Nick Grizzle

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast . I'm your host , Nick Grizzle , joined for this episode by co-host Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers , and today we've got Beatlemania , with a lively roundtable discussion chock full of inspiring musical examples , all about arranging and performing the music of the Beatles on acoustic guitar . Like so many musicians of a certain generation , our guests started playing guitar in large part because of the Beatles . Laurence Juber has been playing Beatles tunes for 60 years and seriously arranging them for finger style guitar since the mid-1990s , after playing alongside Paul McCartney as a member of Wings . Guitarist , composer, and professor of jazz studies Mimi Fox taught herself to play guitar at 10 years old when her cousin gifted her a copy of Rubber Soul .

Nick Grizzle

Though perhaps best known for his klezmer , folk, and jazz playing , Tim Sparks was also galvanized by the Beatles in his youth . Each of our guests take a different approach to arranging , adapting , reharmonizing and reimagining these tunes . After you've listened to their conversation , I encourage you to check out the links in our show notes to learn more about them and hear even more of their music . You'll also find the link to support the Acoustic Guitar podcast on Patreon , that's patreon . com slash acousticguitar plus . Thanks for listening and chipping in if you can . Now I'll kick things over to Mimi Fox , who tells us about the first Beatles song she learned .

Mimi Fox

You know it's still in my brain . I could play it two ways . It would be . "I've just seen a face , which is the first song from the Rubber Soul album . It's still in my brain . I've just seen a face . I can't forget the time or place where we just met . Still in my brain , Exactly 50 plus years later . Still in my brain .

Mimi Fox

But I learned every song from that album . I remember when I worked out my own arrangement of the intro to Michelle I came up with and I was so excited when I was 10 and I had worked that out . You know , that just seemed . I remember I brought my guitar to school and I play that .

Mimi Fox

But actually a song that I recorded on my most recent album is you know , Laurence was talking about John's songwriting because I was so enamored with Paul and I had arranged so many of his pieces for solo guitar . But anyway , recently I recorded in my life and you know again , it's just so , you know , et cetera . So , yeah , and so to me that that's another song from the album that now I really appreciate . But anyway , yeah for sure , I've just seen a face . It will always be in my brain and that was the second song I learned . The first one will make Laurence and Tim , and hopefully all of you laugh was by another band lesser known from the British invasion , the animals , who I was also very fond of when I was 10 . So , anyway , that that concludes this portion . Tim , what about you ? What was your first one ?

Mimi Fox

Tim Sparks: Well me I don't know .

Tim Sparks

I enjoyed hearing all the Beatles tunes from the early 60s but then , you know , I was also listening to Hendrix and I guess the album that when I was really coming of age that pressed me the most , with Sergeant Pepper's , that album and in the white album I learned Rocky Raccoon .

Tim Sparks

That was when I learned to play . It's more like years later I came back to the Beatles and what I think about this whole Beatles thing now is you know , there's a famous saying by Dante , the Italian Renaissance or Italian medieval medieval poet , who said that what we call modern is what we have decided whether or not we want to keep, collectively as a civilization . And I think what's happened now is after , after that , those 60 years , the Beatles material stands up and it's kind of being appreciated in a different light . Because actually , you know , in the period right after the Beatles , in the 70s , 80s , you know people heard so much . Beatles are just kind of tired of it , you know . I mean , and when you heard Beatles bands they were just trying to dress up like the Beatles and sound exactly like them . But now there's a very interesting universe of people who are doing interpretations . It's very rich kind of quality , I think .

Laurence Juber

The dressing up thing we call boots and suits . It's interesting because Mimi did her arrangement of In my Life in the original key in A , but you've done it up the octave . When I went to arrange it and this was in the 80s when it was very close to John's death and I didn't think about doing it up the octave , I just it just felt dark and I ended up doing it , doing it in D and just placement , where you put the arrangement on the guitar makes a big difference to how it speaks . My choice is do I go to the original key ? Do I find a place to put it on guitar that is guitaristically satisfying ? Because that's a really important criteria for me .

Mimi Fox

Yeah , I mean for guitarists . Obviously for solo guitar it's a different world and obviously A and D give us the opportunity of using open strings . It's their familiar tonalities . I also play Blackbird in the original key because it just feels right and maybe somewhere in my musical memory you know , tim , you were talking about how the Beatles were really emblematic of the era that we were all living through , everything that we were going through , and so somewhere it's sort of like in a musical memory . It's stored in there in a certain way . So I learned the original arrangement of Blackbird . But then when I went to do my own , I put in a little plug for Acoustic Guitar Magazine . I actually did a session on Blackbird and you can find it online . It was a lot of fun to play it and teach it . But anyway , yeah , there's something nice about the original keys and there's something nice about exploring the different keys . It's all what we feel .

Laurence Juber

Yeah , I found that I couldn't work the melody into the Blackbird accompaniment because the accompaniment is so self-sufficient .

Mimi Fox

Wait til you hear my weird- ass version .

