Alan W. Pollack's "Notes On' The Beatles Series

March 20, 2006 2:23 AM

Beatlemaniac It took Alan W. Pollack 10 years to pick apart every Beatles song and describe in detail the mechanics behind the music.
posted by minkll (36 comments total)

A wonderful find. I like the way that the technical detail is interspersed with comments like, "The sensuous experience of single three note like that with two of your friends is worth having at least once in a lifetime". Thanks for sharing.
posted by primer_dimer at 3:02 AM on March 20, 2006

That's amazing. It's even more amazing that it's available free on the Internet, instead of being buried between covers by some obscure musicological publisher.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:31 AM on March 20, 2006

Very interesting. This is why I love MetaFilter.

Here is a recent interesting essay about the Beatles songwriting.
posted by caddis at 3:56 AM on March 20, 2006

Cheers minkll. For a similar take on things, see Ian MacDonald's Revolution In The Head.
posted by Hartster at 4:09 AM on March 20, 2006

Wow! Really brilliant. I can't wait to do some heavy Beatles listening/reading now. Beware of that background graphic, though!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 5:50 AM on March 20, 2006

Hm, I guess I thought this had FPPed posted before, or I would've posted it a long time ago. Anyway, it has a much nicer layout here.

Anyone who writes pop songs should read this stuff.
posted by ludwig_van at 6:19 AM on March 20, 2006

Great stuff! Thanks, minkll, and thanks for the nicer site, ludwig_van.
posted by languagehat at 6:24 AM on March 20, 2006

As someone who has tried his hand at songwriting, I really appreciate this.

I wonder... when they were writing their music, did they do it because they knew technically what was going on, or just because it sounded good that way?
posted by Enron Hubbard at 6:31 AM on March 20, 2006

Hm, I just read the essay caddis links to. I found it a bit lacking, to tell the truth. The author doesn't seem to offer much real insight. First he says this:

But it is on Revolver, the best of their thirteen albums, that the Beatles can be heard at their most disciplined and musically impressive.

Which I totally agree with, but it's a rather bold statement and he barely supports it. And then this:

It is, I suspect, no accident that after 1970, none of the four Beatles would write any songs or make any recordings comparable in quality to the ones they made as a group.

Which is BS. There are certainly post-Beatles songs that are comparable in quality to Beatles songs. And I'm not sure what he means when he says "it was no accident."

And then this, which seems to have been entirely pulled out of the author's you-know-what:

Like most self-taught musicians who start out playing guitar rather than piano, both Lennon and McCartney were conditioned by the feel of the guitar fingerboard, whose stepwise layout facilitates the harmonization of the flattened-seventh, Mixolydian-mode melodies first heard in such early Beatles songs as “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Uh, ok.

Anyway, Allan W. Pollack knows his shit. Although he gets a little gushy sometimes, in a sort of quaint, not unlikeable way.

On preview:

I wonder... when they were writing their music, did they do it because they knew technically what was going on, or just because it sounded good that way?

Well, they weren't formally trained, so while I'd say that they must have "known technically what was going on," simply because they wrote what they did, they grasped it intuitively, in their ears, and probably not with the sort of terminology that Pollack uses.
posted by ludwig_van at 6:35 AM on March 20, 2006

This is all utterly remarkable. I absolutely agree with FoB: it's a marvel to have this available as a free resource. Learn about harmony and songwriting from the Beatles! What fun! Many thanks to Alan W. Pollack for sharing the fruits of his lovingly obsessive labor!
posted by Songdog at 7:02 AM on March 20, 2006

For awhile I've had the idea that I would write something like this about The Beach Boys, particularly Pet Sounds. Unless anybody knows of one? I may as well just get started with God Only Knows.
posted by ludwig_van at 7:11 AM on March 20, 2006

Great, great links. Thanks.
posted by Miko at 7:15 AM on March 20, 2006

Thank GOD they didn't write them that way.
posted by HTuttle at 7:27 AM on March 20, 2006

What way, HTuttle?
posted by ludwig_van at 7:28 AM on March 20, 2006

Wasn't this guy from the usenet?

And he sure sounds like Geir Hongro too...
posted by klangklangston at 7:39 AM on March 20, 2006

ludwig_van, if you do that for the Beach Boys, I'll read every word you write. Probably about three times.

