7 ms·

Mathematician cracks Beatles mystery - perhaps

54 points by bootload 14y ago

gdg92989 14y ago
um.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxPc5MPEuQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxPc5MPEuQ
- DigitalSea 14y ago
  Presto. Compared the chord that Randy Bachman played against the original track and it sounds exactly the same to me. For anyone else interested in knowing what the 12-string chord is, pretty sure this is what he described: 1st string = G on the 3rd fret (pinky) 2nd string = C on the 1st fret (pointer finger) 3rd string = A on the 2nd fret (middle finger) 4th string = F on the 3rd fret (ring finger) 5th string = C on the 3rd fret (with the thumb, curl it over) 6th string = G on the 3rd fret (with the thumb as well)
- mintplant 14y ago
  The original sounds a bit lower to me. Link for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY
  - ender7 14y ago
    Yeah, and the dissonances are not quite right either. Close...but not quite.
  - mbell 14y ago
    Pretty hard to tell if its a real difference or just the recording quality. Most of the Beatles recording I've heard sound pretty washed out.
- icarus_drowning 14y ago
  I agree with Jason Brown, who, the article states, noted that the piano chord in the background is critical to capturing the overall sound. Listening to this, I hear everything but the touch of dissonance added by the piano, which completely changes the feel of the chord. Listen to this and the original[1], you can clearly hear a missing piano part, which gives the chord such a crunchy bite. The damper pedal is clearly depressed as well, and it sounds like there is some sympathetic resonance from the guitars/bass that's helping to muddy up the piano sound. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY
kens 14y ago
This seemed familiar; Hacker News discussed this topic in 2008: "Beatles Unknown 'A Hard Day's Night' Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform", http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347231 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347231 The current article claims improvements on that solution.
mistercow 14y ago
>Dr Kevin Houston, from the University of Leeds, used sophisticated software to split up the sound on the record into its component frequencies. I love when reporters say silly things like implying that something like the Fourier transform is state of the art.
- bonaldi 14y ago
  The reporter doesn't -- the article goes on to talk about Fourier transforms, and how they'd been used in previous attempts. The sophistication alluded to in the article is in the visualisation of the results: the reason previous attempts had got it wrong was because looking at the flat numbers returned had misled them.
bootload 14y ago
A more detailed explanation by Kevin Houston on this topic for the British Science Festival, "The Beatles' Magical Mystery Chord" (8m49s) ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx0DG-5Qyg&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx0DG-5Qyg&feature=playe...
- grueful 14y ago
  This is quite good, and it briefly hits a couple of the more obvious ways in which naively applying an FFT will lie to you (superposition, harmonics). If you really want to kill it, you could always come in with a learning model which accounts for the characteristics of the instruments and the way in which the sound evolves over time. An FFT is effectively looking for the integrated power in a frequency band. This is often more than enough to do the job, but it misses potentially useful information found in the time domain.
CrankyPants 14y ago
Now, if they can figure out how a boy band that started out with a following of veritable teenyboppers wound up receiving near-universal adoration, I'll be really impressed. Edit: This is a sincere request: can someone tell me why I should care about this? If the homeless guy on the corner–sorry, make that two homeless guys, with one on the piano to get that extra bit of dissonance–had been first to play this as people walked by, I can't imagine it would have amounted in much interest, appreciation, acclaim. (Or, donations, for that matter.) Had they done the same with, say, the Moonlight Sonata, something tells me passersby just might take note. If this is just academics in the field acting like academics sometimes do in their respective fields, then, I get that. But as someone who has always found the ratio of fawning-to-substance fairly high when it comes to the Beatles, this kind of thing doesn't help. Maybe I'm totally missing the point, and this has as much to do with the Beatles as recreating the THX sound does with Star Wars.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- keithpeter 14y ago
  "Now, if they can figure out how a boy band that started out with a following of veritable teenyboppers wound up receiving near-universal adoration, I'll be really impressed." They were a bit rougher round the edges than your modern boy band, having been playing in 'adult clubs' in Hamburg. Remember the Cavern Club was in Matthew St, not a salubrious district then. To answer the question: right time, right place, bloody clever manager
  - weef 14y ago
    > right time, right place, bloody clever manager So true but I'd like to add: amazingly innovative producer (George Martin) and brilliant engineer (Geoff Emerick). Without those two guys the Beatles recordings might have been just ordinary. Interestingly, the fiddling by Capitol Records might have contributed to their success early on (when they weren't destroying the intended album track sequence) - for example I prefer the US mono version of I Want To Hold Your Hand over the English version.
lignuist 14y ago
I recently heard in a documentary, that John Lennon detuned his Guitar a bit all the time.
ArekDymalski 14y ago
We are The Scientists. Struggling to fight critical problems since 1964.

