Song Help Request Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - that ain't no Bb

[TimWilson]

Tim, I so love your posts. Your knowledge, humility and positivity just shine through (even when I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about ). Keep ‘em coming!

You're so kind, Victoria! Thank you so much! While you're here, I'll mention that I LOVE your video of Scarborough Fair from SOTU 564! I love everything about it, and will definitely add it to my list for attempting sooner rather than later.

So for now, I'm pretty well settled on F ("towering over your") to A#maj7sus4 to Dm ("heaa-eaaaad") -- again noting that this is vastly simpler than the name would suggest. As I note a couple of posts earlier, that gnarly-sounding chord is just the middle and ring fingers on the third fret of the G and C strings for one stroke, then moving those back to the second fret for a bog-standard Dm. It's easy, organic, and sounds a LOT closer.

Exactly? No. But close enough for now. The fact is that all of this is an approximation, but the trick is to pull out what sounds most important to me. And as @Wiggy surmised, the answer has a "D" in it.

This made me think of the mystery of the opening chord in A Hard Day's Night. You can find acres and acres of speculation and debate on the web at large, YouTube and elsewhere. Thanks to tracks being broken out for games, surround mixes and the like, we know a lot more than we did before. I find the layout of the argument at The Beatles Bible site most persuasive: they say that George played an Fadd9 (F with a G on top) on a Rickenbacker 12-string, John played another Fadd9 on a Gibson acoustic 6 string, Paul played D on bass, and George Martin played D2, G2, D3, G3 and C4 (middle C). They also observe that George M. had the sustain pedal down, so that there are all kinds of overtones and harmonics in the mix, easily observable on spectral analysis, even if nobody was physically playing them.

[Edit: This article at GuitarWorld adds that G. Martin's notes, plus John doubling a low G, plus Paul's D in the bass, turns the finished combination into something like a Dm7add11. "As it happened the Bass and Piano parts inadvertently changed the quality of the chord from major to minor to suspended dominant seventh."

Moreover, G. Martin's piano was tracked at half speed and doubled in mixing, which adds a completely different tone. Mr. Martin did something similar with In My Life of course, where his piano played at half speed then doubled in mixing sounds more like a harpsichord, all of which explains why nothing that any rational set of musicians will try will not sound exactly like what The Beatles did, since they were of course rarely entirely rational!

Be sure to watch the embedded video there if you're still curious, too! Only two minutes long, but goes all the way into the weeds on why even The Beatles were never able to reproduce the recorded sound of that chord on stage: no acoustic piano with its dozens of undamped strings, resonating like crazy.]

Again noting that I'm not saying any of this. LOL I'm just reporting what I saw at The Beatles Bible, which documents 14 other possibilities that other folks have argued for with at least some degree of authority -- and that's not counting the comments insisting that it HAS TO BE this or that, or CAN'T POSSIBLY BE this or that.

My one and only point being, at some point, ya gotta wade through all those notes on all those strings, and pick four of 'em. Your four may not be my four. There are ways in which both of us will be literally right, and both of us will be literally wrong, but you have to play something. As long as it makes some kind of musical sense, it's close enough.

Because the other thing this makes me think of is that I said something one time about wanting to learn The Doobie Brothers "Black Water" on uke, and the fella I was talking to said, "Yeah, but no fiddle", and I replied "Or guitars plural, or bass, or multiple drummers (after the first album, the Doobies had two), multiple singers, and fancy recording studio." EVERYTHING we play is boiled down from some kind of larger whole -- and hey, he's not wrong. I do not in fact have a fiddle. LOL

For him, that was a deal breaker -- no point in playing the song FOR HIM, without the thing about the song that sounded most distinctive TO HIM. I do get that. There are songs, like Lucy (he says, trying desperately to wrestle his own post back on his own topic LOL) where if I don't have the intro, hook, solo, whatever, then it's not worth the effort TO ME. I'll choose something else. I think of that as more a matter of arrangement than instrumentation, but I get it. "Don't Fear The Reaper" sounds pretty nifty on uke, but it does kinda miss the cowbell.

Some folks work around this the best they can with software instruments, or the many multi-instrumentalists among us who are also so wonderful with multi-tracking and video editing....but the rest of us do our best to make a choice that feels organic, and hope for the best.

So I'm not saying that this is over for me. I've come in for a landing on the slippy syllables (yay!!!), I'm slowly getting comfortable with the intro, and I do still want to figure out the bass walkdown that immediately follows this "heaaa-eaaad"/"awaa-aaaay" passage, but for now, I thank you all for all of your incredibly insightful and generous suggestions that have gotten me this far!

