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amishtwister
10-31-2008, 09:54 AM
Apparently this guy used some math to figure out the mysterious chord at the beginning of A Hard Day's Night.

http://dalnews.dal.ca/2008/10/17/hard_day.html

His actual paper, for those able to understand it at www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/AHDNSoloJIB.pdf (http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/AHDNSoloJIB.pdf)

The laymens article doesn't spell out the exact notes, but apparently George Martin played a chord on the piano that contributed to the sound.
scottlr
10-31-2008, 10:01 AM
There was a lot of discussion about this chord over on VoxTalks years ago. Without yet reading the article, George Harrision played (as he put it) an F chord with his pinky playing a G note on the high E string. By itself, this sounds all wrong, and especially so if on a 6 string. Paul played an open D IIRC, and the piano played some sort of Gsus4, all with a pile of compression. I tried it using GarageBand once and it came out pretty damn good. If you watch live performances of AHDN, Harrision just plays the chord he describes, and it doesn't sound quite right. A single guitar trying to emulate the record does better just playing a Gsus4, and maybe have the bass play the open D.

The Beatles were masters of simplicity, and I don't think this chord is all that complicated. The engineering of it is where the complication comes in. It is so tightly compressed and spliced onto the beginning of the song, it's hard to hear everything that is really there.
amishtwister
10-31-2008, 10:11 AM
The PDF link is to an article about the solo of the song, which is also very interesting. Here's the one on the chord:
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/n-oct04-harddayjib.pdf
scottlr
10-31-2008, 10:26 AM
There was am online chat with George several years ago. That is where he answered what HE played, and IIRC correctly he may have also mentioned the bass and piano. I have the text from that chat somewhere on one of my HDs.
bjjp2
10-31-2008, 10:28 AM
Best article I've seen on the subject.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1718612
scottlr
10-31-2008, 02:15 PM
Best article I've seen on the subject.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1718612

That IS a good article! It seems I am mistaken on the open D on bass, and that it's the 12th fret D. After I read it, I thought to myself "well duh, I knew that," but I guess I forgot.

Leave it to The Beatles to do one freakin chord that people are still discussing and debating 44 years later!

And to find out once I had a Ric 12 that it is the same "F with a G on top" that he used at the end was unreal. Once you do it on a 12, there's no mistake, but the same thing on a 6 sounds totally wrong. The high A note on the G octave string is the key to it all.
zombywoof
10-31-2008, 05:01 PM
There was am online chat with George several years ago. That is where he answered what HE played, and IIRC correctly he may have also mentioned the bass and piano. I have the text from that chat somewhere on one of my HDs.

Yup, I have an audio copy of the interview - if I recall Harrison was not sure what the bass note Paul played was. If ya listebt o boots fo the recording session, many of th attempts at the tune have just the piano playingt eh first chord.