Magical Mystery Chord

Harmonics doesn’t get more fun than this chord.  I think someone’s posted an analysis here before, but I’d forgotten the details.  Randy Bachman got to listen to the individual tracks at Abbey Road;  here he is breaking it down.  Truly a band firing on all cylinders during this time, the height of their early period.

7 Replies to “Magical Mystery Chord”

  1. Are there graduate studies programs focusing solely on this chord?

    I think everyone knew about Harrison’s Fadd9 but I hadn’t heard about Lennon’s Dsus4. So no piano?

    The mystery is caused by the fact that Martin is playing a piano chord atop Harrison’s Fadd9 (or “F with a G on top,” as he said in early 2001) played on his 12-string Rickenbacker, Lennon’s Fadd9 played on his Gibson J-160E and McCartney’s single note (D) played on his Hofner 500/1 bass.

    Guitar World

  2. I forgot about the alleged piano. Fuck, now I’m going to be playing it over and over to find out if I can hear a piano.

    Emerick at the pub later: “Bloody lumberjack came in wanting to hear ‘Hard Day’s Night’ chord tracks. I put the mockers on it by leaving out the piano.”

    There’s a graduate studies program for everything, so yes. $50k per semester with complimentary career counseling. Free becuase they won’t be able to do anything for you.

  3. I say yea. I hear a very piano-like sonority, most prominently a G as the chord begins to fade. Listened to both stereo & mono CD’s with very good headphones. Next step will be to check All The Songs to see what it says (would have done that already, but it will require hunting it down in Kindle edition, the only copy I have).

  4. So glad we expanded our research budget.

    I checked Anthology, because at over 800,000 giganto-pages, surely it contains the answer? Nope.

    I did learn that “Tomorrow Never Knows” was another Ringo malapropism.

  5. According to All the Songs, Martin did double the opening chord(s) on the piano. You’ve probably noticed that he also doubled Gerorge’s guitar solo. That one’s very obvious. Whole song was recorded in three hours, and John had written it the night before. They were nearing the end of shooting the movie and needed a theme song. John rushed it out to try to get ahead of Paul.

  6. I wish my last-minute projects had such quality.

    Also, the video has been taken down on most of my access platforms. This leads me to believe that we are getting close to the truth and someone doesn’t want us to find out!

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