Math Prof Uncovers Secret Chord 177
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."
Re:So, having Googled... (Score:4, Informative)
There are like a million copies of this article verbatim and with the same picture. Here's his page http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/ [mscs.dal.ca]
and then find these:
http://www.guitarplayer.com/story.asp?sectioncode=8&storycode=15819 [guitarplayer.com]
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/AHDNSoloJIB.pdf [mscs.dal.ca]
Not so secret (Score:2, Informative)
Right guy, right song, wrong story (Score:5, Informative)
Dr. Brown's work on the opening chord of Hard Day's Night is four years old. His paper is at:
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/n-oct04-harddayjib.pdf [mscs.dal.ca]
(Note the "oct04" date in the URL).
His recent work is on the same song, but it's not about the opening chord. It's about the guitar solo (which was actually a duet with the piano), which Harrison played an octave down, at half speed, and then sped up. Which he proved by noticing where the piano notes went from double-strings to triple-strings, as seen by tiny mis-tunings between the strings.
It's pretty interesting work:
http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~brown/AHDNSoloJIB.pdf [mscs.dal.ca]
(Note: slashdot is just reporting the article, which is new. But it comes from Dr. Brown's own school, so I don't know why they're reporting the wrong story, except to guess that the older story was a well-known mystery among guitarists.)
So What's the chord? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've heard there was a secret chord (Score:0, Informative)
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
Re:Not so secret (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Not Lost, just Secret (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not so secret (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe it sounds better with the piano though.
Re:Well, this isn't total crap (Score:2, Informative)