Hmmm. I don't know, Crowley really isn't my sort of thing.
Lady Madonna has a 8th note bass line that crawls around in A major in octaves. The right hand is a playful statement of the tune. (Concerning the intro). Practice the hands separately one at a time, then put them together, a measure at a time if necessary.
It isn't really hard but if a bit of walking counterpoint in the left hand is new to you, this is a good way to get started on that kind of figure.
Yes, Let it Be came in with the end of the '60s and the birth of the early seventies eight note ballad, (Barry Manilow, the Carpenters, REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Peter Allen, so many others..... )where the right hand plays a sort of "We've Only Just Begun" figure with the left hand sitting on a whole note (in octaves again) one to a bar, mostly. You don't have to keep track of as much! The left hand is relatively inactive.
Again, Lady Madonna is equally active in the two hands.
And all during these 1968 sessions, what WAS John Lennon REALLY doing?
Why, inventing the iPod, of course! Not since Al Gore!
grouper.com/video/MediaDetails.aspx?id=1550538&ml=o%3d7%26fk%3dbeatles%2b%26fx%3d&Doc, the piano bass line and melody of "Lady Madonna" is a PLAGIARISM of the 1956 British swing hit "
Bad Penny Blues."
"Let it Be" is a PLAGIARISM of the Bercaud 1950s hit "
Let It Be Me."
during these 1968 sessions, what WAS John Lennon REALLY doing?Was John Lennon even alive? What was Charlie Brill doing?
From an amazon review of an album featruing Humpherey Lyttleton:
"I'm no jazz fan anymore than John Lennon was-yet he once named Bad Penny Blues as the only jazz he could listen to.In 1968 this 1956 instrumental was the main influence behind Lady Madonna.
Me I like instrumentals from the Golden Age-Duane Eddy,Sandy Nelson,Link Wray,the Ventures etc. And Bad Penny Blues is to my mind the greatest instrumental EVER.
Hrearing this at the time you never wanted it to end-that beautifully dry percussion sound,the muted trumpet,the piano riff-you could fall into it.
The disc was produced by somebody called Dennis Lansdowne who had a studio and it was engineered by a young Joe Meek a few years away from his own take on pop music.In his biog it mentions things he added to it which were not to the jazzmans liking but it went out anyway as it was thank God
Lyttleton is a British institution-a very clever guy who was once a cartoonist and managed to keep the same wife.Makes a guy feel inferior but there you go.
He should have been knighted long ago"
Thank you for the info, and the title. I have listened, and I hear the aural similarities that you hear.
I see a big difference betwen note for note plagiarism and influences.
We can avoid this type of exchange by reading this:
forums.radioblogclub.com/viewtopic.php?t=8959This statement:
Plagiarism is illegal and wrong, and as well as that I hate people who do it. This indicates that they don't have an adequate of music knowledge to produce their own music. Lacks of talent. really gets me......
Do they have any idea that in classical music, the study of it, we observe there were "schools of competition", meaning time periods and localities, that "breed" certain kinds of music? Not always "schools" in a literal since, but merely streams of musical thought flowing togeher through many musicians during a particular epoch.
These music schools thru the centuries have tended to "inculcate" stylistic leadings.
i.e. Haydn, early Mozart, and very early Beethoven, while still showing palpable differences, also show marked stylistic simlarites, statements, chord progessions?
Also, some Schubert, Mendelsohn and early Schumann pieces as well...as wel as their long forgotten contemporaries, which are many, like Nicolas Gade and others, who wrote with many a similar cadence, scoring style, motivic design?
Bach imitated; but soon Bach became more imitated himself! Scarletti wrote at the same time, but lived far away in Spain, free fro the shackles of German conventions, and in a hospitable situation for creativity, and his works are vastly different from Bach's.
My point is that as musicians, we are influenced by what we have heard. Being influenced is not a crime. Point 1.
Point 2---is we listened to nothing, we would never write. All music composition builds upon the previous generation of music. A composer living in 1840 has no exposure or knowledge of what kinds of atonal/12tone music cam about in the 1920-40's.
No architect builds a house without studying floor plans and houses of all periods up to his;
no dress maker can design a dress without understanding the couture of the times leading up to his; no corporate exec can design a corporation without training and exposure to centuries of business evolution.
This is WHY we have schools.
