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4.40am
2 May 2014
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Oudis said
Norwegian Wood was mainly written by John, with the middle eight perhaps co-written with Paul. Let’s see its structure. I include the lyrics and the chords in case someone wants to play the song.Intro (guitar and then sitar; the melody is the melody of the verse and is repeated twice)
After the intro we have what I think can be called the first verse, in the D key:
Then John and Paul changed the chord (a D major turns into a D minor; such changes –also from minor to major– were a common trick of theirs I’ve noticed); they do it in what I think we can call middle eight. It’s likely that this is a change in the key of the song, or modulation.Dm G
“She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere
Dm Em A
But I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair”
Then they return to a verse
Solo (sitar twice, the same melody as the verse)And the middle eight again:
And then a verse again:
Outro (sitar, same melody only once)
So we have the simplest possible structure of a song:
Intro (Verse melody) – Verse – Middle Eight – Verse – Solo (Verse melody) – Middle Eight – Verse – Outro (Verse melody)
OR
A – A – B – A – A – B – A – A
What amazes me (well, lyrics aside) is the simplicity of the song. It proves that you can compose masterpieces with very little. More sophisticated songs aren’t that good. Its structure is very simple and it only uses six chords.
For all of you musician lurking in the forum: feel free to comment, correct, add information. I’d appreciate it very much.
Oudis.
Nice one, @Oudis! Full marks for your homework 
That’s how I’d set it out as well, and I completely agree with your comment about the simplicity. It’s a real lesson in economy… I wish I could do that.
The change to D minor in the middle eight: You could probably argue equally that it’s a modulation OR a key change. It’s called Modal Interchange when the root note stays the same but the quality of the chord changes; another example off the top of my head is in the verse (and also outro) of ‘I’ll Be Back ‘, where the chords change between A and Amin.
Using Em and A to get back to the verse is a very common movement called a II-V-I (two five one). It’s essentially what the language of Jazz and Tin Pan Alley standards is built on. If you think of the numbered scale degrees (like I mentioned above), in the key of either D major or D minor, the 2 and 5 chords are both built off E and A, therefore we can use this movement as a pivot. Sometimes you need to alter one or other of the chords depending on which of the keys you are moving to.
I think there may some slight difference in the verse chords you outlined, but it’s more to do with what you would call the voicing depending on what Paul is playing in the bass. Again, if my wife weren’t napping, I’d check it out…
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Oudis4.57pm
15 May 2014
Offline Thank you for your comments @muzair; I have a few questions but they will have to wait, since I’ll spend the next three days at a friend’s house. I will probably get back to you next week. Oudis.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
10.11pm
15 May 2014
Offline 
Hello everybody, hello @muzair.
Let’s keep on analyzing Norwegian Wood … As for you question, Muzair (“Is Norwegian Wood the one that is in D on the record but take 1 is in C? Or is it Take 1 in D and the record is in E?”) I’m copying from Wikipedia:
“Norwegian Wood was initially composed in D major, but was played in E major in the version on Rubber Soul (with a capo on the second fret)”.
However I don’t follow you (please explain) when you say:
“Only one thing to mention: Where you say the key in Norwegian Wood is Re; yes, it is if D is relative to C (is that what you meant?), but otherwise D would be Do. I think of it instead as one.”
If you see the chords I used to play it (how is was composed), D (Re) starts the songs and I thought it was the key of the piece since it is the tonic note and chord, which “gives it its subjective sense of arrival and rest”. C=Do, D=Re, E=Mi, etc, do we agree on that?
I have MANY more questions that will test your patience and good will, dear Muzair, but for now this is enough. Happy New Year and I hope to continue this conversation in 2015.
Oudis.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
3.44am
2 May 2014
Offline Oudis said
However I don’t follow you (please explain) when you say:
“Only one thing to mention: Where you say the key in Norwegian Wood is Re; yes, it is if D is relative to C (is that what you meant?), but otherwise D would be Do. I think of it instead as one.”
If you see the chords I used to play it (how is was composed), D (Re) starts the songs and I thought it was the key of the piece since it is the tonic note and chord, which “gives it its subjective sense of arrival and rest”. C=Do, D=Re, E=Mi, etc, do we agree on that?
