Notes on "Here, There, and Everywhere" (HTAE)

Notes on "Here, There, and Everywhere" (HTAE)

KEY G Major

METER 4/4

FORM Intro -> Verse -> Verse -> Bridge -> Verse -> Bridge -> Verse -> Outro (w/complete ending)

GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST

Style and Form

- This song is remarkable for its bittersweet tune, clever harmonic scheme, and understated arrangement. It is a landmark triumph of the soft rock genre. No kidding.

- It opens with one of those (relatively rare-for-the-Beatles) ad-lib introductions, but the form is otherwise the classic two-bridge model, with only one verse intervening and no instrumental break.

- The lyrics make a rather John-like structural use of the title words.

Melody and Harmony

- The tune uses a wide variety of rhythmic values to convey an impression of the naturally spoken word. It also manages to maintain a nicely fluid melodic feeling through its mix of stepwise motion, long leaps, rhetorical dwellings on a single note, and some triadic outlines.

- The home key of the song is G Major, but both its Relative minor (e), as well as the parallel minor (g) and its Relative Major (B flat) make important appearances. Both Paul and John were fond of these types of key schemes, and there are many songs we've looked at that use one or more of these tricks. This is a particularly rare example in which ALL of them are used in the same song. Granted, in the formal context of the 2-3 minute song, there is relatively little room for the full-fledged modulations you'll find in larger forms, but this in no way precludes a more furtive and no less restless exploration of alternate tonal centers.

- The opening measures of the verse make use of a jazzy chord stream of the sort that harkens all the way back to early numbers like "Ask Me Why" and "P.S. I Love You."

Arrangement

- The arrangement subscribes to the aesthetic of "less-is-more," with restrained yet carefully placed details in all departments. This accomplishment is made to seem ironic and all the more impressive given the extent to which Lewisohn reports they fussed over the arrangement in the overdub stage. Even without access to the bootlegs of so-called Monitor Mixes, you can get a feel for this by simply listening to each of the stereo tracks on the official release one at a time.

- Paul's lead vocal was recorded on the low and slow side in order to make it sound higher and much wispier on playback. Both this lead vocal and the lead guitar licks of the bridge are selectively double-tracked. You'll note places in which the second track either drops out or provides a harmonization with the primary track. Enjoy discovering these for yourself!

- The backing vocals provide their much talked about, deceptively simple block harmonies on the phoneme, "ooooh." The slight changes they make in their articulation of the chord changes in measures 5 and 6 of the verses make these backing vocals sound somewhat instrumental. And in the instrumental area we have a subtle patterning of the guitar chords, and a a bunch of just-right gentle touches in just the right places from Ringo. Did you ever notice, BTW, the addition of finger snaps in the final verse and the outro?

SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH

Intro

- The intro gives away, in its first two chords, the secret of what will soon unfold as the songs characterizing harmonic restlessness. The B-flat chord provides a pleasantly surprising cross relation against the B-natural of the preceding G Major chord, and also foreshadows the later flirtation with this "relative Major of the parallel minor" that will appear in the bridges: 

        |G              |B-flat         |a              |D              |
G:       I               flat-III        ii              V

- There's an interesting comparison to be made between this intro and the one from the much earlier

Verse

- The verse is a fairly traditional eight measures long, though its phraseology contains some subtle internal patterning. The overall structure is 2+2+4, "AAB," but the B section is itself subdivided into its own "AAB," though the durations are halved down to 1+1+2.

- The harmonic structure of the verse opens up to V after flirting in the second half with the relative minor, e. According the "stricter" theorists who argue that the home key isn't officially established until both I and V have been exposed, this verse doesn't establish G Major until its very ending: 

        |G              |       C       |G              |       C       |
G:       I                      IV       I                      IV
                                                        e:      VI
        |f#     B       |f#     B       |e      a       |C      D       |
         ii*    V        ii*    V        i
                                      G: vi     ii       IV     V

- The chord on *f# in measures 5 and 6 is a so-called "half-diminshed" 7th; i.e. the triad itself is diminished (F#-A-C) but the 7th (E) is minor. I "grep" in vain, through all the preceding notes in this series, to find another use in a Beatles song of this somewhat jazzy chord type.

Bridge

- The bridge is 6 measures long, strictly speaking, but the phrasing of the melody and words elides right into the start of the next verse based on a repetition of the second part of the first phrase, and this obscures your perception of where the actual section boundary is: 

        |Bb     g       |c      D       |g              |c      D       |
B-flat:  I      vi       ii
                       g:iv     V        i               iv     V

- Stepping into B-flat at the beginning of this section is, indeed, a "deceptive cadence", and feels at first as though a fourth dimension opens up. The slip into g minor delivers a melancholy twinge, yet the deceptive cadence back into the parallel Major at the start of the next verse is akin to the feeling you get on a day when the sun comes out in late afternoon, just when you've resigned yourself to the day being a cloudy one. Paul evidently was proud of this trick, as he would play it over again, almost identically in the "Two of Us."

Outro

- The outro is built on top of the first half of the verse section, but this last time Paul provides a different melody for it, one that is set to the words of the title. This special effect lends a sense of closure and summarization to this outro. We've seen something very similar to this in "Michelle," even though the latter song ends with a fadeout.

- The outro finishes off the song harmonically on a "Plagal" cadence; i.e. I-IV-I. Don't underestimate the extent to which the absence of the V chord at this juncture allows the music to end on a more laid-back note than it would with the V chord. Try the alternative out in your head if you don't believe me.

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

- It seems like the number of resonances spotted in this song to other McCartney efforts means this one is either unusually pregnant with resonances, or else we've been writing this series too long :-)

- In any event, I save my favorite free association, this time, for last. Now, this song is characterized by the following gesture that opens each verse: a declarative word, followed by a pause, and then rhythmically active ascent in the tune, as in -- "Here (pause) making each day of the year ..."

- An informal page-through of the collected lyrics of Mr. McCartney reveals the following list of other examples of the same, or at least similar, gesture. Granted, the grammar of all of these is not the same, nor is the melodic contour of the consequent phrase, but still, I think these are interesting, and some of them are unmistakable:

Regards,
Alan ([email protected])

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"Do you think I haven't noticed ... do you think I wasn't aware of the drift?" 112894#96
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Copyright (c) 1994 by Alan W. Pollack
All Rights Reserved
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