And this person who says
Plagiarism is illegal and wrong, and as well as that I hate people who do it. This indicates that they don't have an adequate of music knowledge to produce their own music. Lacks of talent. needs to go to music school for about 4 years and find out what goes into musical composition. There are techniques, there are modalities. There are styles and examples.
There are "standard" concepts in music, just as there are "standard" concepts, for example, as far as what it is that goes into building a car. Cars all have doors, a windshield, brakes,
and a steering wheel! Is this plagiarism? No! Thay are standardized elements.
Boogie Woogie is a musical form with standardized elements.
Without common traits by which to identify a style, there is no style to be named!
Most boogie woogie is an "8 to the bar", swinging music with a walking bass line that crawls the arpeggios in a twelve bar bluse pattern.
Now, as swing music began to wane and rock and roll gained in popularity, the newer music tended to be straight eight notes, even.
Nothig wrong with sharing bass lines.
One thing you learn, for exampl, about a form like disco, is there are like 5 or 6 mainstream drum patterns, and 5 or 6 bass line TYPES always used in that music from '77-80.
There are variations, and rock disco since then took it to new place, but late 70's disco is all about a handful of well established, often used patterns.
So was the bossa nova.
So was big band swing.
So was ragtime.
So were sambas.
So were beguines.
Mambos.
Waltzes
Hula songs.
Broadway two-beats.
Country western two-beats.
Rockabilly shuffles.
70's quarter note ballads.
Straight ahead walking four bop.
Jazz waltzes.
So were marches, for crimeys sake, everything John Phillip Sousa wrote sounds like every other march in the world from that time.
Plus the ULTIMATE stupidity of this statement:
Plagiarism is illegal and wrong, and as well as that I hate people who do it. This indicates that they don't have an adequate of music knowledge to produce their own music. Lacks of talent. Lord, give me strength.
Do they know, that for instance, the exact melody and chords for a popular 40's song called "Tonight we Love" is a verbatum quote from Tscahikovsky's First Piano Concerto.
"Full Moon and Empty Arms" is from a Rachmaninoff piano concerto.
From the same concerto comes the tune for Eric Carmen's 'All By Myself', and from the 2nd Rachmaninoff symphony comes Carmen's tune for "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again."
But this person says that "all plagiarism is a crime.", and that people only do it when they have a lack of talent.
This reveals a naiveté about music, AFAIAC.
Well, then, this Eric person should go to jall! I hate him, cause he's a copywrite infringer!
He lacks of talent, and has no abilities sufficient to produce his own. I hate him. Those songs should be illegal on the radio then.Well, then, Betsy, did you know that Gounod, a French composer, took a Bach clavier piece and used the chords and exact accompaniment to write his own version of Ave Maria? Note for note? Huh? Do you know what a clavier is, hon?
Well, then, Gounod is also a perpitraitor and must pay. Does Bach know about this outrage?Fine. Bach is dead, honey. And so is Gounod. BIDGID. lol
You can reuse public domain music any way you wish at any time. There is no crime possible. It belongs to the public. And this is a VERY good thing. For al music to have copyright protection from antiquity, would ruin the world of music for the common people.
Eventually, you wouldn't be able to play Three Blind Mice or Amazing Grace in the privacy of your own home without a permit. How long before they say, "Hey , we own all 12 notes of the scale, you can't play music at all without paying a music fee to the Ministry of Vibration...."
Hey, it's a slippery slope folks. The powers that be have declared a moratorium on allowing anything to slip into Public Domain. It used to be 75 years, I think. But they have frozen it at 1924. If it is written then or afterwards, there is currently no date set to turn the status over.
The music should be owned by the owner for a reasonable period of their life so that they may reap the benefits of it. Then, it should pass on to the public domain, for the public to own it, and enjoy it freely. Otherwise, lawyers, record companies, and probably very untalented grand-chldren, who had NOTHING to do with writing the music in the first place, continue to profit on work in which they played no role. And why should they continue to protect it? Protect it from what? Protect themselves from loss of royalty income. Are Bach's GGGGGgrandchildren receiving $$$ for the B minor Mass? No. We'd never hear it again if churches had to pay exorbitant fees to mount this time honored classic.
I don't even believe George Harrison committed deliberate plagiarism. Yes, the ii7-V7 cadence with the hook (in his song where the back up girls echo him, in the Chiffons song it's the "He's So Fine" part, I think those 4 bar turn-arounds are remarkably similar, and no doubt a subconscious quote on Harrison's part. The other chord changes and melody are totally different, sorry. How many Carole King songs have this same ii7-V7 progression? Shall I find them and put them up?
