At the same time, my sister Anna was getting engaged to her soon-to-be-husband Brian Sleeman. Besides being one of the only people with whom I would entrust Anna's well-being, Brian also happened to have wonderful taste in music. He approached me after hearing "Julia" and asked me to do a series of these arrangements for the dinner music at the wedding. The unique challenge of getting the Beatles music to remain interesting without the benefit of brilliant lyrics had a certain element of danger that intrigued me. I agreed to do it.
I do not know that I have succeeded, but I have done my best. This exercise has stretched the limits of my limited technique on the keyboard and my ability to create on demand. I am, to this day, sitting on a half-finished arrangement of "Strawberry Fields Forever" that I cannot record because I am not able to play it. At the same time, I have also become aware of some hidden treasures of my musical self, and for this I am grateful.
As much of a challenge as this has been for me, and as rewarding as it has been, I remind myself that it celebrates something much larger and certainly of more lasting importance. Anna and Brian's marriage will undoubtedly bring endless challenges and rewards to them both. I hope that the music of their life together pours out into the world for years to come
-- Charles Parker
I was done with these arrangements and looking for the original recording of "Yesterday", when I saw the track listing for "Please Please Me". "Do You Want to Know a Secret" caught my eye and I started humming it to myself. To make a long story short, after playing with it for a few minutes, I found that it worked so perfectly well as a jazz ballad that I had to do it.
I particularly like the brief modulation to C minor at the lyrics "I'm in love with you" followed by the falsetto "oohs". The gentle sadness of this part seems very appropriate to me, as some of the best loves are those that are gentle and sad. It's difficult to explain how this true is in words, but I think I captured a bit of it musically in the last four bars.
This arrangement nearly wrote itself. Though it has nearly the same shape as "Something", this is only because this is the shape of the original tune. As a pure transcription, this tune might work better than any of the others: There are enough layers in the music that there is always something interesting and different to play each time through.
One of the themes of this little exercise for me has been finding ways other than the Beatles' lyrics to keep the same melodic phrase engaging when played two or three times. Among these are changes in style, register, articulation, tempo, harmony, and dynamic level. It is this last one that I focus on here. The dynamic peak in the recorded version is the bridge - "You're asking me will my love grow / I don't know, I don't know. / You stick around now, it may show / I don't know, I don't know." Given the lyrics, I thought it might be nice to soften it a little at the bridge and build around that.
Notice my note for note transcription of George's solo. Certainly it's not the greatest guitar playing in the world, but it's interesting to hear it realized on another instrument.
This one has a lot of the same problems for me that yesterday did. It would be such an easy tune to play as a ballad in a jazz combo, but to do so as a solo piano arrangment feels forced and unnecessary - "like a clean joke told by an assistant pastor" to quote Jeffery Essman. A friend who has been listening to these commented that I spend a lot of time in the middle of the keyboard. I couldn't give them a satisfactory answer as to why I do this, so this arrangement is my response.
I always like the quality that eighth notes at the top of the keyboard have - very sweet and music box-like. As this is one of the sweetest of all Beatles songs, it seemed very appropriate. Unfortunately, I'm not that great at playing metronomic eighth notes, so there are a few hiccups in time and it speeds up throughout, which might be good but I can't decide. I leave it to you.
I've been struggling with this one for a while. In the end, I think this is more a product of frustration than anything else. With a little reach, this can be connected to the topic of the song, which is really a kind of frustration when you think about it: Sometimes one just has to take what one is given and move on. In this case, I think the harmonic richness of the song is able to overcome any lack of clarity in the arrangement.
This one was kind of spur of the moment. I was playing with it before a gig one day and played the little thing at the beginning almost by accident. Then I kept going and noticed you could rock it out in the middle, and that the other section could be played like a Chopin nocturne. With all that going on, I couldn't pass it up.
The lyrics to this song are brilliant. Lennon takes something as large as the passage of time and the moments of one's life and uses it as a jumping off point for something as intimate as a love song. To me, that's what this song is about: The mixture of the grandiose with the tiny and personal. I tried to capture a little bit of that here. The little interlude I play at the beginning and middle of the song is inspired by the song "Walking on the Air" from the animated film The Snowman.
My arrangement doesn't really suit the lyrics very well, but I think the music is asking for it. I'm going for the big Bolero-style crescendo and then bringing it way down for the tiny Mozart ending.
I think I heard one time that there were two interpretations of the lyrics - one where everything works out for the girl who is running away and one where she ends up homeless and alone. I was playing with different ideas and decided to explore the latter interpretation in the last verse/chorus. I especially like the last four bars. I think they sound like someone walking down an empty street at night.
The first arrangement. There was a lot of confusion going on in my life when I wrote this, and I had a friend was going through a confusing time as well. She described in a letter how she was feeling, and this is the music that came out of that letter. Julia has always been my favorite Beatles' song. As wonderful as it is as a little meditation on guitar, I think it works equally well given more shape and thicker harmonies.