A Hard Day's Night song: Encyclopedia II - A Hard Day's Night song - Opening chord

A Hard Day's Night song - Opening chord

"A Hard Day's Night" is immediately identifiable before the vocals even begin, thanks to George Harrison's unmistakable Rickenbacker 12-string guitar's opening chord. The exact chord played by Harrison has been the subject of contention. According to Walter Everett (1999: 13,19,312), the opening chord is a major subtonic ninth (♭VII, read "flat seven", plus the seventh and ninth, in G major: F A C E G) — the major subtonic being a borrowed chord commonly used by the Beatles, first in "P.S. I Love You" (see mode mixture), and later in "Every Little Thing", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Got to Get You into My Life" (in the latter two against a tonic pedal).

Contrastingly, Alan W. Pollack ([1]) interprets the chord as a surrogate dominant (surrogate V, the dominant preparing or leading to the tonic chord), in G major the dominant being D, with the G being an anticipation that resolves in the G major chord that opens the verse. He also suggests it is a mixture of d minor, F major, and G major (missing the B). Tony Bacon (2000: 5) calls it a Dm7sus4 (D F G A C), which is the dominant seventh (plus the fourth, G). For more information regarding chord functions see diatonic function.

Jason Brown, Professor for the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, whose research interests include graph theory, combinatorics, and combinatorial algorithms, posits that the chord is pandiatonic. Professor Brown announced in October 2004 that after six months of reseach he succeeded in analyzing the opening chord by "de-composing the sound into original frequencies, using a combination of computer software and old-fashioned chalkboard." According to Brown, the Rickenbacker guitar wasn't the only instrument used. "It wasn't just George Harrison playing it and it wasn't just the Beatles playing on it... There was a piano in the mix." To be exact, he claims that Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.

Everett (2005: 109) says: "It doesn't make sense to try to label the chord traditionally. The chord has dominant function, it has modal neighbors, and it predicts the Rick[enbacker] ending." He also thinks "the piano doubles the Rick, and McCartney plays D in the bass."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Opening chord", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki