Occasional Observations

I love it when I find an article that brings together multiple of my favorite topics.  So when I saw this article on the Noise Addicts blog about a mathematician who used numerical analysis to finally solve a problem plagueing the music world about a Beatles song;  well, I just had to publish it!

This first chord that starts A Hard Day’s Night is one of the most recognizable and famous opening chords in rock & roll. It’s played by George Harrison on his 12 string Rickenbacker.

The other reason that it’s famous is because for 40 years nobody knew for sure what it was. Many guitar players have tried in vain to recreate the sound but have usually failed miserably.

Well, someone has figured it out definitively – not a musician, but a Dalhousie mathematician.

Four years ago, Jason Brown was inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary – so much so that he decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to break the sound into distinct frequencies using computer software to find out exactly which notes were on the record.

What he found was interesting: the frequencies he found didn’t match theinstruments on the song. George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, John Lennon played his 6 string, Paul had his bass – none of them quite fit what he found. He then realized what was missing – the 5th Beatle. George Martin was also on the record, playing a piano in the opening chord, which accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

“I started playing guitar because I heard a Beatles record—that was it for my piano lessons,” says Brown. “I had tried to play the first chord of the song many takes over the years. It sounds outlandish that someone could create a mystery around a chord from a time where artists used such simple recording techniques. It’s quite remarkable.”

The Beatles producer added a piano chord that included an F note, impossible to play with the other notes on the guitar. The resulting chord was completely different than anything found in songbooks and scores for the song, which is one reason why Dr. Brown’s findings garnered international attention. He laughs that he may be the only mathematician ever to be published in Guitar Player magazine.

The original PDF published by Dr. Brown is online here.

I’ve been listening to Pandora for a while now.  It builds “stations” for you to listen to based on your favorite types of music.  Start simple by entering an artist or a song that you like.  Pandora plays music that is similar to your choice.  As the songs play, guide Pandora by giving the music a thumbs-up or -down.

Pandora is driven by The Music Genome Project which categorizes music not just by genre, but by techical attributes such as “harmony and rhythm, instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony.” Like a radio station, you don’t get to pick what song plays next, but the more feedback you give to Pandora, the more your station(s) play what you like.

Pandora is a great way to discover new music.  I’ve discovered many artists and bought (yes, for real $$) their music to add to my collection. You might think the music labels would be eager to see Pandora (and others like it) succeed.  On the contrary, the Copyright Royalty Board, backed by the RIAA is raising the royalties on Internet music stations like Pandora.  This year, Pandora will pay 70% of it’s revenue in music royalties.  Higher rates can have no effect but putting Internet radio out of business.  Traditional broadcast radio (owned by corporations with huge lobbying budgets) pay NO royalties; XM and Sirius pay about 2% of their revenue to royalties.

Check Pandora out.  If you like it, write your representatives in Washington and tell them that you want to save Internet radio.  Representative Howard L. Berman, a Democrat from California, is attempting to work up a deal between Pandora and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and labels, but so far there is no movement on the issue.