I have MANY more questions that will test your patience and good will, dear Muzair, but for now this is enough. Happy New Year and I hope to continue this conversation in 2015.
Oudis.
Yes, C = Do, D=re, e=mi etc but only when we are in the key of C. It’s only specific to those notes when C is the tonic.
Once we are in the key of D, D becomes Do, E = re, F# = mi, g = fa and so on and so forth, because D is the tonic, or point of resolution. Do re mi fa so la ti do (or solfeggio) is a movable system; it doesn’t matter which key you are in because it’s a series of relative pitches. So, say you sang ‘do re mi fa so la ti do’ out of silence with no reference to any starting note, then went to the piano and found the note you started on was a Bb, then Bb would be do, C would be re etc. It’s especially useful for ‘sight singing’.
All the harmonic concepts – Solfege, diatonic chords, scales and modes etc etc – can be applied across any key and any starting note. We always learn and teach things in C (no sharps and flats makes things easier), but you could start with any key you liked.
So with Norwegian Wood , we really should move all the chords up a tone to fit the key of E rather than D, since that’s actually what we’re hearing (unless we’re listening to take 1!). Then E will be do, F# = re, G# = mi, A = fa etc
Does that make sense? Also, keep asking all your questions, it’s the best way to learn!
10.54pm
15 May 2014
Offline Hello again @muzair, hello anybody who might be reading this abstruse thread for musicians or songwriters.
Well Muzair, you really baffled me. For a few hours I even thought you were making a joke. This is what my guitar teacher, a great jazz musician, taught me ages ago –and I’m copying from my notebook:
DIATONIC SCALE:
1T – 1T – ½ T – 1T – 1T – 1T – ½ T
C D E F G A B C
D E F# G A B C# D
E F# G# A B C# D# E
And so on and so forth.
Now, maybe he did teach me what you just explained and I didn’t get it, but, shouldn’t we call those scales “C”, “D”, and “E”? If I play the sixth string in my guitar and play a diatonic scale that scale would anyways be called Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti?! It’s confusing, I don’t get it. Wouldn’t that mean that all songs are in the key of Do? So what scale/key is Norwegian Wood in?
Sorry for being so obtuse, please reply when you can. Yours,
Oudis
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
4.17am
2 May 2014
Offline Oudis said
Hello again @muzair, hello anybody who might be reading this abstruse thread for musicians or songwriters.Well Muzair, you really baffled me. For a few hours I even thought you were making a joke. This is what my guitar teacher, a great jazz musician, taught me ages ago –and I’m copying from my notebook:
DIATONIC SCALE:
1T – 1T – ½ T – 1T – 1T – 1T – ½ T
C D E F G A B C
D E F# G A B C# D
E F# G# A B C# D# E
And so on and so forth.
Now, maybe he did teach me what you just explained and I didn’t get it, but, shouldn’t we call those scales “C”, “D”, and “E”? If I play the sixth string in my guitar and play a diatonic scale that scale would anyways be called Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti?! It’s confusing, I don’t get it. Wouldn’t that mean that all songs are in the key of Do? So what scale/key is Norwegian Wood in?
Sorry for being so obtuse, please reply when you can. Yours,
Oudis
@Oudis I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse things further! I’m sure this is one of these situations where if we were in a room together with a couple of guitars, we’d have it sorted in about 2 minutes.
To (hopefully) answer your questions:
Norwegian Wood as we hear it on Rubber Soul is in E Major. On take 1 (on Anthology 2 ) the key is a tone lower, making it D Major. We have been talking about it in D Major.
The scales you wrote out are Major scales (copied from above):
DIATONIC SCALE:
1T – 1T – ½ T – 1T – 1T – 1T – ½ T
C D E F G A B C
D E F# G A B C# D
E F# G# A B C# D# E
And so on and so forth.
We call these scales C Major, D Major, E Major etc etc
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do conforms to exactly the way these major scales are formed, ie the intervals are set out the same way, like this:
1T – 1T – ½T – 1T – 1T – 1T – ½T
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
If you sang Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do, and started Do on the note C, you would be singing a C Major scale.