This Beatles one is a great resource, but although I listen to a good chunk of their stuff (like everyone else on the planet does), I'm not as know-it-backwards-and-forwards familiar with every Beatles note as I am with the Beach Boys' stuff.
posted by booksandlibretti at 8:17 AM on March 20, 2006

Very interesting, thanks,
posted by nuclear_soup at 8:52 AM on March 20, 2006

Kinda takes the fun out of listening to The Beatles for me. Sometimes it's disappointing to look at something through a microscope.
posted by punkfloyd at 8:57 AM on March 20, 2006

I love this stuff. It's great how it reads like an extension of my classical theory courses (hemiolas and appoggiaturas and secondary dominants, oh my). Thanks, minkll.
posted by danb at 9:32 AM on March 20, 2006

Love this comment about "And Your Bird Can Sing:"

Going out on a very personal limb here, for a change, I'm not sure that "And Your Bird Can Sing" discloses its innermost secrets until you've both sat within the sanctum of your own living room making special plans with one individual, only later to be cornered in the last booth of the Chinese restaurant by someone else to talk about new drapes for that same living room.

Also, this:

Today we call it Mid Life Crisis, and we expect it to happen around the age of 41, or the environs. Goodness ... John was a tender 25, and was capable of articulating the excruciatingly impossible to verbalize nature of it; and in music.

Although John didn't know it, 25, for him, was midlife.
posted by Miko at 10:04 AM on March 20, 2006

I don't know... Maybe it's just me, but I feel like this kind of over-intellectualized abstracted analysis of the Beatles songs has the potential to take away from the visceral pleasures of listening to the songs themselves.

It's how I felt in film school when critical studies professors would start jabbering on about deconstructing this or that or the underlying postmodernism blah-blah-blah.

I have an MFA, but I feel that art, to be truly appreciated, ought to be appreciated primarily through the intuitive, through the gut reaction. I think this kind of over analysis can just kill the pleasures of the underlying work.

I don't want to think about whether or not John used a mixolydian scale on Come Together, I'd personally rather just feel it. It makes the listener be in their head, analysing from some abstracted place rather than directly experiencing the art, IMHO.

I'm not disparaging taking pleasure in analyzing the music. I just think that, sometimes, it can suck the life out of the work, IMHO.
posted by MythMaker at 10:15 AM on March 20, 2006

Miko - a fave Beatles obsessive story re: And Your Bird Can Sing (not super sure if it's true, but a fave nonetheless) is Joe Walsh catching Harrison backstage (whilst Walsh supported Beatle Ringo in the 80s) and gushing about how hard it was to play the up-tempo guitar line. Walsh tries his hand at it and cranks it out in the same tempo and Harrison admits that it was most likely an overdub when he performed it on Revolver.
posted by mctsonic at 10:31 AM on March 20, 2006

I do love the little asides too. In response I guess to those who criticize this as over-studied, he does admit in "She Loves You" that:

There's not much more your learned astronomer (shades of Walt Whitman) can say about this effect; the theoretician stands in awe of a natural, miraculous phenomenon.
posted by vacapinta at 10:54 AM on March 20, 2006

MM, I can see your point. But, I can think of three good reasons why this endeavor merits attention.

First, the genius of the Beatles. According to George Martin, pretty much all the music is intuitive. Paul was the only one who had any kind of musical guidance in the form of his then girlfriend's family.

Second, it took this guy ten years to do this. That's about how long the Beatles were in existence. As others have pointed out, he did this for his own pleasure, and made it available for free. I can think of many books, musical and otherwise, that took much less time, effort, and skill that have earned their author's undeserved noteriety.

While I consider myself a fairly musical person, most of the language is beyond me. What interests me is that the author's efforts name and contextualze ideas that we've all "felt." Supposedly, Gregg Toland taught Orson Welles the whole bag of cinematographer's tricks in a weekend before they made Citizen Kane. But few people were able to use them in such a daring and provocative way. He's not discussing alterities or modes of alienation here.

But, yeah, it's a music nerd thing.
posted by minkll at 11:01 AM on March 20, 2006

There's an absolutely wonderful book that takes this same approach to The Beatles: Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald. It tells the story of the Sixties through the work of The Beatles, track by track, with fabulous insight. Single best piece of music criticism/analysis in the 20th century, for my money.
posted by influx at 11:28 AM on March 20, 2006

I think this kind of over analysis can just kill the pleasures of the underlying work.

I don't want to think about whether or not John used a mixolydian scale on Come Together, I'd personally rather just feel it.

Yeah, well are you saying that purely as a listener, or as a composer? Consider that this stuff probably isn't intended for the "average," non-musician listener. While I think that an understanding of theory and composition will ultimately improve anyone's appreciation of music, the way these articles are written assumes a whole lot of prior knowledge. It's meant for people who already speak the language of music theory, at least somewhat. If the term "mixolydian scale" doesn't instantly conjure up in your head the distinctive sound and flavor of said scale, then I can imagine why reading about it wouldn't be as illuminating.

