when people look back in 200 year time into our culture

whos music will survive from the 20th century music

The Beatles - a musical appreciation and analysis - by composer, Howard Goodall
CBE
---------------------------------------------------------------Who will be our equivalence from bach and beethoven, verdi and
Wagner.
there are big classical names on the last hundred years undoubtly
shubert strabinsky ...___
but i believe the big story of the 20th music is the way the classical and popul
ar music collided with each other to create a new musical mainstream.
The chief arquitects of this new mainstream, absorved every other style around t
hem in an extraordinary and unprecidently melting pop. They really vigoratted th
e old western tradition and embrace a new technologies with entusiasm and imagin
ation. Music could be both, genuinely sofisticated and genuinely popular.
In the 1960s with classical music at his lowest ebb the most important composers
in the world were without doubt, the Beatles.
---The Beatles officialy split up in 1970, but the impact their music had still bei
ng felt today, and shows absolutely no sign of residing.
When they started out, pop music was still in its infancy, belting out a roarned
primitive sound. Theyre along to came the "fab four", they may have review the pr
evious generation of rock & rollers such as Elvis and Chuck Berry, but what the
Beatles were about to do to music was to outstrip theyre achievements a hundred f
orward. They changed the sound, the form, the ambition, the scale and the langua
ge of popular music.
_____ 2:34/48:37
The seed speed development once they got into the stripe is stugly___?.
here they are in 1963 with "from me to you" a bright & breeze love song with a c
rackinly humbleable tune. The line up and look of the band is typical of pop gro
ups of the time.
_______3:06
Is better than most people could write on a lifetime of course, and in his middl
e section: "ive got arms that long to hold you and keep you by my side", has alre
ady got more interesting chords on it than most of the chart topping contemporar
ies. But nevertheless its just a good pop single. But here they are just four yea
rs latter in 1967 with strawberry fields forever.
______3:37
The conventional look and sound of 1963 has dissapeared completely, replaced by
more individual and introverted style. Everything about the track is strange and
unfamiliar: the shape of its tune, its sound and its shape of wildburying compl
exities.
the chief weapon in their musical counter revolution, was a stunning role call a
sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart could match in european musical histo
ry. Its no accident that yesterday is the most recorded song of all time, it is
that good.
But they went just about catching tunes...
_______4:29
To apreciate fully what The Beatles did to music, we need to look at the basic c
hording blocks of all music: melody, rithm and harmony, and to see why does it t
he western music sounds so different to the music of other cultures.

A piece of western music is instantly recognized as such because its tune is con
structed from a series of notes which belongs to families of notes called keys.
Think of it as a pallette of available colours if you like.
______________5:10
Since the list of available colours is in fact fully restricted, this notes arra
nge themshelves time and time again into a familiar and atractive patterns, whic
h composers over the centuries have discovered were well.
Until looked 20th century that is when classical composers decided to dismantle
the system of agreed note patterns all together, deliverately. They were feed up
with tunes sounding predictible and familiar and though the best to destroy the
old note system completely.
_____6:13
One result of this movement is that for the first time in history a huge gulf op
enned up between music clevers??__ and music, because audiences could identify a
nyway with the new sound.
Popular music on the other hand, stucks to the old note system with advengions__
_??. Classical and popular music were drifting further and further apart, but wo
rse was to come.
Classical composers in the 1950s and 1960s decided to abandon not just the note
system but every other recognizable feature of western music, declaring that any
sound, such as the rubbing of sand papper could be described as music.
All of the activities you see here were put on his actual musical performances,
no kidding.
_____7:05
But if wasnt if there was no method at all in this madness.oftenly only way to se
e all here things are fresh is to do a way with the old and traditional, but aud
iences and the masses didnt get the new sounds and concepts, they held on stabbin
gly to the familiar inherited forms. For their part, the musical add on guard__?
? celebrated the unpopularity, a dreadfull impass emerged, classical music as a
living comunicative language had to all intention purposes ground to a hut.??__
______7:44
So by the time the Beatles arrived on the scene, practically the only new music
anyone want to listen to was the popular music.
But pop music in the 1950s while is top and catchy, had its limitations too. It
was formula, recycling the same few chord, song structure and rithms, again and
again. Nothing that percieves the beatles gets any clue as to starting transform
ation they were about to set in motion.
______8:21
To understand fully how the Beatles rescue the western music, we had to know abo
ut something that had been around since the renacence, renacimiento, harmony. Or
put simply the chords that acompany a tune. Not only is western harmony more ri
ch complex and versatile than it comes aparts around the world, it has something
in it that is unique. This is a kind of inamovement, a blow the surface current
that help propelled___ at all, and the way it works is like this. You take a si
mple tune like my body lies over the ocean. you could of course just sing it on
his own.
_____9:00
now you could add one acompany note like you would in indian music or in a bag p
ipe tune.
9:33
but if you add western chords ___ not only it sounds more friendly and warmer it
also gives it a kind of inamovement that pushes it along more purposely.

