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Learning Beatles songs


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saw Help when I was 6 and living on an Army base in Germany

What army base? I was born when my dad was stationed in Nuremburg. I don't remember meeting you, but then again, we departed Germany before I turned 1.

LAMC - Landstuhl Army Medical Center outside Saarbrucken. My dad was a doctor.

 

dB

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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Yes, I am in a jam band that does quite a few Beatles tunes and they are probably my favorites among the others that we do. We do Golden Slumbers and I sing it. I have a somewhat high vocal range and usually end up singing all the Paul M. songs.

 

One of the most difficult Beatles songs that this jam band attempts to do and that really takes effort and time to do correctly is "I want You (she's so heavy)"

 

Enjoy your Beatles immersion Dave !

How many bars repeat at the end?

The fact there's a Highway To Hell and only a Stairway To Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers

 

People only say "It's a free country" when they're doing something shitty-Demetri Martin

 

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Yes, I am in a jam band that does quite a few Beatles tunes and they are probably my favorites among the others that we do. We do Golden Slumbers and I sing it. I have a somewhat high vocal range and usually end up singing all the Paul M. songs.

 

One of the most difficult Beatles songs that this jam band attempts to do and that really takes effort and time to do correctly is "I want You (she's so heavy)"

 

Enjoy your Beatles immersion Dave !

How many bars repeat at the end?

 

The same number as Hey Jude...

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Oh man! I have a lot to say about this topic, dB. I"m about 4 years older than you and their music is simply part of my dna. I used to hate covers of their music until I gave myself the challenge of doing one right. Since then I"ve written my own band arrangements of Rain (thanks for the plug, Drawbar), Come Together, Yesterday, I Will, Taxman (based on Jim Alfredson"s bluesy 7/4 version) and note for note one-man-band covers of And Your Bird Can Sing and Hello Goodbye.

 

Some covers or rearrangements seem cloying or exploitive, as if Bossa Nova Beatles was actually adding something new to their music. The brilliant mashups that George and Giles Martin did for Love really opened my mind up to new possibilities, though.

Doug Robinson

www.dougrobinson.com

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George and Giles Martin did the Love project when I was running ADAM Audio in the US. We sold them/Cirque de Soleil a bunch of 5.1 systems to do the project.

 

I got to talk to Giles at one point - that was fun. I used the Love stuff for demos at trade shows for a while after that. :cool:

 

dB

:snax:

 

:keys:==> David Bryce Music • Funky Young Monks <==:rawk:

 

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This brings back memories... I've been playing Beatles songs since I can remember - both solo piano and with Classic Rock bands. In one of the Classic Rock bands the whole Golden Slumbers thing was how we ended our first set which not only put smiles and cheers and alcohol into our audience but made sure they stayed for the next set! And while solo piano Beatles songs are great, I also did piano medleys of entire Albums (Sgt Peppers, Abbey Road, Magical Mystery Tour) which quickly had people wanting business cards. I have quite a few of these on my Youtube channel from nearly a decade ago.

 

I've done entire piano gigs consisting of Beatles only (one was actually a wedding where the bride only wanted Beatles songs). Another unique gig was alternating between Beatles and Stones.

 

Thanks for this thread - definitely brought back fun memories!

PianoManChuck

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The percentage of Beatles songs that work for solo piano is remarkable. It's easily 90+%. I don't know if there's another rock band about which that can be said. I think this goes back to the simplicity/complexity paradox (probably not the right word) talked about earlier in this thread -- how they created such a unique sweet spot on that spectrum.

 

Another testament to the Beatles is how they can take hold in a new generation. My kids 4 and 7 are crazy about them. I never said anything like "this is a historically important band," "this is my favorite band". I just played the music and in no time they were making requests and singing along. They were not influenced by social context, so it's like a controlled experiment. And this happened before they discovered the Beat Bugs show (which definitely deepened their enthusiasm).

