Song Complexity

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Tue May 24, 2005 4:23 pm

I started on guitar when I was 13 but changed to bass as soon as I could, I got pretty good on the guitar in the meantime (played about two years) and can still play but didn't realize how complex some of their seemimgly simple stuff was until I was about 18 and played in a band with a good guitar player who knew most of the correct chords to a lot of their songs. I learned that there was a lot more than meets the eye with The Beatles. Even the ending harmonies with the #2 note on "She Loves You" were complex for 1964. they very rarely played just straight chords in their music, there was always some little twist. Lennon and Harrison did a lot of interplay between them with McCartney playing other than the root notes quite often, that was advanced stuff for pop music in 1963-64, especially considering that they arranged that early stuff themselves maybe with GM helping here and there.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Tue May 24, 2005 8:28 pm

...maybe?...okay, I'll settle for that...

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Wed May 25, 2005 4:17 am

Well, I'm sure that he had more to do with their stuff later than that early in their career, I bet they arranged a lot of that stuff themselves in Hamburg playing night after night. Arrangements tend to happen spontaneously when you play the same song time after time. You know how that is Dane, didn't you play the Poompf room for 6 months in Duluth, East Dakota for 6 months once? haha!

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed May 25, 2005 5:44 am

Right you are, Bob...after a while, I was itchin' to drop some Bonham-esque fills into "Feelings", but then I would've been out the three-fifty-a-week.

As to the Beatles, with those tight pants I'm sure they were arranging their stuff on stage almost perpetually...

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed May 25, 2005 6:32 am

Bob, after a careful re-reading of your last post, I feel I have to make a correction: it was 'the Oompah Room for 6 months in DejaVu, Minnebraska for 2 weeks once.'

qmoder · Post by **qmoder** » Wed May 25, 2005 3:27 pm

Learning Beatle songs can be a musical education in itself.

rictified · Post by **rictified** » Wed May 25, 2005 3:53 pm

Oompah room! haha! I used to play tuba when I was a kid, talk about oompah.
I happen to think some Bonham fills would have done a good job of livening up Feelings myself, at least you would have woken everyone up in the room.

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Thu May 26, 2005 5:20 am

Everyone but the bandleader...