A-Level音乐-流行音乐和爵士乐Popular Music and Jazz。

A Day in the Life

The Beatles' roots are very diverse but they came more from Rock and Roll and country music than the black Rhythm and Blues that influenced their main rivals at the time: The Rolling Stones.

This track is fairly late in their output and by now they have incorporated many influences from eastern meditative music to western classical arrangements. It is the last track on the Sergeant Peppers album, which at the time was revolutionary in its approach being a concept album which included a fancy sleeve and various cardboard handouts to make the consumer believe in the magic of the fictitious Edwardian brass band. The opening album tracks merge into each other and include crowd noise and excitement.

A Day in the Life emerges out of the reprise of the opening track Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the solo acoustic guitar at the start heralds a change in the mood from the noisy public sound of the band to a more personal story in the first person. The piano and bass come in emphasizing the chord C (subdominant) - just like the use of this chord in Waterloo Sunset.

The music is cleverly put together by using multiples of 10:……

There follows a dream interlude made from two lots of5 bars (=10)

The opening material returns and the big orchestral build returns to take us to the end where there is a huge crash chord of E. ( after this on the vinyl there are some strange spoken noises and the record is cut in such a way as it doesn't finish but rather just loops.

There is much to comment in the music apart from the form. Paul McCartney's melodic bass playing and Ringo's genuine percussion parts - a bassist and drummer freed from just time keeping- contribute much to the varying textures and fluid movement of the music. In this piece the piano is the instrument that is more responsible for keeping things together. The psychedelic orchestral crescendo come from techniques in the electronic music field, from composers such as Stockhausen.

The album, from which Day in the Life is perhaps the most experimental track led to even more daring arrangements and helped not only establish the Beatles as serious music composers but influenced many other musicians working in all genres.

Desmond Dekker and the Aces1970 – Reggae You Can Get It If You Really Want - Jimmy Cliff

Pop reggae with Soul influence.

Political message.

Off beat Ska on guitar and organ

Pop bassDrums around top of kit.

Spanish trumpets

Soul brass bridge (“Think” by Aretha Franklin)

Van MorrisonWannabe soul, celtic rock Tupleo Honey – Van Morrison

Flute in intro – Irish folk influence

Repeated chord pattern with improvised vocals and fills – soul, gospel – signifying cf. Ray Charles

Guitars improvise simultaneously (folk) – major pentatonic

Vibraphone not in score

Heavily influenced by the Beatles.

Imagine Intro

“Descending Bass” chord sequence cf. “A Day In the Life”, “Waterloo Sunset”

Structure

……

George Harrison guitar licks

Guitar leads mainly major pentatonic – rockabilly, white American folk blues.

Strings – George Martin – “Baroque ‘n’ Roll”

Guitars imitating strings at end.

Don't look back in anger

Tribute to the beatles and in particular John Lennon. Opening piano chords similar to opening of imagine with the lead guitar entering where Lennon's piano part assumes an additional melodic content. Also evidence of quotes from Lennon's lyrics (e.g. revolution a song which uses a similar heavily distorted guitar)

The song uses 4 bar phrases. Verses are constructed from 2 ideas- firstly the chord pattern established in bars 5-8 and secondly a contrasting 12 bar pattern staring at bar 13 and formed from 3 four bar units.

The opening pattern returns in bar 25 where it supports the new melodic material of the refrain giving as ABA form to the entire verse. The predictability of this scheme is offset by cutting the main pattern down to three bars in bars 29-31, which launches us into a lead guitar improvisation. A quite reflective coda, using the chromatic subdominant (Fminor) concludes the music.

The heavy guitar distortion and the very low bass guitar- mostly on the bottom string thicken the texture and the driving drumbeat gives the music a strong impact. Oasis was particularly successful commercially, partly due to their talent at composing memorable melodic material and catchy hooks. Use of the pentatonic scale in melodies is common and chord progressions using chromatically altered but basically simple and direct harmonies added to their appeal.

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