If you start on the note D and sing Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do, as conforming to how the major scale is set out above, you are now in D Major and have changed keys from C to D.
It’s a movable system, so that idea applies to any Major key. In all honesty, I never actually use Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do and prefer to use numbers instead.
If you like, we can Skype or something sometime to clear up any confusion, it’d be no hassle at all. I’m in Australia though, which never seems to work out with anyone’s timetable around the world!
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Oudis, ewe25.01am
15 May 2014
Offline I’ve been meaning to ask you, @muzair –and forgive me if I’m asking for too much– if you couldn’t analyze a song that you like (The Beatles of course) your own way, and post it. I’m very interested in your way of analyzing songs’ structure, key, modulations, etc. Once more: if I’m asking too much simply forget that I said it. Oudis.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
2.12am
8 January 2015
Offline
That analysis of Norwegian Wood is interesting, the middle-eight is also sort of a chorus but with different words. One thing that has been on my mind lately is how stuck on solos the Beatles were. Even in a song this structurally simple they had one. Strawberry Fields sort of has one at the end. Very few don’t. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds , Getting Better , She’s Leaving Home . With A Little Help From My Friends has a vestigial solo of sorts (and there’s a few of them too, like All You Need Is Love ). A Day In The Life , does that really have a solo? Isn’t it interesting how many songs on Sgt. Peppers don’t?
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but I may have to get more specific in the future.
4.15am
15 May 2014
Offline Interesting comment, @ewe2; one of the reasons I like The Beatles is that unlike some other bands (The Doors, Cream, etc.) their solos are always brief and not a digression from the song.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
5.39am
8 January 2015
Offline Yes, I’m not knocking the solos themselves at all, they never overstay their welcome. But it makes one wonder; was it just for giving George a lead role whether he cared about it or not (and I don’t think he did), or was it just a dependable out so the song could get finished? There’s plenty of times they made it a keyboard solo just to be different, but it was a convention for them for quite a time.
But… Hello Goodbye was happy with a guitar riff and a verse masquerading as a bridge. Yesterday is a very pure form which could have had a solo during a verse section but it would have been overkill (hasn’t stopped some cheesy covers though). Why does Martha My Dear get an instrumental verse and not an actual solo? Why Don’t We Do It In The Road doesn’t last long enough for one. Rocky Raccoon cleverly avoids it. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da has no room for one (thank god, imagine that if you can). Now I’m realizing that Two Of Us nor I’ve Got A Feeling have solos either. I would class Across The Universe and Julia to be in the same class as Yesterday though Julia has a semi-silent verse too.
I'm like Necko only I'm a bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin and also everyone. Or is everyone me? Now I'm a confused bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin everyone who is definitely not @Joe. This has been true for 2016 & 2017 but I may have to get more specific in the future.
5.44pm
8 October 2014
Offline Holy cow, are you guys okay now? ) Good, well let’s keep hacking at theory then.
Once you know the major scale, reduce songs to numbers. ex: Help ! 1-3-6-(5-flat7) 1. Then some other numbers for the chorus.
Easy. The most common chord that isn’t part of the sequence, that you will run into, is the flat seven. Viz: F in the key o’ G.
It’s everywhere, very common in American music by the 30s. This gives you the ‘extended key’ that guys like Ted Greene go on about. This is not complicated, it just is. The other thing you run into, even in lots of pop songs, is dom7 chords in place of the 2, 3, 4, 6. This spins you off into related Harmonic Mi scales, which are exactly one note different than the relative major scale.
This one note matters hugely, and not only because it throws a mi 3rd interval into an otherwise whole/half-tone scale. It sounds downright eastern and mystical.
Probably better to just learn the chords, parrot the solo and try to look good while making shew. If you can’t handle it then get a job, cop.
4.55am
5 February 2010
Offline Norwegian Wood is one of those instances where I think the Beatles’ lack of musical training actually helped them, in the sense of not boxing them in to a set of known rules. I’ve written maybe 15-20 songs in my life, and I would never have thought to take the “home” chord (or root, or tonic, however you like) of a song — E major in this case — and suddenly flip it to a minor chord. But that’s exactly what they did for the bridges of this song.
