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Math Prof Uncovers Secret Chord
chebucto writes "The opening chord to A Hard Day's Night is famous because for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing. Musicians, scholars and amateur guitar players alike had all come up with their own theories, but it took a Dalhousie mathematician to figure out the exact formula. Dr. Brown used Fourier transforms to find the notes in the chord, and deduced that another George — George Martin, the Beatles producer — also played on the chord, adding a piano chord that included an F note impossible to play with the other notes on the guitar."
That David played, and it pleased the lord,
but you don't really care for music, do you?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Why didn't anyone just ask Harrison?
Stories like this are actually interesting and have a math/science side to them, instead of being mindless humor that everyone has already seen elsewhere. This is something that a math teacher could show her students to make them interested, more so than all the silly posters and videos they used when I was going through grade school.
You want to talk to a human -- a musician -- when you could be performing a discrete Fourier transform? You must be new here.
Then we will know for sure. It is probably the red and blue chord.
the problem is that /. designates idle to be full of crap. all of the good articles get shoehorned into other categories. For example, the article about how Heinlein responded to fans with a preformed checklist was under entertainment. Something like that is much better suited to idle and it would make the section worth reading.
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
The article doesn't actually say what he thinks the chord was. I do music transcriptions (http://jordanbalagot.com/musictranscriptions.html ) and to me it sounds like G7 sus 4 / D. Or actual pitches: D1 G2 G3 C3 F3 G3. I do hear the F in there...If it's not playable on guitar it's possible the Beatles combined two recordings at once of different takes. They used all sorts of innovative recording techniques like that.
Not really, the piano is playing a Dsus4.
If it was as simple as you say it is then people would have been able to recreate it long ago and no one did.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J