The word “chromatic” comes from the Greek noun χρῶμα (khrṓma), which means “complexion” or “color”. For a musician chromatic means the notes, or tones, that lie outside the key signature of a song. In layman’s terms, you can think of playing a tune on the white keys of a...

Another musical device that McCartney and The Beatles draws upon in his compositions is the concept of modality. Modality or modalism involves music that is based on a scale formed from a different set of intervals (the distances between notes) on a normal Western major scale. You know the...

In part one we looked at the art of the interrupted or “deceptive” cadence in The Beatles with the examples of I Will (1968) and Here, There and Everywhere (1966). If you recall, an interrupted cadence involves taking the listener on a musical detour – we expect to arrive...

As I mention in Volume Two of Paul McCartney After The Beatles: A Musical Appreciation, the chord of the flattened sixth represents a daring excursion within a song. The chord of the flattened sixth is a true imposter chord. It is not a part of the song’s key centre....

In Volume Two of Paul McCartney After The Beatles: A Musical Appreciation I quoted Clive James on McCartney’s songwriting. Here is what he has to say: The key phrase is “he has the precious knack of making the unexpected sound inevitable”. But what does this mean in practice? We...

Diminshed, like augmented chords, have their own particular flavour. If we could describe the sound of diminished in a single word, we might use a word such as “astringent”. Not quite jarring, but definitely a slightly “edgy” sound. So let’s start off by identifying what diminished chords sound like....

In Volume Two of Paul McCartney After the Beatles: A Musical Appreciation I discuss how McCartney first came across the musical oddity of the augmented chord while listening to the Buddy Holly track Raining In My Heart (1958). It can be heard at 0:03 in the song and then...

My books set out to prove how McCartney’s musical imagination consitently pushes the composer outside the norms of three-minute pop song. This been facilitatated by the input of number of skilled orchestrators and arrangers. Although the oboe is a classically-based instrument that is on the periphery of pop music,...

A little bit of music theory isn’t as scary as you might think. Yes, McCartney does it all by ear (he doesn’t read music), but that doesn’t mean we have to close all doors on music theory. As Richard Dawkins has argued, understanding how a rainbow is formed doesn’t...