54 points by bootload 14y ago

gdg92989 14y ago

um.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxPc5MPEuQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxPc5MPEuQ

DigitalSea 14y ago
Presto. Compared the chord that Randy Bachman played against the original track and it sounds exactly the same to me. For anyone else interested in knowing what the 12-string chord is, pretty sure this is what he described: 1st string = G on the 3rd fret (pinky) 2nd string = C on the 1st fret (pointer finger) 3rd string = A on the 2nd fret (middle finger) 4th string = F on the 3rd fret (ring finger) 5th string = C on the 3rd fret (with the thumb, curl it over) 6th string = G on the 3rd fret (with the thumb as well)
mintplant 14y ago
The original sounds a bit lower to me. Link for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY
- ender7 14y ago
  Yeah, and the dissonances are not quite right either. Close...but not quite.
- mbell 14y ago
  Pretty hard to tell if its a real difference or just the recording quality. Most of the Beatles recording I've heard sound pretty washed out.
icarus_drowning 14y ago
I agree with Jason Brown, who, the article states, noted that the piano chord in the background is critical to capturing the overall sound. Listening to this, I hear everything but the touch of dissonance added by the piano, which completely changes the feel of the chord. Listen to this and the original[1], you can clearly hear a missing piano part, which gives the chord such a crunchy bite. The damper pedal is clearly depressed as well, and it sounds like there is some sympathetic resonance from the guitars/bass that's helping to muddy up the piano sound. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm0M-BbVdY

kens 14y ago

This seemed familiar; Hacker News discussed this topic in 2008: "Beatles Unknown 'A Hard Day's Night' Chord Mystery Solved Using Fourier Transform", http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347231 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=347231 The current article claims improvements on that solution.

mistercow 14y ago

>Dr Kevin Houston, from the University of Leeds, used sophisticated software to split up the sound on the record into its component frequencies. I love when reporters say silly things like implying that something like the Fourier transform is state of the art.

bonaldi 14y ago
The reporter doesn't -- the article goes on to talk about Fourier transforms, and how they'd been used in previous attempts. The sophistication alluded to in the article is in the visualisation of the results: the reason previous attempts had got it wrong was because looking at the flat numbers returned had misled them.

bootload 14y ago

A more detailed explanation by Kevin Houston on this topic for the British Science Festival, "The Beatles' Magical Mystery Chord" (8m49s) ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx0DG-5Qyg&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKx0DG-5Qyg&feature=playe...

grueful 14y ago
This is quite good, and it briefly hits a couple of the more obvious ways in which naively applying an FFT will lie to you (superposition, harmonics). If you really want to kill it, you could always come in with a learning model which accounts for the characteristics of the instruments and the way in which the sound evolves over time. An FFT is effectively looking for the integrated power in a frequency band. This is often more than enough to do the job, but it misses potentially useful information found in the time domain.

CrankyPants 14y ago

Now, if they can figure out how a boy band that started out with a following of veritable teenyboppers wound up receiving near-universal adoration, I'll be really impressed. Edit: This is a sincere request: can someone tell me why I should care about this? If the homeless guy on the corner–sorry, make that two homeless guys, with one on the piano to get that extra bit of dissonance–had been first to play this as people walked by, I can't imagine it would have amounted in much interest, appreciation, acclaim. (Or, donations, for that matter.) Had they done the same with, say, the Moonlight Sonata, something tells me passersby just might take note. If this is just academics in the field acting like academics sometimes do in their respective fields, then, I get that. But as someone who has always found the ratio of fawning-to-substance fairly high when it comes to the Beatles, this kind of thing doesn't help. Maybe I'm totally missing the point, and this has as much to do with the Beatles as recreating the THX sound does with Star Wars.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
keithpeter 14y ago
"Now, if they can figure out how a boy band that started out with a following of veritable teenyboppers wound up receiving near-universal adoration, I'll be really impressed." They were a bit rougher round the edges than your modern boy band, having been playing in 'adult clubs' in Hamburg. Remember the Cavern Club was in Matthew St, not a salubrious district then. To answer the question: right time, right place, bloody clever manager
- weef 14y ago
  > right time, right place, bloody clever manager So true but I'd like to add: amazingly innovative producer (George Martin) and brilliant engineer (Geoff Emerick). Without those two guys the Beatles recordings might have been just ordinary. Interestingly, the fiddling by Capitol Records might have contributed to their success early on (when they weren't destroying the intended album track sequence) - for example I prefer the US mono version of I Want To Hold Your Hand over the English version.

lignuist 14y ago

I recently heard in a documentary, that John Lennon detuned his Guitar a bit all the time.

ArekDymalski 14y ago

We are The Scientists. Struggling to fight critical problems since 1964.