The Beatles' influence: Encyclopedia II - The Beatles' influence - The music

The Beatles' influence - The music

The Beatles' influence - Composition and recording

Whilst by no means the first to do so (Buddy Holly composed his hits, for example), the Beatles' example made self-composition the standard for rock bands then and since. Although they did not necessarily invent all the new ideas they incorporated in their music, they often competed with and played off the developing ideas of other prominent acts of the period (such as Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and the Beach Boys). As such, they spurred rock music, which hitherto had been largely looked down upon by older music fans, towards becoming an accepted art form. When the Sgt. Pepper album was released, it was hailed by music critics of the time as a major work of art, even compared favorably to classical musicians such as Schubert and Schumann. Within days of its release, the album's title song was being covered by artists like Jimi Hendrix.

In the studio, The Beatles were always experimenting with new recording techniques and even coined a few common studio phrases that are still in use today. For example, a common vocal or guitar effect where two copies of the same sound are overlapped and time-shifted slightly (producing a swirling, swishing sound), is now known as flanging, thanks to John Lennon, who named the effect in the 1960s.

The Beatles' use of various instruments is regarded as highly innovative. With the help of George Martin, they made wide use of string and brass overdubs for a variety of different musical effects and experimented with some more unconventional instruments. An early example is the string arrangement on "Yesterday"; other notable examples include the use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood", the exclusive accompaniment of a string octet on "Eleanor Rigby", and the amusing orchestral arrangement (with an initial reference to "La Marseillaise") of "All You Need Is Love".

The Beatles' influence - Instrumentation

The popularity of the individual Beatles combined with their considerable instrumental skills led to a better knowledge in the general public of the musical contributions made by lead guitar, rhythm guitar, drums, and particularly bass guitar.

Paul McCartney was not only cute and loveable, he was also a very melodic bassist and listeners learned to listen more carefully because of it.

While not flashy, Ringo Starr's drumming was tasteful, precise, and imaginative. Ringo also changed the traditional way of holding drum sticks. Before Ringo, nearly all drummers held drum sticks with the "traditional" grip, with the left hand stick held like a chopstick. Now, most percussionists play holding the drum sticks in the "matched" grip, like Ringo. Ringo used Ludwig drum sets, which quickly became the standard brand of drum sets in rock and roll bands.

The Beatles were legendarily rejected by Decca Records because "guitar bands are passé", but John Lennon and George Harrison disproved that. Even the brand of instruments used by the band became more popular because of the band. Rickenbacker guitars have been widely used by rock and roll bands since the mid 1960s, thanks in part to Lennon's heavy use of the guitar.

The Hofner violin bass (or "Beatle Bass" as it would commonly be called nowadays) was styled after one of the very first Gibson electric basses, the EB-1.

George Harrison was also the first musician of a pop group in the sixties to make use of the sitar. Because of its psychedelic sound, the instrument would soon be used by many other bands, such as The Rolling Stones, Love and Donovan. Ravi Shankar, who taught the sitar to George Harrison, would even be part of the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

The Hofner version of the violin bass was popular among the bands playing around Germany in the early 1960s, largely because it was cheap. McCartney's use of the instrument led bassists all over the world to buy Hofners, in spite of the fact that at the time, it was generally not considered a high quality instrument and even had difficulty staying in tune. To this very day, it is quite common to see the Hofner "Beatle Bass" being used by up and coming bands on MTV and in concert, which probably would not have happened without the Beatles. A large number of guitar manufacturers have copied the iconic design of the 'violin bass', such as Tanglewood, Cort and Epiphone.

McCartney returned to using his original iconic violin bass in later years (1988 onwards) and features it regularly on tour, where it gets almost as much applause as he does.

In later years, from around the time of Revolver, Paul McCartney was to be seen sporting a fine-looking fireglo-finish Rickenbacker 4001 bass (see "Hello Goodbye" video, where it was given a psychedelic paintjob). The use of this bass is not as well remembered, as The Beatles ceased touring not long after McCartney took delivery of it. Paul later used it quite extensively on the road with Wings, the paintjob removed and the bass sanded down to a natural finish.

The Beatles' influence - Length of Songs

The Beatles, along with several other artists such as Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd pushed the boundary for just how long a standard pop single could be, recording songs of up to 4 or 5 minutes, which for the time, was twice the length of the average pop single, and seemed gargantuan by most people's standards. However, by the end of the decade, 3-4 minute singles were quite common. This is generally accepted as being due to the influence of the Fab Four.

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