Laurence Juber

I've done is I do it DADGAD in the key of A , and then it all works out that way .

Laurence Juber

Tim Sparks: Nice I do it in Drop D . And going to Mimi's comment about having the open strings , I mean that's one of the advantages of using an alter tuning of some kind , whether it's a drop D or a DAG or whatever is that it does give you more flexibility in the bottom end . And because Paul's baselines can be so important in the texture of this stuff it's like I saw her standing there in DAG , DAG and D , because that way I can get when I go to the five chord , I have the open string . If you stick with the original key , you don't have that flexibility .

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

I wanted to maybe circle back a little bit to something that Lawrence said a little while ago about sort of all the layers in these songs . I mean , they not only have the really strong melodies , they not only have these genius chord progressions , but especially after the very early years , I mean they have so many counter melodies , instrumental interludes on other instruments they have even like the baselines are so melodic often . So I'm wondering , when you set out to do a song like that on one guitar you've got two hands how do you go about sort of making an impression of all of that , all those different parts which a lot of times they seem all seem so integral to the songs ?

Tim Sparks

Well , I'll jump in there , I'll show you what song I got . . There it is . So there's a kind of a just taking the melody of the song and coloring it in with some interesting jazz chords that are different from the original and give a different insight into the tune , a different feel . I particularly like the way the song in the melody has this E7 , sharp 9 . It's in the melody , so there's an example .

Mimi Fox

That's cool . That makes me think of this arrangement that I did of Daytripper on the baritone guitar . So I'm going to pull out my baritone for a sec .

Mimi Fox

I try to take these pieces and then think of , because they were so perfect as they were written and we were . You know , jeffrey , you were talking about the layers , all of the different things . So I try to imply the layers through a jazz lens sometimes and come up with different things . And then I come in now , right , so I've got that . But then when I come , so I see , and so I'm , I'm keep trying to keep that infectious groove going .

Mimi Fox

I picked a baritone , which then is much more similar to a bass , you know , and then , and then I'm playing the melody in octaves , which is a more of a jazz technique and , I think you know , kicks it off , and then when I come to that second part , when it modulates to A , you know , I go right into a jazz bass line , cause for me as a jazz , this bass line sort of sounds to me like it could be like all blues , and it's just such an infectious bass line . So anyway , so for me it's just sort of all connected , and then I get the harmonics in there and it's a very guitaristic kind of thing that you can do . So I like to use everything the guitar gives me to try to create that layering and imply it , uh , without having to have a whole band with me , which is kind of cool , and of course , having a strong rhythmic drive is very helpful for that .

Laurence Juber

So anyway , See , I do it in DADGAD in D , Because I like to keep the parts consistently going . You know whether it's two or sometimes three parts , but I love the counterpoint and I think part of it for me is just the challenge of making the bass line and the melody work together .

Nick Grizzle

If you had advice for someone making their own arrangement of a Beatles tune on solo guitar , what would you say is something you got to make sure you nail this , or start with this , or you know what would you say .

Tim Sparks

I'll jump in here . Often when people are trying to play guitar they think of chords . They start , say you think C , what you think of putting your finger on the root of the chord and making the chord . But a lot of the coolest stuff comes from starting from the melody and finding the chord . Going the other way , going down , and even if you don't know anything about theory , just exploring the different shapes and intuitively recognizing those can be helpful . I'd like to show you a little example . Recently this is a Lenny Breau arrangement of Hard Days Night , a sample of it . You know , lenny had this way of playing these shapes , this tritone kind of combination for a seventh chord like that is A and then this is D7 . So I took some of that and I did this arrangement of so that's full of these chord shapes , that instead of having a bass of the chord that names the note , like here , instead of C7 , I'm making a voicing that has the seventh in the bass .

Nick Grizzle

There's one way to look at it Laurence . How about you ? What would you say is something you have to really pay attention to ?

Laurence Juber

Well , you have to start with the melody , because without the tune you don't have a tune . I mean , it's the melody , even if you change the articulation of it . I think the melody is the place to start , and I just look to the melody , I look to the bass line and then I try and find a place where the voice works . And it's not always easy with Beatles songs because especially when you get into the middle period , for example with Strawberry Fields , it's in the cracks . I mean it's between A and B flat , because they slowed one version down and sped up the other one and they met in the middle , and so when I went to arrange it I just couldn't find a place that it would fit , until I realized that DADGAD that that the E flat major 7 chord , which of course you can't do in standard tuning in that voicing , and then everything fell into place . But there's the intro , there's that seventh , actually it's a ninth voicing over D . I mean it's a G9 over D .

Tim Sparks

And the timbre is nice . It's like a cello kind of sound , exactly .

Laurence Juber

It puts it in and that's really . I mean , that's pretty close to the original key . It's a little higher , but it brings back . It resonates in the same way as the record does , and that's not always necessary or appropriate , but in this particular case it was the only way that I could find to arrange the song . That was really true to my experience of the song and I tend to favor lower register stuff . I just like the voice of the guitar when it's in that kind of Tim Sparks: what I like about your arrangements DADGAD is in DADGAD they don't sound like DADGAD .

