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How the Beatles Wrote ‘A Day in the Life’
- matchagaucho 9y agoFor a more musical deconstruction, check out Scott Freiman's video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTBB6iQbTsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTBB6iQbTsE
- SubiculumCode 9y agoThanks. For some, its about the lyrics. But for me, it is the music.
- bvm 9y agoHmm, not sure about the very grandiose 'quadruple plagal cadence' over 'circle of fifths'
- matchagaucho 9y agoaka "Hey Joe"
- 2bitencryption 9y agooh man, thanks, I know what I'm watching all night tonight
- andrepd 9y agoAlso check http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/aditl.shtml http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/aditl.shtm.... He has an absolute bible of a collection of analyses for every song in the Beatles' catalogue.
- HeavenBanned 9y agoThat last E chord never fails to send shivers down my spine.
- sizzzzlerz 9y agoOnly chord more famous is the one that starts Help!
- droithomme 9y agoHey. So this domain blocks access. I'd like to propose that posts containing links to all such domains be automatically held back. The reason is that posts to sites that require paid access are clearly and unquestionably spam, which is the promotion of paid material. And spam links should not be considered legitimate posts on any social media site wishing to maintain credibility and quality of discussion. Thanks for considering this.
- codebam 9y agoI'm not being blocked. Are you sure that your ISP isn't blocking the website?
- droithomme 9y agoWhen I click on the link it says I need to purchase a $39.99/year or $3.99/month subscription to view the article. (So weird someone is downvoting my posts about this, what possible reason could there be to do such a thing.)
- acover 9y agoOne reason: excluding all paid journalism seems dumb.
- droithomme 9y agoAd hominems are fallacies.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- philbarr 9y agoI've come to think that quoting latin phrases at people is in itself a logical fallacy. Is there a latin phrase for that?
- 9y ago
- goatherders 9y agoGreat article. Great story.
- rurban 9y agoThere much more stories about how they wrote it. Eg. the story about the orchestra. They booked the strings for a few days, but only had an idea of the downgoing glissando. He explained it to them, but they just stared. What does he mean? Which tones? So he took some empty note sheets, marked the beginning and the end and then drew a straight line from the top left to the bottom right, which was not easy because it spanned multiple lines. Now they got it. And they could play it now easily. Also the Andy Warhol story. He made a painting of the crashed Lotus, the one they saw in the newspaper. I saw it live in my hometown's Warhol exhibition. This was quite a moment. Not even the curator knew about "A Day in the life" but it was so obvious.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- goldenkey 9y agoThis is actually the song I delete from my entire discography of The Beatles because of the terrible cacophony. It caused me to run outside scared shitless when I was high on LSD. Really..fuck you Lennon, having something that sounds like the devil sonified is not good music.
- polotics 9y agoAt least you didn't get squashed by a passing truck, running outside in your silly self-inflicted state.
- goldenkey 9y agoYeah. I consider myself lucky. But wont happen again now that the song is deleted.
- SpoilerAlert 9y agoAncient stuff like The Beatles music will eventually fade away. Simplistic tunes and harmonies all around. Must be a generational thing.
- tjr225 9y agoI find it interesting(strange) that individuals think this sort of smug contrarianism is welcome on HN.
- valuearb 9y agoI'm guessing something else will happen.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- carlob 9y agoIt's also worth noting how heavily the whole Sgt. Pepper is influenced by Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock. If you don't know it go listen to it!
- ZenoArrow 9y ago>"Freak Out! by Frank Zappa. That record basically singlehandedly started the psychedelic revolution in rock." Zappa did some amazing stuff, but he didn't invent psychedelic rock. Can read more about the early history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rock
- carlob 9y agoNot invented, right (but I didn't say exactly that). However in the context of Sgt. Peppers: According to David Fricke, the album was a major influence on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out! from Wikipedia
- ZenoArrow 9y agoOkay, but I'd say there were probably multiple major influences. Pet Sounds is also meant to be a major influence on Sgt. Peppers: https://www.quora.com/How-did-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds-influence-Sgt-Peppers-Lonely-Hearts-Club-Band https://www.quora.com/How-did-The-Beach-Boys-Pet-Sounds-infl...
- grasshopperpurp 9y agoIt came out in '67, so it wouldn't have influenced Sgt. Peppers, but I read that John Lennon had like 10 copies of Beefheart's Safe as Milk (Ry Cooder played guitar on that one).
- emmelaich 9y ago
- jancsika 9y agoIs the major chord heard when a Mac boots up a reference to "A Day in the Life"? Also-- there's a complete transcription of the Beatles output published by Hal Leonard. For the orchestral gliss from "A Day in the Life" there is an ascending line drawn on a single staff, and the staff is titled "orchestra". I thought that was pretty funny.
- kej 9y agoOne of my favorite things about this song is the way it was originally placed on the record. There's the huge piano chord, then silence, then a high pitched sound allegedly to mess with people's dogs, and then a second or two of gibberish speech that endlessly loops around the inner circle of the record. Digital media plays that gibberish for a few seconds and then fades out, which is a different experience from the original record which would play it until you actually stopped the record. It reminds me of how the move from CRT to LCD televisions broke the NES light gun, and makes me wonder what other edge cases we're unknowingly changing or disabling with current technology upgrades.
- Graham24 9y agohe's right it is not there best album, which is indeed rubber soul or revolver, however when Lennon sings 'she was just 17, you know what I mean", I've got a pretty damn good idea what he was on about...