Why is Strawberry Fields Forever in A half-sharp major?

this video is sponsored by kimmerfan microphones if you've ever tried to play along with strawberry fields forever you may have noticed that it's not in concert pitch it's not in a standard key center it's actually somewhere between a major and b flat major at the beginning of the song the key center is about 43 above a normal a major 50 cent would be exactly between a and b flat so this is pretty close to being right down the middle but later on in the song the pitch has now shifted so it's now only 12 cent below a normal b flat major wait so did the beatles actually write a song in a micro tonal key well no this isn't the product of avant-garde songwriting this micro tonal key center is actually the product of avant-garde sound editing now it's not actually too uncommon to find songs that are not recorded to a standard key or what's called concert pitch don't look back in anger by oasis is recorded 40 cent above a constant c major and friday i'm in love by the cure is 65 cent above a concert d major songs with non-standard key centers like these are usually the result of vary speed vary speed is when a tape is played back at a different speed which in turn raises or lowers the pitch with modern software if you want to change the key or tempo of a piece of music you've already recorded well you can do that without much hassle and you can change them independently but because the beetle's only option for this was varyspeed you could only change the pitch of the song if you were also going to change the tempo if you increased the pitch you would increase the tempo and if you decreased the pitch you would decrease the tempo now varyspeed is the reason why strawberry fields forever floats somewhere between the keys of a major and b flat major but the story isn't as simple as the beatles just very speeded the whole track to make it sound cool the real reason that strawberry fields forever is in a half sharp major is a much longer and much more interesting story strawberry fields forever took an unprecedented 55 hours of studio time to complete and one of the reasons that it took so long is that the song went through various versions before jon was happy with it john's initial demo of strawberry fields was in the key of c major and had a far folkier sound to it than the version we know today [Applause] [Music] the first studio version of the song was also recorded in the key of c major but actually wound up being 55 cent flat placing it between b and c major [Music] misunderstanding all you see this odd variation in tuning was seemingly caused by the band experimenting with tape speed to change the sound of john's vocal as george martin describes in this quote typically john asked for a speed change on his vocal recording so when we overdubbed his vocal we pumped up the tape frequency to 53 hertz instead of the normal 50 hertz but the experiments didn't stop there by take 4 the track was now at a slightly slower tempo 90 bpm rather than take one's 95 bpm and the key had now been changed down to b flat major the band were also still playing with tape speed at this point so take 4 is actually 25 cent flat take seven recorded the next day was also recorded in b flat major but this time the tape speed effects had left it 57 cent flat so in other words it was a 43 cent sharp a major [Music] after a week or so though john decided that he wasn't happy with the direction the song was going in and asked george martin if they could completely re-record the song from scratch which was the first time they'd ever done this this new version was in the faster tempo of 111 bpm and was in normal concert c major suggesting that the band had now stopped experimenting with tape speed the new version known as take take26 looked set to be the version of the song that would get released [Music] as you can hear though take 26 is quite different from the version of strawberry fields that we actually got see john still wasn't satisfied with this take 26 version so after listening back to some of the old takes he approached producer george martin and studio engineer jeff emerick and asked them if they could take the first minute of take seven and connect it to the rest of take 26 combining two different takes together listen to this clip of george martin describing the conversation he came making me think well i like that but i like the first one again as well i said we can't have them both he said why not i said what do you mean he said well let's take the beginning of one put the end of the other one i said well there's only two things wrong with it one is that they're in completely different keys and completely them tempos yeah you can fix it you know what you like and listen to that a few weeks previously martin and emmerich had pulled off a similar edit when they took the first three quarters of take 15 and connected them to the final quarter of take 24 but the difference with that edit was that the two takes have been in the same key and more or less the same tempo obviously this time they couldn't just splice take 7 and take 26 together without adjusting for tempo and key otherwise it would have sounded like this [Music] they needed to find a way to bring these two takes into pretty much the same key and pretty much the same tempo now like i mentioned previously in 1966 if you wanted to edit the tempo of a piece of music you would have to also adjust the key but it turned out that this limitation actually worked in the beatles favor see they soon realized that the fasted take 26 was in a higher key than the slower take seven so if they slowed down take 26 and sped up take seven then the two tempos and keys would more or less meet in the middle unfortunately it didn't turn out that there was one perfect solution which would put both takes into the exact same tempo and exact same key either the tempo or the key would have to be slightly off and it seems that they prioritized matching the keys rather than matching the tempo this is how they went about it they started by slowing down take 26 by 11.5 percent which brought the key down from c major to a 12 cent flat b flat major so pretty much the same key now as take 7. 