______10:03
and the reason for that, is the way that chords by the very nature groupe theirs
helves together in familiar and affective patterns, not only that but some chord
s are magnetically drown to those other chords, giving a sense of progression an
d developement. These progressions and pattern had been exploited time and time
again by composers across the centuries from bach to puccini.
_____10:53
in the 20th centurie though, all that began to change, classical composers got b
ored with the old sounds and dump all those cosy western harmonies.
what the beatles do was to rescue those old familiar patterns, discarded by the
modernist and put them to use on the pop music. they discovered that the full po
tential of western harmony was still waiting theyre___?? own tap, ready to be opp
ened up and released. It was like changing to colour tv after years of black and
white.
_____11:30
At first they use the same simple 3 or 4 chords everyone else in pop knew.As for
example in "i saw her standing there".
But very soon they went beyond that finding the chords have a complex into logic
system of their own. they have what you might call gravitational fields around
them. where by one chord might set of a chain reaction in other chords. Bad comp
osers,simply pick the first chord that come into their head that seems to fit wi
th the tune. (as f.e. ek)
But good composers sniff around for ages trying to find that perfect chord to f
it the tune.
________12:59
but really good composers go one better,
they not just pick a nice chord too fit the melody, they instinctively know how
to chain chord secuences together to revive a whole new dimension, a new layer
of movement to the song.
i saw her standing there, writen in 1962, has four chords in it. I am the Walrus
, writen by john lennon in 1967 has 16. juxtapose with each other to create the
aureal___ effect of a shifting unestable landscape. there are 8 in the intro alo
ne.
and about that the tune is going nowhere, its like a pleasaron__?
but the chords are on a journey of their own.everytime they change they all to r
elative position to the tune. this has an effect desorientating the listnener, i
s a musical mudslide.
These harmonic and the current drives the song onwards. In the original recordi
ng from the film magical mistery tour complemented by the psycodellyc imadry__ t
he harmony glides and slides__ all over the place through out the song.
_____15:24
Shifting the chords about underneath the tune can be made even more effective if
you exploit their relationships with each other. Some chords like some people h
ave a fatal atraction to other chords. this is particulary true if you add some
new elements to an otherwise quite inocent chords. this chord for example F majo
r its pretty inocuous on its own, but if you add E flat to it, it becomes F seve
nth, and F 7 its a woobly chord, it really really wants to make a move on anothe
r chord with who meet she has a flat.B flat. if you dont believe me listen to th
is, is the bit at the end of the verse of hey jude, where we reaching F chord on
the word better. then an E flat is added to it and becomes F seven, and then su
ddenly we all desperately want to move to B flat, which we do on the word pain.
its magic and it works.
________16:23

