Acoustic Guitar
Acoustic Guitar
Fab Four on Six Strings | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast Spotlight on the Beatles
Like so many musicians of a certain generation, our guests started playing guitar in large part because of the Beatles. Today, Laurence Juber, Mimi Fox, and Tim Sparks each take a different approach to arranging, adapting, reharmonizing, and reimagining these tunes. Tune in for a lively roundtable discussion, chock-full of inspiring musical examples, all about playing the music of the Beatles on acoustic guitar.
Additional resources:
- Access Part 2 of this episode on Patreon.
- Visit Laurence Juber's website. Watch his Acoustic Guitar Sessions performance and pick up a copy of DADGAD Guitar Essentials to take an in-depth lesson with the fingerstyle master.
- Visit Mimi Fox's website. Watch her perform “Blackbird” for Acoustic Guitar Sessions.
- Visit Tim Spark's website. Learn how he arranged composer John Zorn’s avant-jazz project Masada for acoustic guitar.
This episode is hosted by Nick Grizzle and Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, produced by Tanya Gonzalez, and directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi.
The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is produced by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine, including:
- Publisher: Lyzy Lusterman
- Editorial Director: Adam Perlmutter
- Managing Editor: Kevin Owens
- Creative Director: Joey Lusterman
- Digital Content Director: Stephanie Campos Dal Broi
- Digital Content Manager: Nick Grizzle
- Marketing Services Manager: Tanya Gonzalez
Special thanks to our listeners who support the show on Patreon.
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.
