Mathematician (finally) finds opening chord to "A Hard Day's Night"
Posted 01.15.2009 at 5:19 pm
9 Comments
Imagine All the People
Taylor Hengen
The opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night” has reached an almost mythical status. For years, no one knew what it actually was. People would come close, through trial and error, watching Ed Sullivan performances, and studying advanced music theory, but no attempts ever quite captured the exact chord.
Enter Dr. Jason Brown, from Dalhousie University in Canada. An avid Beatles fan and amateur musician, Brown had tried for years to play that chord, but it never seemed quite right. “It sounds outlandish,” said Dr. Brown, “that someone could create a mystery around a chord from a time when artists used such simple recording techniques.”
Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Brown decided to use the Fourier calculation to decompose the song into its original frequencies and figure out the notes from there. It almost worked, save for one not- so- minor detail; the instruments didn’t match up. Oh, George was definitely playing his 12 string Rickenbacker, Lennon was was playing his six string, and Paul (oh Paul) was there on bass, but there was also an unaccounted-for F note that was impossible to play with just the instruments there. “Then the solution hit me: it wasn’t just those instruments. There was a piano in there as well, and that accounted for the problematic frequencies.”
Brown decided that there was a second George (George Martin, the producer, to be precise) who played that piano chord with the F note. This was never mentioned in any of the literature about the song, making it impossible for others to figure it out until Dr. Brown did. He just might be the only mathematician to ever have been published in Guitar Player magazine.
Via: Science Daily
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from Sao Paulo, SP
Very very VERY cool.
I had read about people trying to figure out that chord and so much arguing about it.
from Westlake, Ohio
So............what's the chord?
What???
It's Dm addG (300011).
I meant Dm7addG. The tab is still the same.
so.. what chord is it then??
sorry folks, not so mysterous ... the correct chord on guitar is a simple modified D7 with added low A and high G.
So the notes are
A (5th string/open),
D (string4/open),
A (3rd string/2nd fret),
C (2nd string/1st fret),
G (1st string/3rd fret).
Been playing this for YEARS and it is 100% the right one.
The same bottom 3 is used to finish the song picking 1st string with alternating from fret#3 to fret #1.
Enjoy playing A Hard Days Night like George.
from Grand Island, Ne
Thats so cool that it took this long to figure out one cord of a song by the Beatles. They were smarter than they looked. LOL
>>sorry folks, not so mysterous ... the correct chord on guitar is a simple modified D7 with added low A and high G.
So the notes are
A (5th string/open),
D (string4/open),
A (3rd string/2nd fret),
C (2nd string/1st fret),
G (1st string/3rd fret).
Been playing this for YEARS and it is 100% the right one.<<
This may be what one of the guitars is playing, but to say this is "100% correct" for achieving the true "Hard Day's Night" chord is wrong.
You have no F anywhere in this chord, whereas an F is definitely heard on the recording.
One quick and dirty way to get an (again, incomplete) approximation on the guitar is to play a Gsus7 (353533). But then, you miss out on the A.
The only way I've found to get all the notes of the chord on one guitar is to tune the bottom E string down to a D, and then play 003213. This way, all of the essential notes that give this chord its distinctive nature (D, A, F, C and G) are present.
Of course, this leaves you in the lurch for playing the body of the song, forcing you to voice the bottom G on the 5th fret of the E string!
One more thing: the formation you mention will work for playing the ending riff only if you're playing a 12-string guitar. Without it, you won't get the octave A that's the third note of the riff.
On a six-string, I play the ending riff by alternating between xx(10)(12)(10)x and xx(10)(10)(10)x.
>>One quick and dirty way to get an (again, incomplete) approximation on the guitar is to play a Gsus7 (353533).<<
Sorry, that should be G7sus4!