Theres nothing accidental about good composing. famous composers use tricks and d
evices like this all the time quite deliverately because they know it will sound
better that way, and because it adds power and depth to the song.
______17:24
As Macartney and Lennon composing developed during the 60s, they increasingly bo
rrow technics from the classical theory to innovate their songs. one of those te
chnics has a dull name: modulation, but a very exciting effect.
Everybody listened to that climatic moment in tchaikowskys Romeo and Juliet. Fee
ls a surging swealling lerge in the stomach as the violins reach the top of that
frase. thats because the music actually is lifting. its undergoing a huge chang
e in its harmony. it is modulation and romantic music could be nowhere without i
t.
______18:08
Modulating means moving a piece of music central gravity from one key area to an
other. its like changing from one colour skin to another, an the effect in how i
s designed can have dramatic consecuences.
in one room you might have a complementary series of hughs__ and shades all base
d on a fundamental colour red.
everything in the room attemps to fit into the overall reddys atmosphere and loo
k up it. we may love this red room dearly but is going to change when we pass tr
ouhg into the next room which has a more yellowy caracter. so it is with the mus
ical keys, you can be poetryng along in a perfectly lovely key with all the note
s and the music complementing the fundamental key note. but to affect to change
your mood colour and feeling we can move to another key area, with its own funda
mental key note.
modulating from key to key its only really posible in western music, and its an
effect that has to be used with care and shatelty. crude or badly handled modul
ation can be as ugly as the juxtaposition of two clashing___ colours in a room.
imagine a georgeous song like dany boy filled with cheesse modulations.
______19:30
by the time the beatles discovered mid song key changes, classical music had lon
g since abandon them. macartney in particular became in thread by modulation as
a device, but it seems instinctibely to know that the best modulations are core_
_ by itshelf, when mood and colour are change inperceptibely as if by magic.
it may surprise you to learn for example that in the cheerfull happy goo lucky s
ong penny lane he pulls off clever and mentally satisfying key changes no less t
han 7 times, ALMOST WITHOUT YOU NOTICING. THIS IS THE WORK OF A COMPOSER WHO REA
LLY KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING.
________21:30
what effect then does this modulation have on the song? well for one thing it al
l does at perception of the chorus.listen to what it sounds without the modulati
on.
______ 21:52
its fine isnt it? but its not very surprising. in the proper version is much of
a shifting gear as we move into the chords.
it is of course quite common in the pop songs, for the voice to rise to a high r
ange to a chorus, to sound more celebratry more friendsed more desperate or more
pasionated. and macartneys voice does indeed rise predictively upwards for the c
horus. but here is the clever bit--??. while the voice is rising upwards for the
chorus, the modulation is actually a downwards shift. moving the key down which
has the subcouncious effect of making us feels like whistfull__??, as if the jo
y is in the tourkle___?? joy, but the joy experiences a slight remove for the ev
ensy___?? portrays.

since the song is about macartney childness memories of growing up in the suburb
s of liverpool, this makes perfect emotional sense to us as we listen. theres one
other vip product of this downward shift. at the end of the chorus we fullster_
_?? move back up a gear as the verse starts again. of course we now modulating u
pwards, the incoming verse greatest__?? like a new day full of optimism and yout
h__?.
___23:53
a letter right to then macartney would have admited that__?? but penny lane is a
bout journeys, into the past, downstreet, trough suburb on liverpool, and so the
harmony goes on a journey too. in the very final chorus, macartney surprises us
once more and let the harmony shifts again, this time upwards into the chorus a
nd the result is gloriously celebratry.
---24:36
penny lane is one of the most magical life affirming songs in the beatles repert
oire. it also features up a rock, pick a low trompet solo, inspired by a paul ma
cartney hearing one on a tv broadcast a bach brandenburg concerto n2.
macartney thirst but knowledging and understanding of classical music wasextreme
ly influencial on the beatles work. divisions between classical and popular seem
to be solved on the later recordings. in this respect macartney was way ahead o
f his time, anticipating the future that didnt recognize artificial barriers betw
een musical styles.
by finding very treasure__?? in musics past the beatles gave their songs depth.
but they also thaught a new generation of classical composers. that the western
tradition at that time being sistematlically dismantled, still had something to
offer.
__25:41
i believe that the beatles accelerated the inventiveness of mass popularity proo
ved to all composers that you could still take the basic elements of western mus
ic and make something new and powerfull out of it. i dont think thats a coincidenc
e the musical composers like phillip glass etc john tavana, john adams, steve ri
ce, sir henry goresky.. is all of permitively__?? tonal. that is, its made up wit
h the familiar harmonyc melodic and rithmics tools of the western tradition. as
a composer living now i actually feel quite angry about the damage done to the c
ontemporary music by the classical add on __??guard on the 50s and 60s. by many
musicians of my generation may owed gratitude to Beatles betrying a life line to
new tonal music.
____26:45
the beatles change the chords to all music in the 20th century, but none of them
had had any formal musical education. how do they do it?
perhaps spade played a hand.they learn their craft playing 6,7,8 hours long set
in hamburg, they had to play everything not just rock standards but movie thing
tunes, broadway show numbers, folk songs novelty numbers a musical... . so when
they came to compose they already had a calleydoscopic musical pallet to draw it
all. this is what all great composers have done.
----27:37
Bagh music for example is a combination of his native german borok? style the it
alian instrumental music of vivaldi and even the rithms and harmonies of luis xi
v french court of the versalles.
the beatles like bach, embrace musical styles and ideas from here there and ever
ywhere with unabashed__?? enthusiasm. they didnt just regoodate their idols like
a humans jukebox. whatever idioms they borrowed always ended up sounding somehow
like them.
one moment were on a free wall gliding down the stairs and singing a song: your
mother should know, with its close harmony backing vocals and soft shoe shaple__

