Did the Beatles know much about music theory?

I think we're basically in agreement here, Ron.
I work the exact same way. I've only HAD to do my own notation for the session musicians when needed. I don't have a George Martin or other person I want to pay to do it so... Other than that- I strum and sing or bang the piano too. Demo it on a hand-held or just write down the lyrics because I'll remember it.

I understand Paul because in the real world of professional scoring there is much language besides the notes. There are the little nuances and terms that Cheif mentioned. I don't know that language, During sessions I describe that stuff verbally- very unmusical terms like swoop, majesty, darkness and drama.

Peace love and fortissimo
Marky

 

Yes, I think that Coltrane did become bored with conventional harmony. Giant Steps certainly demonstrates his mastery of it - I could never have written anything close to those songs, but I know enough about music to appreciate what he did on that album. There is a really satisfying, logical quality to many of the themes he wrote on that album, at least to my ears, but I think that he felt he had taken post-Parker jazz harmony as far as it could go. A lot of contemporary critics complained that the "sheets of sound" period was too busy, with Coltrane exploring every possible permuatation of each set of changes instead of picking the one most pleasing melody. I will confess that I appreciate the initial theme statements of songs like "Blue Train" or "Cousin Mary" more than the solos, because I literally cannot keep up with what he is doing during the solos, whereas the theme statements, as I mentioned above, are very logical and "graspable" to my ears. I can follow him through the early modal period such as "My Favorite Things" and understand, I think, how he is basing his improvisations off of a scale or mode, with no changes, but when he gets to A Love Supreme and beyond, I am no longer able to follow what he he is basing his improvisations on, despite having read books/articles that "explain" how the whole composition is based on the initial four note "A Love Su-Preme" kernel. When he gets to Meditations and Sun Ship, I really have no idea what he is basing anything on, although I'm sure he did.

 

Ha-ha...here is a link to what I was discussing earlier.

http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/awp/awp.html

 

There is no such thing as "completely free expression," imho. A lot of people would argue that Coltrane's final output was indistinguishable from a five-year-old picking up a saxophone and blowing into it "freely."

I read a really good article once by the Marxist critic Frederic Jameson that pointed out that the "freer" Schoenberg got (i.e. all twelve tones are equal - none is more "important" tonally than another) the more his music became incredibly disciplined - i.e. the rigidity of the twelve-tone row and serialism was necessary to control that freedom. I think Webern took this even further and scored the timbre of the instruments or something like that.

I suspect that even at its "freest," Coltrane's playing was governed by some sort of internal rules that may have made sense only to him. I'm sympathetic to his quest, and want to go along with him, but there's a point circa 1965 where I just cannot do it, and "completely free expression" turns into random noise, at least to my ears.

 

I'd highly recommend this series of "technical" analyses of Beatles songs by Allan Pollack to anyone who hasn't already read it.

 

Thats why I don't paint anymore. Its also why I don't create as much music anymore. I know enough to edit everything I do because I know its been done before and by whom:

• "This sounds like ELO"
• "This sounds too much like a Smiley Smile song"
• "This kind of music hasn't been cool since 1993"
• "Jackson Browne did this much better"
• "This is a Pixies rip-off"
• "This is the same riff from Rock And Roll *****"
• "Neil Young used this chord change a thousand times"

etc....

The only reason to continue is because it's fun.

 

Hence the quotation marks.

My own explorations into free jazz led me to conclude that, if the concept were taken to its logical conclusion, no one would be able to understand anyone else's music. To my ears, Coltrane came pretty close to being able to express whatever it was that he felt, and that both his virtuosity and his willingness to abandon established forms both lent themselves to a scope of feeling beyond what most musicians could accomplish. I feel the same way about Hendrix, though he certainly worked more within established forms.

I know very little about serialism, but it seems to me that it must be extremely rigid in application.

Well, he was certainly limited by the parameters of the instrument he was using, although he did deliberately play it incorrectly, and this limitation spread to whomever he was playing with, but there are times in his later output when it seems that there is no connection between the players, and no connection between the music and any conventional kind of music, apart from some degree of "intensity". I have a pretty high tolerance for his later music (and a lot of free jazz), but some of it escapes me. It's such an idiosyncratic mode of expression that there's so little there to grasp.