You can get away with flipping the major chord to a minor chord if it’s the IV chord in the song — that’s fairly common in pop music, and John does that in the previously mentioned “Across The Universe ” when he moves to a G minor instead of the expected G major — but it’s a lot harder to get away with when the chord you’re flipping is the home/root/tonic chord.
I was just thinking about this the other day while listening to Paul’s demo of “Come And Get It .” The key shift in the bridge (“did I hear you say that there must be a catch”) is daring, and not something that I think would normally occur to a composer. The song is in E, but the bridge suddenly shifts into the key of C with no real transition. I mean, I know it works, ultimately, it’s just unexpected. I said a moment ago that it’s easy to get away with using the minor IV chord, which in the key of E would be the A minor, and that chord is just a kissing cousin to the C chord, so it’s not hard to see how Paul got away with that transition.
It’s still an odd transition, though.
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5.26am
5 February 2010
Offline Another major-to-minor chord flip that the Beatles seemed to like using in the early days is the V chord. Paul talks about that in several interviews (including Anthology) with regard to “From Me To You ,” how they were pretty pleased with themselves for stumbling into that trick. The song is in C, with makes G major the V chord, but for the bridge (“I’ve got arms that long to hold you”) they use a G minor chord, which suddenly takes on the feeling of a II chord when it moves back to the home C chord (which now feels like the V chord).
They do the exact same thing in “I Want To Hold Your Hand ” for the bridge (“and when I touch you …”), moving to the D minor where the D major is expected, making the D minor feel like the II chord moving back to the home G chord. I’m sure they use this same trick in other songs, but I can’t recall any to mind right on the spot.
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7.47am
8 January 2015
Offline I think a lot of their songwriting hinges on where they think the melody wants to go. The Norwegian Wood major-minor trick makes more sense that way, it’s still a neat trick to get to that II-V. What I like about the modulation trick (a favourite of theirs) is it can sound minor relative to the tonic, and then there’s the V minor trick, so they really exploited relative minors and modulations (From Me To You has both) for bridges and other transitions. It has the nice effect of shifting the tone of the song without changing dynamics.
That’s another interesting thing about their songwriting is that the dynamics don’t change a great deal except in the collage pieces like Strawberry Fields or A Day In The Life . It’s not that they weren’t capable of it, I’ve been listening to a lot of isolated tracks recently and there are many subtle changes in most songs but the key is subtle not LOUD-soft, soft-LOUD like a Pixies song.
I'm like Necko only I'm a bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin and also everyone. Or is everyone me? Now I'm a confused bassist ukulele guitar synthesizer kazoo penguin everyone who is definitely not @Joe. This has been true for 2016 & 2017 but I may have to get more specific in the future.
4.50pm
31 March 2008
Offline
Ooh, that’s an interesting observation about dynamics. I’d not given it much thought before. Things We Said Today springs to mind (and it also has a minor to major key change for good measure!). I Want You (She’s So Heavy) is another obvious one for dynamic range.
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2.25am
15 May 2014
Offline Joe said
…Things We Said Today springs to mind (and it also has a minor to major key change for good measure!)…
Funny thing is, @Joe, that for the past three or four days I’ve been thinking of ‘Things We Said Today ’ as an example of a chord change, this time minor to major (‘Norwegian Wood ’ has a change from major to minor) and you beat me to posting something about it. I’ve heard that trick several times in Beatle music, and used it myself (I didn’t steal it, I… borrowed it, ehem)
PeterWeatherby said
Norwegian Wood is one of those instances where I think the Beatles’ lack of musical training actually helped them, in the sense of not boxing them in to a set of known rules.
I agree with you @PeterWeatherby. As Allan W. Pollack says “’Things We Said Today ’ is one of the earliest and best-ever examples of the innovative harmony stunts which The Beatles were capable of, being uninhibited as they were by any schoolbook knowledge of the so-called rules.” (Full article here)
Once, decades ago, I spoke to a great bass player who said to me that in popular music “the best musicians aren’t good composers, and the best composers don’t know much about music”. I kind of agree; playing and composing are totally different crafts, and each one of them requires a certain degree of specialization. Of course, there are many exceptions to this “rule” (the one I remember right now is Sting)
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ewe2“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
2.29am
19 April 2010
Offline I think their best use of the major and minor use of the same chord is “I’ll Be Back ” – the opening guitar change into the verse – A major to A minor – you don’t even notice it – it is so beautifully done.
