What makes good/bad song sequencing on an LP?
paramucho
<jfon...@odyssee.net> wrote:
>I guess you could say it's a matter of formal variation or not
>(contrast/similiraty) between two songs with regards to parameters like :
>
>- the song genre and mood (tempo)
>- the arrangement (main singer/instrumentation)
>- the theme, the subject of the lyrics
>- the song duration
>- the song key
>- anything else?
George Martin developed a set of well defined rules.
1. Open the album with a couple of very strong songs.
2. Close each side with a song that's hard to follow
3. Look for natural links between songs
4. Then distribute the remaining songs
The weakest material is found in the second half of the second side
*usually*, except for the very last song.
There also seems to have been an effort to mix pieces from the
different singers. That tends to vary from period to period.
There are two main considerations for key.
The first is that a certain monotony occurs if a number of songs in
the same key follow each other. That's a *negative* which needs to be
avoided.
The second is that some form of direction in keys can produce a sense
of balance and momementum. That's a desirable *positive*.
Martin never mentions key, in either case, but then he rarely speaks
at that technical level. On the other hand, Beatle albums usually have
a good distribution of keys, so that in most cases the "monotony"
issue would not arise. Here are some representative examples. I've
joined songs with "=" when they have the same key.
Summaries Key
A-side B-side A B AB
HARD G==G D E==E D C D G a C G a GC Ga G
SALE C G A C==C B G D A E A G D E CG DAE
HELP A D G A==A E A G C G==G A F A AA GA A
RUBBER D E A E G D F E c Ab A f# A D DD AD D
REV D e eb C G Gb Bb A E B A==A G C D-? A-?
PEPPER G E AG G f E cde C#=C# Ea A FG GE GEe ?GE GE
WHITE A D Bb F# Ca=a==aC Eb A G Eb a C D F D AaC AaD
WHITE2 A E D E G E g A G EG e BA? G AEg AG AG
ABBEY D C D A E da A c# aC ECE=E=EA aCA=AC Dda AC AC
The "Summaries" column summarises the "key" of each side. The final
column summarises the key, or key movement of the album. This data is
very rough and debatable.
Some notes:
HARD The folky G major was flavor of the month for Lennon.
SALE Strange split between the sides
HELP A major is new flavor of the month.
RUBBER Strange keys are result of capoes.
REV Strange keys are result of vari-speeding
PEPPER Much more complex internal key movement.
Strong movement of G to E seen in many places. Probably
the one Beatle album where key plays a major role.
MMT Not really an album.
YELLOW Ditto.
WHITE Back to normal keys. Fairly random except for last side
where I think that "Goodnight" *should* have been in A
major, not G.
I've written "Revolution 9" as "BA?".
ABBEY I don't think the second side works tonally.
(1) Too much E major in the middle (this was caused by
the removal of "Her Majesty" between "Mustard" and "Pam".
(2) After all that E major in the middle the side should
have closed in A major, not C major.
Clearly, there is a good distribution of keys, and for the most part
adjacent keys are related. This is a spin-off largely of the Beatles'
predominant use of guitar keys (C D E G A). The exceptions usually
occur as follows:
Capo RUBBER SOUL was dominated by capoed guitars.
Speedup Peppertime saw many songs sped up (or slowed down)
Piano Some McCartney songs in F and Eb.
For the most part, any sense of tonal direction is debatable. First,
there is no evidence to suggest that tonal direction was a goal.
Second, in most cases different observers will assign different
interpretations of the data -- that's because the tonal "signals" are
very weak (and because the internal tonal movement of the songs
themselves plays a much more important role than shown above).
SGT PEPPER
Here's what George Martin said about the album layout on PEPPER:
Sgt. Pepper...... has to be the first track, naturally. The reprise
of the song had to go last -- except that the final chord of
A Day In The Life was so final that it was obvious nothing else
could follow it... That took care of three of our tracks already.
My old precept in the recording business was always, "Make side
one strong," for obvious commercial reasons. Since the last line
of Sgt. Pepper... introduces the fictional "Billy Shears"...
A Little Help...[sic] had to come immediately after the title
track. Four down.
Lucy... was a great song: it had to go on side one. It could
hardly be more different in atmosphere and mood from A Little
Help..., so why place it after that? Well, it was because it was so
different...
Another principle of mine when assembling an album was always
to go out on a side strongly, placing weaker material towards
the end but then going out with a bang. With this in mind,
Kite... ends side one.
The songs that were least interesting had come before that and
after Lucy. She's Leaving Home was a lovely song, but it was a
bit downbeat -- it didn't exactly shout its optimism -- so I
decided to place it after the more upbeat but less worthy
Fixing A Hole and Getting Better. These were all entirely
subjective judgements of course!
When it came to Within You..., I could not for the life of
me think of anywhere to put it at all. It was so alien, mystical
and long. There was no way it could end a side, not did it sit
comfortably next to anything else on the album. The self-deprecating
laugh George had added at the end of his song game me a bizarre
idea: it could start a side, and I could follow it with a jokey
track: When I'm Sixty-Four.
