The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles by Dominic Pedler

Author:Dominic Pedler
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2017-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

The effect is again a three-semitone ascending line that ‘walks’ from the root of the subdominant into the 5th of the tonic but now via the root of the passing diminished chord. In doing so it creates a colourful line within the internal harmony that can be understood immediately as a cool variation on the voice leading in the IV-iv Plagal drop of Chapter 3, which of course descended into the 5th of the I chord.9

Voice-leading in the #iv dim blues substitution

Here is one departure from the Three-Chord Trick that bluesmen have been adopting since the Pre-War era. The recordings of guitarists like Blind Blake and Scrapper Blackwell suggest that this embellishment was also being absorbed into the blues from Ragtime, and piano standards such as ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’.10

The IV-#iv-I move became a favourite of songwriters of all genres during the 20th century, earning cliché status in the hands of Tin Pan Alley writers before drifting into rock ‘n’ roll, probably via Gospel music. The move could perhaps have entered The Beatles’ orbit through songs like Ray Charles’s ‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’, with the 1960 Eddie Cochran version being a particular favourite of McCartney’s.11 Beneath the celestial string parts on Cochran’s version (in the key of G), the ascending bass line defines the move as D# appears in a chromatic run in which the major 3rd of the I chord can also be seen to imply a 1st inversion tonic (G/B).12

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