "Tricks" by the Beatles1. Dropping from the vi chord to a
Flat VI augmented chord (like above - "All My Loving", the bridge: C#m -
Caugmented - E.
2. ?
I hope this stuff doesn't sound like I'm too full of BS ... I really love talking about the Beatles chords, sometimes I get carried away ... sorry!
Thanks!
Edit -
http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1236475625/