It’s across the universe.

Ain't it just?

 

[Jan D]

...My one and only point being, at some point, ya gotta wade through all those notes on all those strings, and pick four of 'em. Your four may not be my four. There are ways in which both of us will be literally right, and both of us will be literally wrong, but you have to play something. As long as it makes some kind of musical sense, it's close enough.

Because the other thing this makes me think of is that I said something one time about wanting to learn The Doobie Brothers "Black Water" on uke, and the fella I was talking to said, "Yeah, but no fiddle", and I replied "Or guitars plural, or bass, or multiple drummers (after the first album, the Doobies had two), multiple singers, and fancy recording studio." EVERYTHING we play is boiled down from some kind of larger whole -- and hey, he's not wrong. I do not in fact have a fiddle. LOL

For him, that was a deal breaker -- no point in playing the song FOR HIM, without the thing about the song that sounded most distinctive TO HIM. I do get that. There are songs, like Lucy (he says, trying desperately to wrestle his own post back on his own topic LOL) where if I don't have the intro, hook, solo, whatever, then it's not worth the effort TO ME. I'll choose something else. I think of that as more a matter of arrangement than instrumentation, but I get it. "Don't Fear The Reaper" sounds pretty nifty on uke, but it does kinda miss the cowbell.

Some folks work around this the best they can with software instruments, or the many multi-instrumentalists among us who are also so wonderful with multi-tracking and video editing....but the rest of us do our best to make a choice that feels organic, and hope for the best.
...

And then there are some musical groups who perform an entire song (vocals + instrumentation) with only their voices. For those who think an acapella version couldn’t possibly be as satisfying as Queen’s original version, check out Pentatonix’s cover of Bohemian Rhapsody:

 

[Patty]

My one and only point being, at some point, ya gotta wade through all those notes on all those strings, and pick four of 'em. Your four may not be my four. There are ways in which both of us will be literally right, and both of us will be literally wrong, but you have to play something. As long as it makes some kind of musical sense, it's close enough.

Good summation. Too bad George isn’t around to pick up one of his trusty ukes and show us how he’d do it.

 

[Canada Jim]

While I think it sounds fine the way it's written, you could play Bb7 for the first syllable, Bb6 for the second and finish up with Bb and the notes you sing would be found on the 2nd string.
Bb7 - 3241
Bb6 - 3231
Bb - 3211

 

[Canada Jim]

the Beatles used the pentatonic scale, half steps etc, in music all the time in their melodies.

the Bb cited is not a straight major chord, it’s a guideline to help you.

Maybe try gm? Then move a half step down on the second string? Your welcome

I'm not sure I understand the first line UkeSlacker. I realise that there are more than one pentatonic scale, but the most common one has no half steps. We just drop the 4th and 7th notes from the diatonic scale.
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[TimWilson]

Good summation. Too bad George isn’t around to pick up one of his trusty ukes and show us how he’d do it.

The description of George playing the Fadd9 (F with a G) comes from George himself. He goes on to say that he had no idea what Paul was doing on bass, but the source is an amazing document that any Beatles fan should check out -- the transcript of a Yahoo chat that George did in 2001. The whole thing is here, and a non-stop delight.

The larger point is that, knowing exactly what George played, we're less than a quarter of the way to knowing what the ENTIRE chord should be -- which includes what George played on 12-string electric, what John played on 6-string acoustic, what Paul played on bass (avoiding the tonic altogether, a Motown trick), what George Martin played on piano, plus the intentional distortions that they added while editing. The gap between what they created for the final studio recording and what they could actually produce live was so large that they simply flew in the studio chord for the Hollywood Bowl live recording! That is. on the Hollywood Bowl recording, they give us the studio version of the opening chord straight from the AHDN elpee, cut it and pasted it to the front of the live performance in Hollywood. Even THEY couldn't COMPLETELY do it.

(Having said that George's part of the puzzle is the easiest to understand, I think EVERY DAY about how he'd be responding to this wave of the ukulele's popularity. Can you imagine him and Jake doing While My Guitar Gently Weeps together? Or his take on Here Comes The Sun for uke? How many George Harrison ukulele albums would we have? No kidding, I think about it EVERY DAY.)