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Oudis, meanmistermustard, Mr. Kite"She looks more like him than I do."
6.30pm
8 October 2014
Offline “Stumbled onto this trick’ is an apt description. There’s no easy backdoor into music theory, let alone its application.
Beatles were in a position to play for the world – nobody else is. You aren’t. So ‘songwriting’ is kind of an illusion. Nobody cares about pop tunes, not really. I have hundreds laying around, I know others with even more. Good songs, solid, could have been hits in the right hands at the right time.
It’s disturbing to see all these people banging away, as if they are somehow ‘like the Beatles’ …. by playing their tunes, or knocking off similar ones. I was at a rehearsal space yesterday, and heard Come Together , bits of this and that. These people are primarily rich kids with time on their hands. Their original music sounds ghastly, if they but knew it! But no…. we are kinda ‘like the Beatles’ .. as if there is a genre called ‘Beatles’
Pop band. Teenagers. They were indeed better, and a step ahead of everyone else, esp. the bloody irritating Stones… but that was then and it is over. Muzair etc. are showing you simple music theory, and that’s pretty much all there is to know before you go out and try to play with older musicians, who will roll their eyes when you jump into the shufflebeat Come Together , or emote beautifully on Hide Yer Luv Away….. you aren’t John or Paul, there is no large audience waiting with bated breath, and it is pretentious as hell to show up with poptones and expect anything at all from actual musicians.
Grrr. It happens constantly. The industry has been conditioning people for decades, to over-ride common sense, and just poof! – be a rockstar!
Conclude rant. Sorry. A tune w/ interesting structure, sorta, is 3 Cool Cats. This was the very first song we, I, heard, that was good – because it wasn’t twelve-bar and shouty. Near as I remember, it starts with a diminished chord, which is pretty cool. I think it’s cSharp dim – but of course the next two chords are B7/E. I think so.
This constitutes a 2-5-1 in E, yes? But, the 2 should be Fsharp? And, csharp dim = fsharp7 flat9. Wowee! Then, the descending chorus bit is something like E-D-C-B. This is the Tocatta and Fugue, or a gazillion other songs, really a lot of music, since it showed up in the 1600s. . Beatles were playing this around 1960, but did they understand the theory of it well enough to, say, improvise a solo over said changes? Not really. But, you could, and should. Rather than learning rafts of strummy tunes and starting to think maybe fame and fortune is near.
Can’t stand ‘musicians’ who show up with their knockoffs and assume that veteran players should’ back them up’ becos they are ‘singer songwriters’ kinda ‘like the Beatles.’
Just the minute you have hordes of fans, I’m in – for a fair wage. Unfortunately that’s not how it is, anymore.
This rant is anti ‘music biz’ – if there really is such a thing anymore – not Beatles. You can hate the Stones for not giving up, for sucking up the proceeds of about 50 bands, if you like. *) It is an infested industry if there ever was one, as bad as Hollywood. Hope I live long enough to see the whole thing crash, and return to some semblance of normalcy. I’ve been hoping this since about 75 tho, so….. *
5.30pm
31 March 2008
Offline [Admin note: I suspended Mockswell’s account for a month for ignoring my warnings to stay on topic. If it happens again I’ll enact a ban. I don’t really want to discuss this further here; as I’ve said before, I want this thread to stay focused. Carry on.]
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4.09am
15 May 2014
Offline It’s hard to come up with something to post after taking so much abuse and being exposed to so much bitterness. What a source of negative energy. When I started this thread I wanted it to be an opportunity to exchange information, learn, teach, analyze The Beatles’ songs, and I don’t know how you guys feel about it but I personally don’t even want to read it anymore. Maybe you-know-who prevailed and succeeded in killing this thread.
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (“Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to look back on even this”; Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 1, line 203, where Aeneas says this to his men after the shipwreck that put them on the shores of Africa)
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