Laurence Juber

Laurence Juber: Well , thank you , and that's really because I'm applying my musical understanding to it , that I'm not just DADGAD as as a drone tuning , I'm just using it as another standard tuning and just finding where the notes are and not being bound by chord shapes . You know , I create my own whatever I need to , or look over and kind of . You know oh that's how he does that .

Tim Sparks

So Segovia said to make a successful solo guitar arrangement of a piece that came from another setting was it should sound better than the original it was based on .

Nick Grizzle

That's tough to do , especially with these tunes , you know .

Laurence Juber

But that's a challenge , is how do you make the arrangement compelling for the audience ?

Mimi Fox

I was going to say to me . I try to put my own personal stamp on it , honor the beauty of the melody . I mean , one thing we haven't talked about and it's probably the best compliment I can get from a reviewer critic is if someone will say that you play lyrically . And I think about the lyrics to the tunes and I try to put that into what I am creating . So , for example , with she's Leaving Home , you know . So again , I'm trying to take the beauty of the melody and really be expressive with it and almost as if I'm singing the lyrics . And thank God for everyone that I'm not actually singing the lyrics , because what I lack vocally I try to make up for instrumentally and so . But then there are times like I was thinking about . And then , jeffrey , this came to come back to what you were saying about the layering , because in this case I'm playing the cello part on the guitar and combining all of the parts and just trying to make it very musical . But honor the lyrics and the intent .

Mimi Fox

Yeah , sometimes the song just is what it is and it doesn't need to . In this case it's a little bit of reharmonization as I get going and I have more of a classical kind of technique that I was using on it . Sometimes I try to really reharmonize something and still keep the lyrics in mind , like Blackbird , so that I will have and then the last verse , etc . So I'm hearing the beauty of the melody , but I'm trying . You know , paul sings it and plays it and it's perfect as what it is . But for me , as a composer and a player , I try to find , you know , obviously the harm is very reharmonized , but the melody is always there . To me the melody is sacred . So that's a whole different approach , because there is no way to take what Paul did , like I said , it's a perfect picture . So I'm trying to create another picture using what he wrote as the jumping off point .

Laurence Juber

Yeah , by comparison . I mean my arrangement of Blackbird is again , I'm in DADGAD in the key of A . My benchmark was actually not Paul's version of it . I used to play that with Kenny Rankin and Kenny's voice I mean it sang like he had a French horn in his throat . So and I think it's important , not just the lyric but the tone of the melody , kind of how the melody sits on the guitar and how vocal it can be on the guitar Because the voice of the instrument is so important . But I also I mean Tim's point about simplicity and you don't have to put a lot in the arrangement if you can keep things simple . You know it's such a beautiful melody . I chose not to try and reproduce what the Beatles did , but just did my own approach to that one .

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

We're talking lots about the melody here and obviously these songs have such strong melodies . But there's also a lot of songs where , because they were very into such big vocal arrangements you know choral kind of arrangements Sometimes it's almost hard to tell what the melody is . I mean , and the impression of the original recording is , like you know , it's multiple voices and then so I'm wondering in cases like that , do you ever try to I don't know somehow suggest that quality of a bunch of voices in harmony on the guitar ?

Mimi Fox

Yeah , I mean , I did that on the little snippet I played of she's Leaving Home . That is actually implying it . There are parts of it played out where the melody is on top , but it's also , you know , it's also all there . So if I'm coming up here , so there's got a counterpoint going on .

Laurence Juber

that's implying different , you know , the different voices , the actual vocal thing , and yeah , I mean you can do it like if I needed someone , I mean just with block harmonies too . Where it gets tricky is when you've got counterpoint going on with this harmony counterpoint but you've also got the melody as a separate thing .

Tim Sparks

One thing about the arrangement . Now there are tunes that have such a signature riff built into them , like Day Tripper right , I mean , you can't do a solo version of that tune without putting that bass line into it , you know . But a lot of songs less is more can be that can also work because , like Laurence said , if you have the melody and you really phrase that , you don't have to have a really busy arrangement to have something that really works for the listener .

Tim Sparks

I recently did an arrangement for a show of Paul McCartney tune . I based it on Sergio Mendes' Brazil 66 arrangement .

Nick Grizzle

That's the end of part one . Tune in to part two to learn more about this arrangement , our guest's varied approaches to rhythm and groove , and much more . The Acoustic Guitar podcast is brought to you by the team at Acoustic Guitar Magazine . I'm your host , nick Grizzle , joined for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rogers . The Acoustic Guitar podcast is directed and edited by Joey Lusterman . Tanya Gonzalez is our producer . Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal broi . Intro music for this episode is performed by Laurence Juber . If you enjoy this podcast and want to support us , please visit our Patreon page at patreon . com slash acoustic guitar plus or find the link in the show notes for this episode . As a supporter , you'll have access to exclusive bonus episodes , along with other special perks and if you're already a patron . Thank you so much for your support .