The object of the game for an arrangement that reduces those 100+ strings to only 4 is to include the elements that matter most to YOU. Or in this case, ME. LOL

Which brings me to yesterday's Ukulele Underground podcast (as I write this, on Dec. 10, 2022), with special guest Matt Dahlberg, another of my favorite teachers along with Aldrine. THEY SAVED MY QUESTION FOR LAST!!!! Now, some of this was to help pimp Matt's new UU course on creating your own chord melody arrangements, where the central question is, what do you need to hear to make the "translation" from original to solo uke make sense?

Both Aldrine and Matt tackle it, and come up with slightly different solutions, while pointing the way to a handful of others. Watching their explanation of the movement of the three notes in "heaaa-eaaad" as D, C, and Bb made clear to me what was missing for me. The first position Bb puts the D on the second fret of the C string, but that's the wrong D for me. I want the D on the 5th fret of A -- so those notes are all on the A, from fret 5 (D) to 3 (C) to 1 (Bb).

Aldrine's core suggestion was to look for inversions elsewhere, and indeed, the second inversion of Bb is quite nifty -- a G shape on frets 5 and 6. Matt pointed out that you can play it as a barre of C, E, and A on fret 5 with your middle finger on the 6th fret of E, which leaves you really well positioned for a slide to an alternate first position Bb -- fretting the same three strings with your index, and moving the middle finger from the E string to the C string.

This is a Gm7 or Bb6 -- same fingering, different name. The fellas pointed out that you can in go straight to the Gm7 and add your pinky to the 5th fret of A for that higher D, creating a G7, then pull off to the Gm7.

ALL OF THESE WORK! I definitely feel vindicated in my belief that the first position Bb isn't exactly right (the right notes, but some in the wrong place), and that there are multiple ways to achieve the slide, which isn't 100% necessary if you can find a set of chords that you can move between smoothly enough. and we've obviously got those in spades as it turns out!

Then right at the end, Aldrine whips out a couple of pull-offs that are moving too quickly for me to see. I WANT THEM, but they're a little beyond me at the moment.

Still, extremely gratifying to watch them work through my problem, and I think you'll find their breakdown of the issue highly entertaining and enlightening. I certainly did! It starts at the 49 minute mark in the video, which is where I think this embed lands...but if not, that's where you'll need to go to check out the discussion.



Honestly, I'm gonna be floating on air for a couple of days. I really did practically fall out of my chair when they started talking about this. Totally fangirling out. LOL Thanks to @anaka for noticing this thread and bringing it to Aldrine's attention, and thanks to Aldrine and Matt for such terrific answers!

And again to the rest of you for indulging me! There are a lot of things coming into view that had seemed beyond my reach, but you're all making a big difference for me!

 

[Patty]

The larger point is that, knowing exactly what George played, we're less than a quarter of the way to knowing what the ENTIRE chord should be -- which includes what George played on 12-string electric, what John played on 6-string acoustic, what Paul played on bass (avoiding the tonic altogether, a Motown trick), what George Martin played on piano, plus the intentional distortions that they added while editing. The gap between what they created for the final studio recording and what they could actually produce live was so large that they simply flew in the studio chord for the Hollywood Bowl live recording! That is. on the Hollywood Bowl recording, they give us the studio version of the opening chord straight from the AHDN elpee, cut it and pasted it to the front of the live performance in Hollywood. Even THEY couldn't COMPLETELY do it.

(Having said that George's part of the puzzle is the easiest to understand, I think EVERY DAY about how he'd be responding to this wave of the ukulele's popularity. Can you imagine him and Jake doing While My Guitar Gently Weeps together? Or his take on Here Comes The Sun for uke? How many George Harrison ukulele albums would we have? No kidding, I think about it EVERY DAY.)

The object of the game for an arrangement that reduces those 100+ strings to only 4 is to include the elements that matter most to YOU. Or in this case, ME. LOL

Which brings me to yesterday's Ukulele Underground podcast (as I write this, on Dec. 10, 2022), with special guest Matt Dahlberg, another of my favorite teachers along with Aldrine. THEY SAVED MY QUESTION FOR LAST!!!! Now, some of this was to help pimp Matt's new UU course on creating your own chord melody arrangements, where the central question is, what do you need to hear to make the "translation" from original to solo uke make sense?

Both Aldrine and Matt tackle it, and come up with slightly different solutions, while pointing the way to a handful of others. Watching their explanation of the movement of the three notes in "heaaa-eaaad" as D, C, and Bb made clear to me what was missing for me. The first position Bb puts the D on the second fret of the C string, but that's the wrong D for me. I want the D on the 5th fret of A -- so those notes are all on the A, from fret 5 (D) to 3 (C) to 1 (Bb).

