

Words and chords: The semantic shifts of the Beatles' chords - bootload
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME03/Words_and_chords.shtml

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gruseom
This includes some really neat examples of unorthodox chord changes in
deceptively simple songs. But then the author goes off the deep end, alleging
to have found overall patterns in these chords and coming out with a grand
theory of how they relate to the songs' lyrics and emotions. This is typical
of the poppycock that critics and academics invent. The piece is its own
reductio ad absurdum.

Despite this, it contains interesting concrete observations, like that the
Beatles blended their vocal harmonies with their more dissonant chords to make
them sound right. That's pretty cool. But musicians do this by feel, and the
way critics think doesn't (in my opinion) match the way art really works.

Anyway, thanks for one of the more unusual posts here in a long time. I'd
never have run across it otherwise.

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michael_dorfman
The author lost me around the time I noticed there was no reference to Dominic
Pedler's work on the subject in the bibliography.

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mynameishere
I read the news today, oh boy.

It was _not_ hacker news.

ED: For all you beatle noobs <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZez_k4vAzU>

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gruseom
Certainly, hackers have nothing to do with music, and aren't much interested
in anything outside their techie little sphere.

Edit: it hardly matters, but I didn't downmod you, I just disagree.

