How The Beatles wrote their most ambitious song

this video is sponsored by British rock band naughty juice the Lennon McCartney songwriting partnership is perhaps the most famous of all time however even though any song written by Paul or John during the Beatles was credited to both of them Lennon and McCartney in reality most Lennon and McCartney's songs were composed by only one of the two songwriters But A Day in the Life the closing track of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a rare example of a Beatles song almost 50 50 written by Lennon M McCartney so let's take a closer look at how this outlandish and magnificent song was composed A Day in the Life by The Beatles began Life as a John Lennon song with him writing the first two verses after reading a newspaper article about the recent death of Tara Brown the 21 year old heir to the Guinness Fortune under the influence of drugs and alcohol Brown had sped his car through a red light and crashed into a parked Lorry you believe after he had completed the first two verses of the song John didn't know where to take the song next so he took it to Paul for help completing it John had started and he kind of had the first verse I read the news today oh boy and we sat in my music room in London just started playing around with it got a second verse and then we put another section I had woke up fell out of bed tried to call him across my head so I had that section so we put that in and then finish the song up A Day in the Life opens with three verses composed by John each of these verses is actually subtly different than the last the first verse is 20 bars the next is 18 and the third is 19 bars these verses are in the key of G major and played at the fairly slow tempo of 79 BPM [Music] girlfriend [Music] [Applause] [Music] sad [Music] ly in contrast to this pool section is actually in the key of E major and played at a far more upbeat tempo of 163 BPM so basically double time this difference of key and fill between the two sections didn't really cause any issues though because the transition from one to the other was completely masked by the creative way they chose to move from the first section to the next foreign the almighty string orchestral Crescendo was unlike anything heard in pop and rock music before the crescendo was Paul's idea and he'd been inspired after listening to avant-garde classical music such as that of stockhausen in fact Carl Heinz stockhausen is one of the many iconic faces gathered in the Sergeant Pepper album art adds a little nod to his influence on the album's closing track Paul very much wanted this transitional Crescendo section to be as random and chaotic as possible but he soon found that asking a classically trained Orchestra to do something random was harder than he first thought and I came up with this idea I said to the orchestra you should start all of you in which they're all looking at me puzzled we've got a real Symphony Orchestra in London who we're used to playing you know Beethoven and here's me so this crazy guy out of a group and I'm saying all you've got to do is you saw everyone start on the lowest note do your instrument could play I'd work your way up to the highest at your own pace just if you want to go that's fine you know that was too puzzling for them and they're all looking at me and Augustus don't like that kind of thing they like it written down and they like to know exactly what they're supposed to do so George Martin The Producer realized that you kept the random aspect but he said to the people you should be about this note at this point in the song and then you should have got to this note and this note and he left the random thing so that's why it sounds like a chaotic chaotic sort of swirl you know Paul's woke up fell out of bed section of a day in the life was already something he'd been working on before John came to him with his opening verses this section begins with a four bar introduction where a repeating E major chord on the piano firmly establishes our new key Center we then set off into an unusually phrased 10 bar Loop across my head downstairs [Music] following this we then enter a different 10 bar passage built around what we could call a circle of fifths chord progression [Music] these five chords are all related by the interval of a fifth so although they don't really belong in the key together the ever-satisfying movement of the perfect fifth makes them work it's like with each chord change we're taking one step around the circle of fence foreign after we've heard this chord progression twice we briskly modulate back to the key of G major near this 5-1 perfect Cadence ready to begin John's Fourth and final verse Paul McCartney's contributions to Adana life aren't just limited to his bridge and Crescendo sections it was actually also Paul who added the I'd love to turn you on part to the end of John's first [Music] foreign so after John's told us for the second time that he'd love to turn us on the song enters its second Almighty Crescendo before climaxing with the most epic piano chords ever recorded [Music] if you'd like to learn more about this massive E Major piano chord and the odd Loop of nonsense that follows it then check out my recent A Day in the Life Recreation video where I go into more depth about the recording process of this classic song but before you do that I'd like to thank today's sponsor naughty juice naughty juice are a rock band based in Torbay UK you have a garage Rock Punky style have a listen to their rocked up cover of letter b [Music] Let It Be and here's a bit of that original song sped tonight [Music] if you'd like to listen to more of naughty juice you can find them on Spotify or YouTube the links for both are down below [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 164,904

Keywords: paul, john, a day in the life, explained, history, music theory, chords, beatles, sgt pepper, track, orchestra

Id: RnZ-pF2S-Sc

Length: 8min 37sec (517 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023