Gigging: Crumar Mojo 61, Hammond SKPro

Home: Vintage Vibe 64

 

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The Beatles have always been a major influence of mine. They're one of the reasons I became a musician - I heard She Loves You when I was really young and it blew my tiny mind, then saw Help when I was 6 and living on an Army base in Germany and have never been the same since... :cool:

 

Anybody else ever get lost in learning to play Beatles songs?

 

dB

 

Indeed, being born in 1960 the Beatles affected me deeply at a very young age and the Help! era is still my favorite memory of them. The exceptionally good piano teacher I had from the Hollywood Hills added Michelle and Penny Lane to my lessons during my single digit years but the guitar stuff was what really got me man!

 

I've played a number of their songs in different bands over the years but on my own I often find the vocals difficult to reach especially as I'm getting older. At this point there is only one Beatles song on my set list and it's only partial; during our show I move over to the full size keyboard my wife is usually playing and do a medley with a verse/chorus of Let It Be into Beth and then finish out with the Layla outro.

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Like everyone else of that era, I was totally into the Beatles. One day I sat down and figured out the chord progressions for all of Sgt. Peppers - that was a music education in itself.

 

I sort of drifted away from listening to them as other forms of music came into the limelight. However, I went and saw the movie "Yesterday" because I'd heard mostly good things about it. What struck me the most about the movie wasn't the need to suspend disbelief entirely (I think going into a parallel universe would have made more sense than a power failure), but that so many songs were done on solo guitar. Without the orchestration, the superb production, the layers of vocals, etc., when the songs were stripped to their essentials it became obvious that their songs were extremely well-crafted and nuanced.

 

I was never much of a McCartney fan, he seemed like he'd be kind of annoying in person...but reduced to essentials, his songwriting is pretty incredible.

 

And the Beatles innovated in ways that didn't get a lot of attention. Like "She Loves You" starting with the chorus instead of an intro or verse! I've stolen that approach a few times myself.

 

I really can see music classes in the future dissecting their songs. There's a lot of "there" there :)

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+1 on the Mark Lewinsohn book if you"re into obsessive detail about instrumentation and such. Plus, it"s a coffee table book, so there"s great photos of people and track sheets from the sessions.

 

I put together a purim spiel based on Sgt. Pepper a few years ago, and one of the things that was indispensable was Hammond Dave"s Gibson combo organ sample set. I was able to import a patch right into ESX24 in Mainstage (once I figured out how to use ESX24) for that unusual sustained keyboard sound in the verse. I used one of the other Gibson patches for the chorus.

 

It was a one-man-band situation, so I threw in the Liverpool Bass that comes with Mainstage, grabbed some free tambura samples from the internetz, and triggered some drum loops made from a track that came from one of the better karaoke sites. I guess it was the complete opposite of a solo piano arrangement. But, I couldn"t have nailed the sound with such detail without Hammond Dave, so thanks Dave!

 

BTW, there are lots of isolated tracks for this stuff on the usual sites, if you want to hear parts with more clarity.

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Another Beatle fan - I was 10 in early '64 when they hit the radio with the first two really big singles. Jeez, the sheer energy and excitement plus singable and memorable and rewarded multiple listens.

 

In '67 we moved to Tulsa and knowing no one there and having the balance of the summer to kill, I bought the sheet music book for Sgt. Pepper and started picking out the tunes on piano. I knew nothing of chords or progressions, just had enough piano lessons to find the notes...so I'm one of the odd people who started playing rock piano by sight-reading!

 

For you users of VST instruments who are also Beatle fans - the East West Fab Four set of VST instruments is really uber-fun and authentic sounding. Costs a bit, but totally worth it to me.

