Penny Lane Mystery Chord, Thanks Scott Frieman

[CrusaderFrank]

Scott appeared at our Jacob Burns Theater last summer to present his "Deconstructing the Beatles" Series. I saw his "Revolver" and "rubber Soul" presentations.

What a joy!

Here he presents Paul McCartney's sweet melodic journey down Penny Lane in a way that even a tone deaf weasel such as myself can understand

Enjoy! And look up Scott and his "Deconstructing" series

 

[Pogo]

Well I do agree that Penny Lane is some of Macca's best work.

He and Lennon were always experimenting though.

 

[Snouter]

Will check out his other vids, but the dude in the video does seem to realize incorporating major to minor chords is not uncommon in progressive music like rock and roll although it is true Paul McCartney was one of the most notable musicians writing songs with progressions that were not diatonic. The harmonized major scale creates a series of 7 chords in which the I, IV and V are major, the ii, iii, vi are minor and the vii is diminished. It is very common for songs to be diatonic, to only contain chords in the key. By the way The Beatles should have been called The Paul McCartney Band since Paul wrote most of the cool stuff and often played all the instruments in addition to doing the vocals and vocal harmonies.

Here is the guy who wrote American Woman explaining the famous Hard Day's Night first chord.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Will check out his other vids, but the dude in the video does seem to realize incorporating major to minor chords is not uncommon in progressive music like rock and roll although it is true Paul McCartney was one of the most notable musicians writing songs with progressions that were not diatonic. The harmonized major scale creates a series of 7 chords in which the I, IV and V are major, the ii, iii, vi are minor and the vii is diminished. It is very common for songs to be diatonic, to only contain chords in the key. By the way The Beatles should have been called The Paul McCartney Band since Paul wrote most of the cool stuff and often played all the instruments in addition to doing the vocals and vocal harmonies.

Here is the guy who wrote American Woman explaining the famous Hard Day's Night first chord.

That's awesome!

Scott said, almost secretly, that none of the Beatles could read or write music. Can you imagine?

 

[Pogo]

By the way The Beatles should have been called The Paul McCartney Band since Paul wrote most of the cool stuff

Incorrect. Their output actually came in waves. From early 1964 up to the Sargent Pepper project Lennon's output eclipsed McCartney's, though not by a lot, and there were still times they collaborated or joined each other's work into a single song. After Lennon lost focus with LSD and, significantly after Epstein died, McCartney took over as de facto quasi-musical director by default and put out more material than Lennon, though again not by a lot. Within The Beatles entire body of work, their individual output is pretty close to even.

McCartney's forte is "vertical", wide-ranging melody such as the OP tune, while Lennon's is the more "horizontal", more closely-ranged and complexly harmonious (e.g Yes It Is, That Boy, Because).

McCartney did and does play a lot of instruments, though not all of them well. He's the drummer on Back in the USSR, Glass Onion and The Ballad of John and Yoko, all of which demonstrate why that was more properly Ringo's job.

As for backing harmonies, all three did that, in twos, threes or multitracked (at least nine in the case of Because) as needed, though McCartney clearly had the most range.