?? built. the next moment they were invited to enjoy a victorian circus atractio
n.completed with fairgrounds steel organ and drumrolls in being for a benefit of
mr kite.
they had the weat__?? and versatilitie to pastage of ben__?? cornucopia an old f
ashion musical forms, but it always sounded like the beatles. the severity and w
ealth style was hear in their music, is one reason why they are much more than j
ust another sixties pop band.
their abilitie to absorve influences can be seen clearly in one of their greates
t songs. in 1966 they released a track that was different from any pop song anyo
ne had hear before.this song was eleanor rigby, nothing shows more dramaticaly h
ow their style as composers was developing.
the song is beautifull and sinister at the same time. whats happening inside this
music to produce so chilly and moving and affect us. why is it so different eve
rything else is going on in 1966. well for start is nothing a convention key. if
it were it would sound like this.
---30:13
as it is, actually sounds like this:
the shuttle?? diference between those two melodies erasing off the 6th the semit
one gives away the fact that eleanor rigby is in what called a mode. modes perc
ided the mayor and minor keys that were introduced into western music during the
renacimiento. like keys each mode has its own particular flavour and texture. t
hey began in ancient grece and still have greek names.and theyre hardware into th
e folk music of many cultures.here is a modal tune:
-----31:15
scarlborough man is in dorian mode the most common minor mode in all angloceltic
folk music it has a moody mellow collect atmosphere about it.
eleanor rigby is an oven version of a tragic english folk ballad in a dorian mod
e. its flowing meandring???___??? vocal line reminiscending church play in song
two. but its mood isnt fatalistic and morous or drippy as an earthy energy and r
each to it.
i dont think for one moment that paul macartney sat down and said: im gonna write
this in e minor dorian, but he is an intuitive composer and it felt right to the
poethic imadry of the song.
32:09____
it is without doubt, one of the most brilliant and pointing songs ever writen. a
nd its tense broudy___? soundscape isnt been any good luck? even a 24 years old,
paul macartney knew exactly what sound he was after.
even the way eleanor rigby ends is unusual. the final two closing chords of a pi
ece of music are known technically as a cadence from the italian word cadere fol
d? when in english poets talk about a dying fold, they mean a cadence. eleanor r
igbys cadence chord 2 to chord 1, for once very fashionable for the 14th centuri
e. now, there are a lot of types of cadences, but the most comon by far are in p
opular music is the perfect cadence, V to I. but listen to these cadences from l
ennon macartney songs.
yesterday
she is leaving home
and i love her
all of these cadences are known as a plagal cadences. whats all about this? is th
e plagal cadences almost entirely absent from the music that paul macartney grow
up with.theres not to be found in presleys chuck berrys, little richard, buddie ho
lly.carl perkins. rockand roll generally or its dub bands music or the holliwood
moovies musical on the 40s everyone knew, or even musical. now plagal cadences
comes from himns, the old familiar amen, we use to hear at church is a classic p
lagal cadence.
when we hear a lennon and macartneys song were often being affected by a small cu
ltur details an emotional asociations, like this, even if we dont realize it. w
hen yesterday ends,it is a dying fold, it is an amen. ____34:24
by reestablishing the link between modern urban music and arcaic forms, the beat
les were in reaching their songs and expanding our expectation as listneners, at