A lot of people like Lovely Rita, but it was not my favourite
song, as I've said, so that one went into the middle of side two
as a bit of padding. Good Morning found its place by virtue of a
happy accident, when I noticed that the chicken squawk on the
end of the song dovetailed... neatly with the sound of the guitar
tuning up that begins the title song's reprise. Finally came the
block-buster that ends the album, A Day In The Life: nothing could
come after that final, numbing, 42-second chord.
Martin GMSP148-149
>I would especially like to hear from the musicological guys about that last
>parameter (song key) : can you give examples of great/poor sequencing with
>regards to the key the songs are played in? What tonal intervals make
>good/bad sequencing? Any harmonic sequencing trends or curiosities on the
>Beatles records?
So, as you can see, Martin makes no mention of key. However, he and
some Beatles had perfect pitch, or something very close, so it could
well have influenced his decision making. PEPPER probably has the best
tonal programming of any of the albums. Here's a brief look at why I
say that.
Quite a few early Beatle songs begin in G major and finish on an E
minor chord. That's in fact the famous Aoelian Cadence. PEPPER expands
that on a massive scale to a tonal movement from G major to E major.
Here are the keys, in a bit more detail:
Side 1 G E AGAG G f E cde
Side 2 C# C# Ea AGAGA FG GEGE
It's interesting that there is *nothing* in the dominant of either
key, D or B. Then again, PEPPER was an album that avoided the dominant
in many ways.
Lets take out everything except for G, E, A and F:
Side 1 G E AGAG G f E e
Side 2 Ea AGAGA FG GEGE
We see G->E operating at a number of levels, with A acting as a
dominant. The final song, "A Day In The Life" goes to great pains to
point out the close from G to the massive final chord of E major.
Was it chance? Let's look at the data.
A Day In The Life" was more or less the first song recorded for the
final album, so it is possible that the other songs were influenced by
it's structure. Lennon had a habit of providing "the last song first".
The opening G->E was painted into place with a worked out join
between "Pepper" and "With A Little Help". It's actually written
[G...|C D |E ], a little like the [C G D A E] joins within "A Day In
The Life" - another "worked out join".
Now, let's look at the songs. We see most of the key structure if we
isolate the jointly composed material.
Key Key Writers
G P Sgt Pepper
E E Both With A Little Help
AG EA Both Lucy
G G Both Getting Better
f P Fixing A Hole
E E Both She's Leaving Home
cde cde Both Mr Kite
C# G Within You
C# G When I'm 64
Ea P Lovely Rita
A J Good Morning
FG Both* Sgt Pepper Reprise
GE GE Both A Day In The Life
One of the main problems with this kind of thing is that it's always
easy to look at the chords, see some kind of pattern, and then start
hunting around for supporting evidence. The simple indicator of this
inventive wishful thinking process is the absence of counter evidence.
Here are two pieces of at least qualifying data:
First, I do think that only PEPPER, the last side of the WHITE ALBUM
and the second side of ABBEY ROAD show a real sense of tonal
direction.
Second, here's the original layout for Side 1, which you can see has
the same logic (even more strongly).
G P Sgt Pepper
E E Both With A Little Help
cde cde Both Mr Kite
f P Fixing A Hole
AG EA Both Lucy
G G Both Getting Better
E E Both She's Leaving Home
Third, I think ABBEY ROAD provides an example where there is a strong
tonal direction but where the Beatles get it *wrong* by closing in C
at the end rather than in A. I won't go into the details (mercy be).
Beyond that, regarding PEPPER, I doubt we'll ever know. However, the
affect of tonality as a powerful long range tool is undoubted and it
isn't surprising to see the Beatles only really cohesive album, in a
dramatic sense, adhere to a strong tonal plan.
To answer your precise question, regarding intervals between songs, I
don't think that matters too much, although skilled use of specific
intervals, if also reflected in the songs themselves, might be have
some interesting affects. I certainly don't see that process in a
general sense with the Beatles tracks (although it did occur once, in
a way, on PEPPER where it was responsible for the join between "Good
Morning" and the reprise -- see Martin's comments above).
SUMMARY
To summarise: tonal direction is a "weak force" which is easily pushed
to one side, however it can have a powerful underlying unifying affect
on a work.
I don't think we notice its absence too much when its *not* there,
although too much of a single key can become monotonous. However, it
can have a dramatic parallel affect when used properly, particularly
if it reflects tonal movement within the songs.
Ian
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SEAHORSE011
are:The Abbgey Road Medley, Band on the Run. It gives the feeling of going down
a runway and becoming airborne.
The same could have been done with Flaming Pie,but they did the opposite
which I feel is a mistake.
Early in the albumYoung Boys' momentum goes into slow motion for it's
endking . And Beautiful Night speeds up considerably and gets the juices going
,But then the whole album is almost over.