Who's the brain behind The Beatles?

This is veering off into von Däniken territory and follows a similar logic to his arrogant theories that ancient civilisations were too primitive to have built the pyramids so they must have had alien help.

 

There are too many assumptions being made about the musical abilities of the Beatles and all this musicologist analysis is retrospective. It is already been asserted that the Beatles played "by ear", so it is only natural that they composed "by ear" - and in doing that they would not have followed any rules of chord progressions, blues or otherwise, since their musical education was practical rather than theoretical and from a broader palate (and palette ) than just blues based rock'n'roll.

 

For example their use of the plagel cadence shows that hymns figured somewhere in that education, which is not unsurprising given the School Education system in 1950s Liverpool being considerably less secular than we know it today; also McCartney's family were Jazz and Brass Band musicians, he was exposed to all kinds of music and would have called on that when writing his own music.

 

Of course they would have started from a framework of 'standard' chord progressions learnt from hit tunes of the day without realising that they were "rules", but then modified that with accidental note, chord and key changes that simply sounded right to them, regardless of how right those new progressions where to trained musicologists. These things don't have to be planned or orchestrated, they just happen, and thousands of other bands make similar 'mistakes', just none of them hit upon a winning formula quite like the Beatles did. Wacky (or clever) key changes could be similar 'errors'  - in retrospect they look complex, but they could just as easily be "compose by ear" changes that sounded right to them - I doubt that they knew they were modulating from "the home key of G Major onto an unstable B minor." - the chord just fitted for them at that time so they used it.

 

Another point made in the text is that some of the chord progressions don't stand up without the overlying vocal harmony - which they make out is some wonderfully clever invention - it's not - it's a natural result of composing on the guitar/piano while singing along - both the melody and the chord progression were composed simultaneously, that's all.

 

 

 

The Ruthless have returned from outer space.