And I don't think it's anything like this:

It's how I felt in film school when critical studies professors would start jabbering on about deconstructing this or that or the underlying postmodernism blah-blah-blah.

This isn't a guy embarking on some a discursive treatise about his subjective interpretations of the music, or how it fits into this and that movement, or what political ideology it reflects. He's simply explicating the text itself in largely objective musical terminology. This is stuff that anyone could come up with on their own just by listening if they had the ears and the knowledge. He just lays it all out clearly and conveniently. For a songwriter I think it's an invaluable resource.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:49 AM on March 20, 2006

From his notes on "Something":

One of the hidden strengths of _Abbey Road_ that we'll uncover in our studies of its songs is the unprecedented (for a "pop" album, even one by The Beatles) extent to which it contains subtle cross references between tracks, whether they be anticipations or flashbacks. The medley on side 2 is where these effects are most obvious and on the surface. But throughout the album, you find many others correspondences at the level of key scheme or even rhythmic motif.

- You're more accustomed to appreciating this unifying effect in the visual arts. Two famous examples are the prevalance of angular v-shaped brushstrokes throughout Van Gogh's "Crows Over the Wheat Field" (not just for the crows themselves) or the way in which the attic curtains in "American Gothic" are the same fabric as the wife's dress. But you can accomplish the similar effects in music.

Wow. Wonderful find, minkll -- thanks!
posted by scody at 1:11 PM on March 20, 2006

Ditto the thanks, minkll! I love stuff like this.
posted by Bearman at 1:31 PM on March 20, 2006

Frankly, Alan W. Pollack needs to eat more All Bran. Lots more.
posted by Decani at 6:45 PM on March 20, 2006

It took Alan W. Pollack 10 years to pick apart every Beatles song...

He should have known better. Actually, this is pretty amazing, especially for us oldtimers who now have an almost teenager (recently in a band called The Lizards) who loves this stuff. A great link, minkll, thanks.

As I think I've said before on MeFi, I've been wrong a lot of times, but I certainly was right back in 1964, insisting to all those smug grownups that, no, The Beatles weren't going to be washed up and forgotten in six months.
posted by lelilo at 1:17 AM on March 21, 2006

Heh. I told my kid brother, when he came home clutching a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," that the Beatles were going to be washed up and forgotten in six months. Bunch of Brits trying to play rock and roll, who do they think they are? The Beach Boys, the Marvelettes, the Chiffons—now, that's rock and roll!

Well, come on, you can't accept your kid brother's taste, can you?
posted by languagehat at 5:15 AM on March 21, 2006

MythMaker raises an interesting question: Do masters actually think of these things as they compose? I don't know, but I'd put my money on that they do not. Bach, maybe. Beethoven, no way (IMHO). I'm no master and not even close, but my stuff is better when I don't consider these things. However, that being said, after-the-fact analysis/theory has helped me get out of a deadend street, though still not particularly artistically (creatively?).

Great post, though. Great find.
posted by sluglicker at 6:14 AM on March 21, 2006

Oh yeah, one more thing. Maybe it's the complete synthesis of the too ideals... the intellectualizing and the intuitive/creative...that marks the master. That's why most of us aren't.
posted by sluglicker at 6:35 AM on March 21, 2006

*two
posted by sluglicker at 6:37 AM on March 21, 2006

Beethoven, no way

That's ridiculous. You can write a pop song without knowing about Myxolydian mode, but you can't write a symphony in sonata form, much less a fugue, without knowing exactly what you're doing. You think Beethoven never studied music, and just sang like a bird? Dude!
posted by languagehat at 7:03 AM on March 21, 2006

One of the hidden strengths of _Abbey Road_ that we'll uncover in our studies of its songs is the unprecedented (for a "pop" album, even one by The Beatles) extent to which it contains subtle cross references between tracks, whether they be anticipations or flashbacks.

Ok, I have to take back part of what I said before. This is one place where Pollack goes out on a bit of a limb, and I have to say I've never agreed. I think Abbey Road is a good album, but not The Beatles' best, and I think the second side is much closer to a bunch of song fragments in guitar keys just sort of thrown together than any kind of pseudo-classical "suite."

And what languagehat said. Of course Beethoven knew what he was doing. You can't exactly just "write what sounds good" when you're deaf.

And like I said upthread, The Beatles probably wouldn't have been able to describe their compositional devices with the terminology that Pollack uses, but they clearly understood what they were doing. The consistency and variety with which they wrote bears this out.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:23 AM on March 21, 2006