11.5 vary speed though only brought the tempo of take 26 down to around 99 bpm so it was still a bit faster than take 7. as for the other take take seven it does seem that they very subtly increased its tempo but the increase is so slight that you can only really tell if you attempt to sync up the final master of strawberry fields with take seven as you'll find that they'll drift out of time with each other ultimately they managed to hide this jump from 91 to 99 bpm by placing the cut point at a moment where the music had already come to a natural pause have a listen let me take you it's a pretty undetectable edit right and john lennon certainly agreed listen to emmerich's account of the moment they first presented the edit to john he listened carefully head down deep in concentration i made a point of standing in front of the tape machine so that he couldn't see the splice go by a few seconds after the edit flew past lennon lifted his head and a grin spread across his face has it passed yet he asked john absolutely loved what we had done we played it over and over again that night and at the conclusion each time he turned to us and repeat the same three words brilliant just brilliant what makes this near seamless cut even more amazing is that martin and emmerich were literally cutting the tape with a blade and then sticking it back together with sticky tape so that's how strawberry feels forever wound up being somewhere between the keys of a major and b flat major the first minute of the track is a taken b flat that was very speeded down to be 57 flat then that was cut together with another take that was very speeded down from c major to be a 12 cent flat b flat it's stories like this that go to show that the beatles never would have fulfilled their creative potential if they didn't have an amazing team of engineers and producers around them to facilitate their crazy ideas now one detail that i wanted to address before the end of the video is that some sources that discuss the story of shaw before forever actually disagree on the keys that the different takes were in as of 2017 both take 26 and take 7 have been publicly available so the way i worked out the key is just using a chromatic tuner with those recordings but some other sources have disagreed with the keys that i found for example in ian mcdonald's revolution in the head he describes the two takes as being a semitone apart in pitch but even if you ignore that take7 is 57 cent flat these two takes are a toner parting key not a semitone now it's important to note that when revolution in the head was published take 26 was yet to be made publicly available so i don't think macdonald got this semitone figure by comparing the two takes instead i think he sourced it from george martin's book all you need is ears in which martin says the slower version was a semitone flat compared with the faster one and i think george martin is actually saying here that the two takes need to be moved a semitone towards each other to meet in the middle i might be wrong of course but based on the officially released takes this seems to be the only solution unless of course martin is misremembering the keys that the two takes were in i'm not the only person though to describe the two takes as being a toner part mark cunningham in his book good vibrations a history of record production also describes the two takes as being one tone apart but regardless of exactly which two keys they were in what is clear is that martin and nemerick pulled off a real feat of music production when they spliced these two takes together to create the legendary and timeless strawberry fields forever now one bonus fact i discovered whilst researching this video is the reason why strawberry feels forever fades out and then fades back in again see if we compare the very speeded version of take 26 with the final version of strawberry fields we can actually listen to the bit that was faded out [Music] as you can hear there are some timing issues there in the percussion parts now the reason for the fade out and fade in is quite simple george martin wanted to get rid of this bit with the timing issues but wanted to keep the bit at the end thank you to kimmerfan for sponsoring this video camera phone microphones can be used to get easy wireless audio for streaming or recording via a computer a tablet or even just your phone kimifan also makes specialized mics for instruments like saxophone or violin you can see kimmerfan's full range of microphones by using the link in the description thanks very much and a massive thank you as always to everybody who supports me on patreon including the names you can see on screen right now and abigail allen andrei sinistiarja andrew andrew brown austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry brittany parker cameron all available christopher ryan david lee fish david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko s ben hansen eugene leroy eyes fd hodor guillermo latona james ko jay kochensparger joe watson john dye jonas sodastrom justin vigor lavender mint rose mark height melody composer squared michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence paul miller paul hazel peter dunphy pierce milovsky roger clay sam lin scott finley sean kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker trisha adams tim payne toot victor levy vidad flowers vladimir kodakov and volte

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 540,671

Rating: 4.9603133 out of 5

Keywords: vari speed, varispeed, microtonal, half sharp, half flat, what key is, music theory, analysis, edit, cut, splice, studio, tape, music, song, concert pitch, tape speed, quarter tone

Id: QgtzOafdoOQ

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Flight_Jameson]

Wow, this was super interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[u/michael_f_ellis]

Strong work! Thank you.

[u/s1a1om]

Thanks for posting. That was fascinating.

[u/Drops-of-Q]

Sorry to be such a critic, but you are miseducating people. There is no such thing as a microtonal key centre. It's just music that isn't played in concert pitch. Most music throughout history wasn't played in what we today have standardized as concert pitch (i.e. 440 hz), and you can't go around calling all music not in concert pitch for microtonal. Microtonality is a completely different concept that has nothing to do with it.