 

Sounds like many reasons I would like your music, Chief. There are so many open roads. Even if you dash it off with the RARP riff.

Peace Love and Dash Riff-Rock
Marky

 

Yes, ironically, the Beatles now exert the same influence over subsequent rock music that classical music exerted over someone like George Martin. All subsequent rock musicians wrestle with the Beatles' influence, whether they base their entire career on the sound of one Beatles song ("I Want To Hold Your Hand" --> The Knack, "Rain" --> The Church, "I Am the Walrus" --> The Electric Light Orchestra, and so on and so forth), try to take the Beatles innovations "farther" (Yes, ELP, prog rock in general), or lament that they can never match up to the Beatles' achievement (I remember reading an interview where Kurt Cobain basically said this).

 

Sometimes the "intensity" is enough for me - the last concert released under the title The Olatunji Concert is certainly more "intense" than any electrically amplified rock band I've ever heard, but, again, I can't really follow why he's playing what he's playing, other than noting that it's really "intense."

 

The Beatles' or Coltrane's true legacy in music(IMO) is: innovation. To say that it's all been done is to ignore the real gift they gave to us.
If that's true, we might as well have a TV show that picks our stars out for us and they could have a formula that someone could actually um...oh wait a minute.

Peace Love and Johnny Bravo
Marky

 

Haha. I have had exactly the same thought when trying to come up with things. It's not like it should matter, as I'm not trying to sell anything, but it does.

 

That sounds like a perscription drug.

"I once suffered from a flatted 7th. My doctor perscribed mixolydian. Took care of it right away. Side effects include Aeolian Cadence and Piccolo Trumpet".

 

It had all been done in the classical genre, and then African-Americans combined Western harmony with African concepts of rhythm and harmony, and that infusion of new life allowed new things to be done for a century or so in blues, jazz, and rock. Rock is now facing the same "it's all been done before" problem that jazz and classical have already faced. Since 1979 or so, the real "something new" has been rap/hip-hop, although I know that many still refuse to accept that, and hip-hop is probably already entering its own "it's all been done before" stage. The same cycle repeats itself more quickly in each subsequent genre - it took classical several centuries to go from Monteverdi to Schoenberg, jazz half a century to go from Armstrong to Ornette Coleman, rock even less time than that to go from the Beatles to Kid A, and hip-hop arguably even less time to play itself out.

Probably the freshest and most original thing in Western music today is the fusion of classical with hip-hop/dance beats that Bjork has explored and the fusion of classical with folk and pop-rock that Joanna Newsom is exploring. Both of these women are classically trained, but open to new, non-classical influences, and not paralyzed by the weight of Western musical history in the way that men are prone to be (you'll notice that there aren't a lot of women here on the forum making lists of their ten favorite albums or arguing that rock died in 1966/1971/1991/whenever - that's because their minds don't work that way, and they are probably the brightest hope we have for the future of music). Or else something completely unanticipated and new like hip-hop will arise from the African-American and/or Latin-American community.

 

This is an interesting discussion! I've always marvelled at how, for example, James Hetfield, who has zero musical training (as far as I know), can come up with such musically interesting stuff. I think as a guitarist and singer, he is aware of chord patterns on the guitar and knows by ear what works and what doesn't (in terms of harmony). When doing S & M he said he doesn't know notation but knows where to put his hands on the fretboard, which tells me he was able to figure it out that way early on.

Or Eddie Van Halen--never had formal training! But obviously he has a musical vocabulary.

I think if you know theory, you have to be really good to be able to creatively express yourself, perhaps like language. Most if not all jazz players know the theory backwards and forwards but have to become comfortable utilizing this knowledge in a free, creative environment (improvisation) without thinking about it, again, similar to language.

 

Why do you think mixing pop and classical is original when Joanna Newsom does it, and "regressive" when Yes does it?

