Description
Book SynopsisThe Beatles and the Beatlesque address a paradox emanating from The Beatles’ music through a cross-disciplinary hybrid of reflections, drawing from both, musical practice itself and academic research. Indeed, despite their extreme stylistic variety, The Beatles’ songs seem to always bear a distinctive identity that emerges even more in similar works by other artists, whether they are merely inspired, derivative or explicitly paying homage. The authors, a musicologist and music producer, emphasize the importance of record production in The Beatles' music in a way that does justice not only to the final artifacts (the released songs) but also to the creative process itself (i.e., the songs "in the making").
Through an investigation into the work of George Martin and his team, as well as The Beatles themselves, this text sheds light on the role of the studio in shaping the group's eclectic but unique sound. The chapters address what makes a song “Beatlesque”, to what extent production choices are responsible for developing a style, production being understood not as a mere set of technicalities, but also in a more conceptual way, as well as the aesthetics, semiotics and philosophy that animated studio activity. The outcome is a book that will appeal to both students and researchers, as well as, of course, musicophiles of all kinds.
Table of ContentsPreface
1. Introduction: a short history of The Beatles in the studio1.1 Recording strategies, tricks and effects1.2 Instrumentation and recurrent techniques1.3 The centrality of the studio
2. Style and sound2.1 Sound and musical competence2.2 The roots of The Beatles sound2.3 Later influences
3. On (the difficulty of) defining The Beatles style3.1. Vocals3.2. Harmonic solutions3.3. Melodic solutions3.4. Rhythmic solutions3.5. Instruments3.6. Dynamics3.7. Sound3.8. Endings3.9. Lyrics
4. Crossdisciplinary reflections: production seen from the perspective of multimodality studies, narratology and film studies.4.1. Visual and literary components in Lennon-McCartney 4.1.1. Lennon or McCartney 4.1.2. Lennon and McCartney4.2. Production as multimodality4.3. Production and diegesis4.3.1. Diegesis, non-diegesis, formality, non-formality4.3.2. Hybrid forms and metadiegesis4.4. Case-study: feedbacks, false starts and blisters4.4.1. Redefining the spatial/temporal dimension of a song4.5. Production as montage4.5.1. Martin vs. Spector (and Lynne)4.5.2. Types of production as types of montage4.6. Case-study: The Fool on the Hill4.6.1. Creation and production4.6.2. What kind of fool was the fool on the hill?4.6.3. The authorial context4.6.4. Themes, structure and imagery4.6.5. Musical strategies4.7. Foreshadowing strategies
5. Birth and fortune of the “Beatlesesque”: Transmission of creativity and legacy5.1 A little survey5.2 Stylistic features in a nutshell5.3 Another little survey5.4 Intrinsically-Beatlesesque features5.4.1 Different approaches5.4.2 Most referenced production elements5.5 Conclusions
ReferencesIndex of namesIndex of songs/albums