Or is it the back ground echo? How many on like manner are there?
Let it Be and Let it Be Me
C G/B Am F6 C/G Gsus G F C/E Dm7 C
C G/B Am Em/G F6 C/E Dm7 G C
Chords pattern is similar.
Same as Theme from Billy Jack, and Beethoven's E major piano sonata 1st movement, though in E major, its the same progresion by function.
Or the intro measure to "Goodbye Yellow Brick road"
F C/E Dm Fmaj7/C Bb C11 C7 F
which, transposed to "C" major, gives us:
C G/B Am Cmaj7/G F G11 G7 C
I-V/vii-vi-I/V-IV-Vsus11-V7-I
or
1, 5 over 7, 6 minor, 1 over 5, 4, 5sus11-V-I
The melody of Let it Be me starts on the third tone of the scale, goes to the fifth tone, and wlks down to the second tone diatonically.
The first part of Let it Be starts on the fifth (When I find my), passes thru the 6(self) and the 2(in), G again, (times of) goes up to the tonic above(troub), upper neighbor on the second (le), appogiaturas the 2nd (d)(moth) to the third (E)(-er Mar) and comes back down(D) (ry-comes) to the tonic (C)(to me).
There is no resemblance.
Let it be is largely sung on the C major pentatonic scale.
If Let it Be Me were pitched in C, it is a C major diatonic based tune, there are plenty of leading tones (the seventh) in the melody, which Let it Be always avoids. No B naturals in the tune! NONE!
There is precious little significant compositional similarity to that song.
Don't make me go ballistic and actually write a screed! ;D
Hey, I love you all, but don't try to pass one like this over on me! There is no real palpable plagiarism in any of these cases. Surface similarities ( a few), stylistic devices in common.
I have to say, that what is so glaringly similar between Bad Penny Blues and Lady Madonna, is the walking bass in the piano left hand, and the right hand does a similar riff to Madonna, i.e. blues thirds with grace notes in a syncopated pattern, improvised........and the drum
pattern, a sort of two beat, is common place in this kind of music, tough the mic-ing of it and the general feel very much evoke Lady Madonna (or vice versa)
Hey, maybe Bill PLAYED piano on the track?............
Even so, I am sure we can pull out some New Orleans stuff with very similar elements.
Again, the actually melody and chord progression is not the same. You are relating the blue notes and a lot of seventh chords between the two songs. Again, I can find 10,000 songs of like elements.
Lady Madonna is also at a faster click.
Did you actually mean your inference, or did I just take the bait? lol
All kindness intended------but tie idea of plagiarism can't fly.
Even the original four Beatles (oops) admitted that Buddy Holly and Elvis contributed INFLUENCES to their writing.
Look, they TEACH young rock musicians in music schools now how to write a 12 bar blues, how to write a rock a billy song, how to write a British Invasion song..........
They teach young architects how to design a tower, or a parking lot, or a motel.
Some things are givens, are standardized.
For plagiarism to be an issue, it is not up to the ears of musicians who haven't listened broadly enough to learn this phenomenon and recognize it for what it is. It is a legal issue, and can only be determined by appointed experts who can rationally determine to what degree specific elements have been "pirated", i.e., the sequence of melody notes (minus riffs and ornaments) and the precise chord progression, also the lyrics.
You can not copy-write an accompaniment figure, only the tune that rides it and the sequence of harmonies if the melody matches. You can not copy-write a chord progression on it's own merit either, or EVERY COMPOSER WHO EVER LIVED WOULD HAVE TO GO TO PRISON FOR DOING IT. The progression alone is not enough, it's the essential tune. Think how many jazz standards are re-harmonized broadway songs? I have heard "My Favorite Things" done with substitute chords from start to finish on a recent jazz vocal record, and I am sure the gal had to pay royalties for it. Tune and words. That is a song.
This is at the heart of my argument with your claim. You are pointing at the accompaniment.
I am pointing at the song itself. Lady Madonna exists as a song in intellectual property, played
in any style one chooses. It could be played as unrecognizable to you, but as long as word and tune flow as the copywritten example does, then there is a violation if royalties aren't paid or permission granted.
See my point? You are listening for the wrong things, legally speaking.