 

nat

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Here's something that will interest you: I did an interview with Chris Jenkins, who did a lot of work on the "Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years" movie that's currently on Hulu. He's won three Academy Awards, nominated for two, and what he says about the evolution of the film, and doing the sound for it, is fascinating. The highlight is the restored version of their Shea Stadium concert. The interview is on Harmony Central, whose fate is uncertain, so it's probably better to check it out sooner rather than later. From a technical standpoint, here's an interesting excerpt:

 

"To create the 5.1 mix, Giles and the Abbey Road team created acoustical spaces optimized with pre-EQ for the various instrumentsâdrums, bass, guitars, voices. Then, instead of upmixing the music, it played back through great speaker systems in these acoustic spaces and was re-recorded from the source materialâno reverb, no overdubs, but done as a 5.1 acoustic process. It"s a beautiful way to record, without digital processing, that yielded a very natural sound. This kind of technique is very old school and not for everybody, but it was ideal in this case. Giles did an incredible job of restoring the concert, while staying totally true to the loyalists. The point of the restoration was to bring out the music."

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T

 

I've been trying to learn one or two songs a day.

 

I thought doing Yet Another Beatles Tribute Band would be a good excuse to learn their catalog. It sorta was, and I did.

 

I can't remember any of it now, years later. But the educational aspect was fantastic. The one-little-slight-detail that makes one of their songs genius was a great thing to delve into and find out.

 

Now would be a good time for people to try to put together a Tribute Band. People can do their homework at home, get together for rehearsal and go presumably when this hopefully is over.

 

 

Anybody else ever get lost in learning to play Beatles songs?

 

dB

 

In said Beatles band I was in, we were doing each album one at a time. We would do a set of miscellaneous Beatles/ancillary Beatles material, and then a set that would be the album.

 

PROBLEM #1

 

Once you've chewed through over half of their catalog, doing due dilligence becomes a massive chore. Particularly if you're the guy in the band that insists on memorizing everything, no music or even scribble notes. When it comes time to learn the NEXT album, you also find yourself having to brush up on an ever-increasingly enormous catalog of material. Thereby making it harder and harder of a chore to stay on top of.

 

PROBLEM #2

 

Because of the complexity of integrating 10 musicians and assorted orchestra musicians, it then becomes Less Obvious about the practicality of logistics when it comes to Certain People insisting on last minute set changes on the opening set.

 

"Yeah, scratch that out, we're doing This Other Song We Did 2 years ago in place of This Song You Practiced and Memorized for Tonight".

 

 

PROBLEM #3

 

Because of routine habit, band members are called one at a time out per song. "Curiously" someone seemed to always get called out 1 song early... on a song I didn't play on. I used to be good with playing something straight off the top of my head from memory of hearing a song until I found myself doing this *suspiciously often* in front of thousands of people. So much so I can't do it as well now.

 

 

So, I would say "Don't do the above" but do a Beatles Tribute band for the educational value of learning the arrangements and detail.

Guitar Lessons in Augusta Georgia: www.chipmcdonald.com

Eccentric blog: https://chipmcdonaldblog.blogspot.com/

 

/ "big ass windbag" - Bruce Swedien

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I'm a huge Beatles fan also. I've even started a "religion" I've named Beatlianism. And I'm a Beatlian. My religion is sonically based. One practices it by simply engaging in focused listening to Beatles recordings (sorry, no Wings). The focused, critical listening can be to Paul's inventive bass lines, their always wonderful vocal harmonies, a counter-melody line George is playing. In other words - details in the recordings. I figure all religions were invented by someone and figure if the recordings aren't destroyed , this religion can continue if the word spreads over time. And by the way, my religion was invented before the recent movie, "Yesterday".

 

I have the Hal Leonard published "Beatles Fake Book" and play thru Beatles songs when the spirit moves me. Sometimes I like to use what I think of as the "jazz ethos" and put my personal spin on the arrangement. I was doing this yesterday with "It Won't Be Long". As practice using GarageBand I may add some other parts.

 

It Won't Be Long

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14b1jZVO4CJDqEu3jH7Vz--6R_p30d3Xp

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