I feel like a lot of this discussion hinges on the idea that the only worthwhile kind of composition is a catchy melody. I'd rather listen to a catchy melody than a bunch of scary atonal modern music too but that doesn't mean I think it's the only thing that's worth doing. Somehow, I don't think Schoenberg was thinking "I wish I could just write a nice melody, but my understanding of musical theory and history won't let me." His aims were not the same as those of a pop songwriter trying to get a hit on the radio.

 

Because, like I said, women aren't as hung up on replicating or competing with prior achievements as men are. I doubt that Joanna Newsom is ever going to cover a classical composition in its entirety, the way that ELP covered "Pictures at an Exhibition." I don't think women's minds work in the same way as men's (shocking revelation, huh? ), and, due to sexism, they have been underrepresented in Western musical history from the classical era all the way through rock. I personally find the really interesting and original talents in the past quarter-century or so to be women: Kate Bush, Bjork, Joanna Newsom - all classically trained to one degree or another, but more able to incorporate new influences into their music than men - witness all the hostility towards hip-hop here, but Bjork, whose "classical" credentials are as impeccable as those of any prog-rock musician from the 70s, if not far more so, is not scared of hip-hop, but embraces it, and, on Homogenic, created a new and interesting fusion of "classical," string-based music and modern beats. Even in more straight-ahead rock bands with no "classical" or "prog-rock" leanings, the women members are always twice as interesting as the men - Kim Deal was about five times as interesting as boring old Frank Black and his recycled indie-rock routine we've seen a million times before. Sleater-Kinney was the one 90s "grunge" band that I could stand to listen to, because their female take on loud guitar rock was a lot more interesting than Soundgarden's or Pearl Jam's or even Mudhoney's.

 

I think that really is more or less what he thought.

This is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg

I believe that Schoenberg stated point-blank that he felt "compelled" to abandon tonality, and that he did not necessarily want to. There are some parallels with Miles Davis's famous response to the question someone asked him during his 70s fusion period: "Why don't you play ballads (i.e., standards) anymore?" to which Miles replied, "Because I love them too much."

 

I'd probably argue that the driving force behind the increase in speed at which musical styles have been exhausted is due to the ready availability of recorded performances, just as the pace of intellectual change picked up considerably after the invention of the printing press. My friend Doug and I were working a few years ago on a paper describing the process of cultural change as a function of the speed and accuracy at which ideas could be disseminated, but like many of my academic projects it lies gathering dust at the moment.

 

There's no denying the fact that no amount of musical training can make someone a great songwriter. That kind of creativity is mostly innate, not learned. But that doesn't mean that an understanding of musical theory, or great skill on an instrument, isn't useful, for being able to come up with different options for harmonies, or write your own string arrangement, or play a complicated musical passage, if you need those things. To me it's about having more tools in your toolbox. Sure, lots of the best ideas are simple. You don't need a degree in musicology to write or play "Louie Louie." But on the other hand, why limit yourself to "Louie Louie"?

 

I've wondered, actually, how much understanding of musical theory most jazz musicians have. Do most jazz musicians tend to know what they're doing in a theoretical sense or is it more by feel for some of them?

 

I agree with all of that. But the underlying problem is that men in the Western World who learn musical theory tend to end up being inhibited, not just by the theory itself, but by the weight of prior musical history. For lack of a better term, I'll call this "the George Martin syndrome." His musical training and knowledge led him to tell the Beatles "You can't do that" when they used a harmony that his training taught him was cliched. Well, it was cliched for a reason - because people respond to it. For whatever reason, classically trained women do not seem as prone to this problem as men.

 

Coltrane and Miles Davis knew what they were doing. Others, like Bix Beiderbecke, reportedly played by ear, much as rock artists like Jimi Hendrix did.

 

I understand what you mean but I don't know that the two necessarily have to go together. I mean, lots of composers have produced innovative music while still knowing their way around a scale or a staff. You can still break the rules when you know the rules. George Martin is not the only person who was ever musically trained.

On the other hand, why aspire to cliche? And when the Beatles really did come up with unusual ideas, not corny flatted 6ths or whatever it was, Martin didn't stand in their way, he helped realize their ideas to their fullest potential.