Aldrine's core suggestion was to look for inversions elsewhere, and indeed, the second inversion of Bb is quite nifty -- a G shape on frets 5 and 6. Matt pointed out that you can play it as a barre of C, E, and A on fret 5 with your middle finger on the 6th fret of E, which leaves you really well positioned for a slide to an alternate first position Bb -- fretting the same three strings with your index, and moving the middle finger from the E string to the C string.

This is a Gm7 or Bb6 -- same fingering, different name. The fellas pointed out that you can in go straight to the Gm7 and add your pinky to the 5th fret of A for that higher D, creating a G7, then pull off to the Gm7.

ALL OF THESE WORK! I definitely feel vindicated in my belief that the first position Bb isn't exactly right (the right notes, but some in the wrong place), and that there are multiple ways to achieve the slide, which isn't 100% necessary if you can find a set of chords that you can move between smoothly enough. and we've obviously got those in spades as it turns out!

Then right at the end, Aldrine whips out a couple of pull-offs that are moving too quickly for me to see. I WANT THEM, but they're a little beyond me at the moment.

Still, extremely gratifying to watch them work through my problem, and I think you'll find their breakdown of the issue highly entertaining and enlightening. I certainly did! It starts at the 49 minute mark in the video, which is where I think this embed lands...but if not, that's where you'll need to go to check out the discussion.



Honestly, I'm gonna be floating on air for a couple of days. I really did practically fall out of my chair when they started talking about this. Totally fangirling out. LOL Thanks to @anaka for noticing this thread and bringing it to Aldrine's attention, and thanks to Aldrine and Matt for such terrific answers!

And again to the rest of you for indulging me! There are a lot of things coming into view that had seemed beyond my reach, but you're all making a big difference for me!

Wow! This impresses my socks off!
First, your brilliant analysis, then the fact that Aldrine & Matt took up your thread for their podcast!

 

[anaka]

Honestly, I'm gonna be floating on air for a couple of days. I really did practically fall out of my chair when they started talking about this. Totally fangirling out. LOL Thanks to @anaka for noticing this thread and bringing it to Aldrine's attention, and thanks to Aldrine and Matt for such terrific answers!

No problem Tim! It was the perfect question to pick both of their brains with. Haha, yes, we conveniently used it to promote Matt's course, but when I first stumbled across this thread, the first thing I thought was, "I'm really glad that people are still using this Forum to explore music through ukulele and work their ideas out collaboratively." That's what this forum is really about - staying curious, reaching out for different perspectives, and getting just a little closer to being able to express the music that lives inside our heads.

As someone who's main job here is to simply beat back the spam bots and respond to complaints, any thread where players are earnestly asking for help and taking other players perspectives into account helps me to refocus on why we started UU and why we're still going. MAHALO

 

[TimWilson]

"I'm really glad that people are still using this Forum to explore music through ukulele and work their ideas out collaboratively." That's what this forum is really about - staying curious, reaching out for different perspectives, and getting just a little closer to being able to express the music that lives inside our heads.

'
VERY well said! That's exactly what I'm trying to do -- turn my curiosity into music, with the help of folks here who know a lot more than I do.

I ran a large (300K+ members, 2.5 million monthly visitors) forum in the video production industry full-time for 17 years, and another 7 years before that as a mostly full-time volunteer moderator, and I know how hard and often dispiriting your job is. Heck, it WAS my job for over 20 years! I'm very glad to have given your spirits a boost, but I can't imagine that it's anything like the boost you gave me!

Thanks again!

 

[UkeSlacker]

I'm not sure I understand the first line UkeSlacker. I realise that there are more than one pentatonic scale, but the most common one has no half steps. We just drop the 4th and 7th notes from the diatonic scale.
________________0__3__
_________0__3_________
__0__2________________
_______________________

Yeah. Sorry im music illiterate. Just trying to help and relate with what I know.

 

[TimWilson]

I'm following up with the end (for now) of this particular odd-yssey as I've continued to dig into Aldrine and Matt's advice.

I'm realizing that the best way to describe my target is "melodic movement". That was my issue with flattening that three note movement into ONLY the resolution chord. Sure, there's yer resolution, but where's the movement?

Everyone's going to sort this out differently depending on what they hear as the most important waypoints in the journey, if you will.