the same time. but their program wasnt just restricted to european music.
it is well known that the beatles particulary george harrison, withdraw on to th
e mistic teaching of maharishy majes yogi. following in first in bangalow in wal
es. then tourishi cash in india. george was intelligent people sitar maestro ra
bi shankar.
35:38____________
the beatles lead by harrison, took indians instruments and use the unusual norma
l western sound as layers in their recordings, mainly the sitar, the violing lik
e duruba, the table drum, the four string tempura, but their interaction with in
dian music wasnt just musical tourism, it was to happen affect on their writing t
hat when far beyond the ocasional use of sitar and tabla grow up into big exotic
colour.
36:09______
here is a song originally record when the beatles were recruited in ruishi cash?
? it was called then child of nature.
this john lennon song resurfaced many years later on the emerging album as yello
w sky. completely played on guitar and strings.sounding just like a regular west
ern pop song. but its melodic shape gives away its true origin.
before the maharishy period john lennons tunes tended to be quite static. alowing
the movement of the chords underneath the melody to give a naiv caracter and th
e interest. the only a hards day night for example, as quite a simple static tun
e with interesting chord changings beneath it.
but as his competitive partnership with macartney developed, john lennon tunes b
ecame more adventurous.and around the time that his encounter with both indian c
ulture and he using lsd drugs, his tunes have quite a disntinctive pentatonic fe
el. pentatonic scales are the black notes on the piano.
pentatonic music sounds oriental because is so prevalent in asian and far easter
n music.
apart for two tiny ornamental notes the whole yellous guy tune can be played on
the black notes of a piano. it is completely pentatonic.
the shaping of the melody was one of the many ways that the beatles responded cr
eativetly to indian music.
by fusing western and eastern idioms the beatles anticipated by 30 years the mu
sical phenomenon of bangra. that was to sweet throough the popular mainstream. b
ut it wasnt just their ability to absorve desperate influences that made them tow
over the century. they transform the whole enviroment in which the music is mad
e. what they got up to in the studio in the 1960s has shaped how people make mus
ic eversince.
the crowning glory of beatles revolutional music, was their use of the studio.
they turned it from a dual box where you try to capture your live sound as acura
tely as posible into a playground of musical experimentation. ironicaly it was c
lassical musics a vangard that was to play a key roll in shaping the beatles att
itude to the studio.
40
prior to recording revolver the grown breaking 1966 album paul macarntey attende
d a vangard happenings in london. and became fascinated by composers such a carl
stochousen and luciano berreo.
stockhousen was even choosen by macarntey to be on stg pepper. it was through th
is conection that the beatles became interested in experimenting with tape. this
concept wasnt particulary new in classical music circles. where musician engenie
rs like the american john cages had been splicing up magnetic tapes and editing
it back together in endlessly repited loops since early 1950s.
but it was dramatically new for pop. by looping short pieces of recording tape t
he material loses its original identity.becomes rithmic and himnotic. any sound

sample a birth cry a machine or a group of people laughing for example is mister
iously transformed by looping.
but there was a big diference between what the beatles were up to and what the a
vant garde composers were doing. for the classical experimentalist it was enough
simply to do the looping and listen to that as a performance on its own. but th
e beatles however it was a means to create a nightmarish or allucinogenics sound
scapes with in the higly emergentics sounds. these avant garde technics, started
turning up on beatles records begining with revolver. from then on along with t
heir producer george martin the studio is to be their creative home. but it was
the final track on the album tomorrow never knows, which confirm that the beatle
s were now a musical innovators of global importance. nothing like the aura of t
he landscape of this song had ever been heard before.
_____42:46
its hard to overestimate the impact this track had when it was released. in the
consecutive forty old years its been sale by so many other and not pick a sound
collages and experiments but it cant sale as mind blame to us as it did then to
the million who bough this record expecting another jolly collection of love son
gs from the fab four. suddenly the beatles were in startingly new territory.
tomorrow never knows is john lennon attempt to capture the experience of a lsd t
rip in music.
radical idea number 1.
the song subject is the mistic writing of hit psico goo goo timothy leary and a
secret text called the tibetan book of the dead. radical idea number 2
is fused indian elements with western pop merging sitar and tempura, with electr
ic bass electric and acoustic guitars organs distorted piano and especially reac
hing an studio treated drumkit. by the way on the long regenerated note c, how l
ong the sitar through out it also welcome back the first so called drown into ma
instream western music since the middleages. radical idea number 3.
producers george martin took lennons voice and in an attempt to the sound a hun
dredof distant bermering and whispering...technics which some were especifically
for this song, like beating the voice electronically through this, a lesslie c
abinet.
lesslie cabinet were originally designed for the electronic hammon organ but no
one had put it a voice throug it before. RADICAL IDEA NUMBER 4
AND RADICAL IDEA NUMBER 5
was the macartneys late use of tape mute running on a chain of five editional ma
chines makes lie into the master track.
the beatles were deep in unchanted waters.not just for pop but for any kind of m
usic. they took what they learn from tomorrow never knows and applied aspects of
it, especially the reverse tape efects to many of their other songs. particular
ily on john lennons strawvery fields forever.
the beatles by 1966 when it was released to a thunderstruck public were easyly t
he most famous people on the planet. they were also dangerously isolated and the
y knew it.
by breaking the mold of what a pop single could posibly sound like with this rec
ord they were also entering shadowy well with their most of the songs to explore
the interplay between ilusion and reality.
______46:16
in they desire to portray