Buddy Holly ... was opening up new worlds there ... I no longer had the fear of changing from A to F. George Harrison[1] Use the flat six chord in a major key song. This works particularly well at the end of a sequence where you can delay (or completely derail) the expected resolution of landing on the I (tonic) by substituting the bVI instead. For example in the key of A major replace the final A major chord with an F major. As heard in: I Saw Her Standing There, With a Little Help From My Friends and Suffragette City (David Bowie). One Minute Theory Lesson Here are some of the most common ..read more

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill[1] Surprise (or possibly infuriate) your listeners by appearing to finish the song and then starting back up again. As heard in: Piggies, Helter Skelter and Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen). One Minute Theory Lesson For several centuries musical pieces in western music usually finished by resolving on the tonic chord. This was even more pronounced when combined with slowing down the tempo, repetition of the phrase proceeding the final chord, a prolonged free time cres ..read more

“How strange the change from major to minor…”[1] Cole Porter: Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye Most pop songs stay in the same key throughout. Some have change key towards the end (usually higher, to ‘lift’ the final chorus) while a few have different sections in different keys. But one easy way to alter the mood between sections is to shift from the relative minor to the major or vice versa. As heard in: We Can Work It Out, When I'm Sixty Four and Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne) One Minute Theory Lesson In musical terms relative keys share the same seven notes but treat a different note as the centr ..read more

Melody is the essence of music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1] The vocal melody is usually the central element of the song and playing it on an instrument can focus more attention on it. This can work either by doubling the vocals (playing at the same time) or reprising the melody as an instrumental section in it's own right. One Minute Theory Lesson Songs generally benefit from a contrasting melodic section (like a guitar solo) that provides variation, but sometimes a completely new section isn’t needed. Reusing a song’s melody as the basis for an instrumental section can strengthen how memo ..read more

   I've not been able to post here for a while as I've been working on a book about Lennon and McCartney. Reviewing the first draft I've had to cull a number of parts that don't really belong in the book and I'll be posting some of them here in the weeks to come. Here's one that that seems very timely. John and I would sit down and by then it might be one or two o'clock, and by four or five o'clock we'd be done. Three hours is about right, you start to fray at the edges after that. But that's good too because you think, "We've got to get this done!" … We always wrote a song a day ..read more

I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. Rolling Stone I loved Paul McCartney … He meant more to me than my own parents. Sandford: McCartney* The Beatles were a early and formative influence on Cobain. A video survives of him singing Hey Jude at the age of two and he remembers walking around the neighbourhood singing Beatles songs while playing a toy bass drum. He wrote he was "forever grateful" to his Aunt Mari for giving him three Beatles albums and heartbroken when he learned in 1976 that the band had split up years before. In high-school Kurt wrote a 2000 word essay on Giv ..read more

King of Sleep Good Night was written by John for Julian Lennon, probably during May/June 1968*. You could call it part of John's sleep trilogy with I'm Only Sleeping and I'm So Tired, or a bookend with Good Morning, Good Morning. Either way sleep was a reoccurring theme in Lennon's work – appropriate for some one once dubbed “the laziest man in England”. The rehearsal tracks on 50th Anniversary reveal Lennon wrote the song using the fingerpicking pattern Donovan taught him in Rishikesh (ticket 59) – making this a brother-song to Julia and Prudence (and Warm Gun).This guitar version with Joh ..read more

Every artist needs fresh inspiration and sometimes mistakes can be a source of new sounds and ideas. Now, more than ever, musicians and producers have the tools to scrub every error from a recording but the end result can be flat, dehumanised and boring. Whether we screw up when the tape is rolling or mess up in rehearsal and then decide to keep the results, sometimes throwing a spanner in the works is the smart thing to do. Or at least leaving the spanner where you dropped it. Mistakes can make the listener feel they are really THERE or that the vibe is laid back or 'real' and not cleani ..read more

At what age did you realise you wanted to become a musician? Probably five, as soon as I heard The White Album. It was pretty much my inspiration, that and AC/DC. Elliott Smith: NME (2000) My friends and I were just starting to teach ourselves guitar in 1980. I was 11 and really into Beatles songs like Julia and Sexy Sadie— cool, kaleidoscopic chord changes. I was totally immersed in trying to figure it all out, and it was slowly happening when some madman gunned down the guide. At first, kids at school acted like it was a hoax. It didn’t seem real at the time, and to be honest, I rarely th ..read more

In order to better understand the influence of ideas on and by the Beatles songs are laid out in chronological order. Songs known to have an influence on the Beatles are in italics. This page is a work in progress. Errors? Typos? Suggestions? Did I miss an example? Leave a comment below! For more on this songwriting tip go here 1960 Mack the Knife (Ella In Berlin) - Ella Fitzgerald (1:55, 2:50, 3:44, 4:00) Ella forgets the lyrics and freestyles new verses, (3:16) Ella does an impression of Louis Armstrong. 1963 I Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles (0:00) Audible count-in. 1963 Twist And ..read more