I love Aldrine's suggestion of, rather than go with first-position Bb-C-F for the first part of the pre-chorus, go Bb up two frets to the second-position C. Love it! Then for the F, take an Eb shape and move it up two frets to make an F (technically an Fadd9) by putting your first finger on the third fret of A, then two fingers on the E and C strings of 5 -- 0553 if I'm adding this up right, yes?

The cool thing about that approach is that the three magical notes in "hea-eaaa-aaad" are D, C, and Bb. And what's happening on the A string as we climb up the neck? The Bb on fret 1, the C on fret 3, and D on fret 5! So you're teeing up the exact same notes on the way up that are about to come cascading down.

The approach I'm going with right now is to make the Bb by barring the whole 5th fret, with my ring finger on the 6th fret of the E string to give me the Bb (and again, this is technically a Bbadd9, but we're apparently adding 9s willy-nilly). After strumming down once there, making sure to sound the D note on the C string, then it's just plucking the C on the fifth fret of A and the Bb on the sixth fret of E: downstrum once leaning into the first string, then quick sliding plucks across 4 and 2. Like so. I'm trying to embed starting at 53:34 -- you only need a few seconds to get the idea.



What's hilarious to me is that he continues with an example so outlandish ("if you're a masochist" he says) that nobody in their right mind would consider it -- a first-position Bb, stretching the pinky to the 5th fret of C and pulling off. "That's a tough sell," he concludes.

Then Aldrine replies by ripping it right off with no apparent effort whatsoever. LOL Both Matt and Aldrine have joked about Matt being like a foot taller, but Aldrine having bigger hands. Aldrine goes with a slight variation on the Bb to make it a little easier -- Gm7 or Bb6 (the Bb shape with the G string open), with your pinky and ring finger pulling off on frets 5 and 3 respectively. This bit starts at 57:05, and once again, is like 2 seconds to get the idea. (The poster frame is the same for this clip as the one before, but the two destinations do seem to be set in the right place.)



It's easy enough to get my fingers in position for this...



...but boy howdy, the noise I'm making with those pulloffs is not yet anything resembling music. LOL You can see that my pinky is way out of position for a pulloff, but admittedly part of it is that I was trying to manage the camera with my right hand at the same time. Not recommended. LOL But there's your D-C-Bb movement all on the A string. I'm practicing to get there, but not too hard yet, because I might be getting enough musical bang for my practice buck with the first method.

(More broadly, I'm not convinced that my radiused fretboard is as conducive to A-string pulloffs as it might be. It feels like there's not enough space for me to make a note before my finger is off the fretboard with a dull thud. I'll keep trying, and I'm about to swap in some higher tension strings as part of my regular string changes, and that may help. We'll see.)

Still, nothing wrong with practicing a variety of Bb positions and pulloffs in general, right? Always gonna find a place to use those skills.

In the meantime, thanks again to everyone who's helped make such a difference in my exploration of all these various issues! Whew! Time to get back to playing!

Thanks again!

 

[Patty]

I'm realizing that the best way to describe my target is "melodic movement". That was my issue with flattening that three note movement into ONLY the resolution chord. Sure, there's yer resolution, but where's the movement?

Seems to be the gist of the problem. The movement toward the resolution chord doesn’t make the resolution chord. … I think…

Incidentally, you also say …

but boy howdy, the noise I'm making with those pulloffs

Did you ever live in Texas? That’s the only place I’ve heard people use the expression “Boy, howdy!”

 

[Wiggy]

The Odyssey ends as Odysseus Tim wins a contest to prove his identity, slaughters the suitors a doo-dolly with his pinky at the 5th, and retakes the throne of UU

 

[TimWilson]

Seems to be the gist of the problem. The movement toward the resolution chord doesn’t make the resolution chord.

There's a joke here to be made about how unsatisfying it can be when men rush to the resolution before properly establishing the buildup to that resolution, but I think I won't make it today. LOL

But kidding aside, that's definitely it. It's not exactly that Bb is the wrong note. It's that, on its own, it doesn't provide the cascading tones that lead into it. Yeah, you can do it with your voice, but why not both?

Did you ever live in Texas? That’s the only place I’ve heard people use the expression “Boy, howdy!”

I did, and for way too long (something about which Texas and I are very much in agreement ), but I've always connected "Boy Howdy!" to the arrival of Creem Magazine in 1969, along with their mascot, Mr. Boy Howdy himself!




What I loved as an outsider teen in the Central Time Zone (let's be honest: a loser) is that they embraced being outsiders (let's be honest: losers), and were a welcome counterbalance to the claustrophic coastal insiderism at Rolling Stone. The strength of a thing and the weakness of a thing are almost always identical, and it's true here too. Creem's embrace of outsiderism seemed to lead as often as not to reflexively pissing on anything popular, as if popularity disqualifies a thing from being good, which is its own kind of nonsense, and very much to be avoided.

But there's a reason why Lester Bangs (the editor of Creem from 1971-1976) hovers like a fairy godmother over young William Miller in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. "Guys like us, we're never gonna be cool. Most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts." True enough, unless it's absolutely false, right? LOL I think Cameron ultimately did a better job balancing this in real life than Lester did, but that's why all these years later, I have a fondness for the "failed" Creem that I'll never have for the "successful" Rolling Stone.

Definitely worth noting in this context that Cameron did great work for both! As indeed did Lester Bangs for that matter. No point in stretching the either/or when the correct answer more often is "Why not both?"

To keep derailing my own thread:

 

[Wiggy]

View attachment 146338

I want that on a T-shirt!

Home

 

[TimWilson]

The Odyssey ends as Odysseus Tim wins a contest to prove his identity, slaughters the suitors a doo-dolly with his pinky at the 5th, and retakes the throne of UU

If all it takes to be king is to butcher some Beatles tunes, then yeah, I'm your man. LOL

I want that on a T-shirt!

Gotcha covered, friend! That's the official Creem store, but a quick Google search will bring you to some equally enticing unauthorized stuff.

 

[Patty]

There's a joke here to be made about how unsatisfying it can be when men rush to the resolution before properly establishing the buildup to that resolution, but I think I won't make it today. LOL

But kidding aside, that's definitely it. It's not exactly that Bb is the wrong note. It's that, on its own, it doesn't provide the cascading tones that lead into it. Yeah, you can do it with your voice, but why not both?



I did, and for way too long (something about which Texas and I are very much in agreement ), but I've always connected "Boy Howdy!" to the arrival of Creem Magazine in 1969, along with their mascot, Mr. Boy Howdy himself!


View attachment 146338

What I loved as an outsider teen in the Central Time Zone (let's be honest: a loser) is that they embraced being outsiders (let's be honest: losers), and were a welcome counterbalance to the claustrophic coastal insiderism at Rolling Stone. The strength of a thing and the weakness of a thing are almost always identical, and it's true here too. Creem's embrace of outsiderism seemed to lead as often as not to reflexively pissing on anything popular, as if popularity disqualifies a thing from being good, which is its own kind of nonsense, and very much to be avoided.

But there's a reason why Lester Bangs (the editor of Creem from 1971-1976) hovers like a fairy godmother over young William Miller in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. "Guys like us, we're never gonna be cool. Most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts." True enough, unless it's absolutely false, right? LOL I think Cameron ultimately did a better job balancing this in real life than Lester did, but that's why all these years later, I have a fondness for the "failed" Creem that I'll never have for the "successful" Rolling Stone.

Definitely worth noting in this context that Cameron did great work for both! As indeed did Lester Bangs for that matter. No point in stretching the either/or when the correct answer more often is "Why not both?"

To keep derailing my own thread:

Creem! Lester Bangs! My life in rewind!

 

[Joyful Uke]

The description of George playing the Fadd9 (F with a G) comes from George himself. He goes on to say that he had no idea what Paul was doing on bass, but the source is an amazing document that any Beatles fan should check out -- the transcript of a Yahoo chat that George did in 2001. The whole thing is here, and a non-stop delight.

Thanks for mentioning the Yahoo chat. I just took a look, and had to smile when I saw this:
nattyrobbo asks: Hi George! I'm Natalie, an 18 y.o. girl from Australia, and I'm a HUGE fan. Any hints for a budding guitarist???
george_harrison_live: Yes.
george_harrison_live: Buy a ukulele!

I think he would have loved UU, even though he said that he didn't surf the internet at all.

 

[Wiggy]

More about this from W-pedia:

"In 1966, Harrison contributed innovative musical ideas to Revolver... His guitar playing on "I Want to Tell You" exemplified the pairing of altered chordal colours with descending chromatic lines and his guitar part for Sgt Pepper's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" mirrors Lennon's vocal line in much the same way that a sarangi player accompanies a khyal singer in a Hindu devotional song."

There you have it.

 

[TimWilson]

in much the same way that a sarangi player accompanies a khyal singer in a Hindu devotional song

I now see exactly where I went wrong.