Error in This is your brain on music regarding "Yesterday"?

August 31, 2011 10:06 PM

Does "Yesterday" by the Beatles really contain a 7/4 measure, as Daniel Levitin claims in "This is your Brain on Music"?

In This is Your Brain On Music, Daniel Levitin makes the following claim:

In "Yesterday," the main melodic phrase is 7 measures long; the Beatles surprise us by violating one of the most basic assumptions of popular music, the 4- or 8-measure phrase unit (nearly all rock/pop songs have musical ideas that are organized into phrases of those lengths)."

The book has a website that even has a sample of the song (look through the page 110 entries here.

However, I cannot for the life of me hear the 7/4. It sounds like a standard 4/4.

I downloaded the score and could find no bar that had 7/4.

I did some digging, and found this entry by Alan W. Pollack discussing the song

Here's the relevant part:

The verse is an unusual seven measure in length and divides up into three phrases which form a 3 + 2 + 2 poetic meter:

Am I missing something here? I've watched some live recordings of the beatles performing the song, and I can hear no bar with seven measures.

Did Alan Pollack make an error, which was carelessly propagated by Daniel Levitin? Or am I missing something here?

posted by spacediver to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Best answer: I think you are confusing measures (of which there are 7 in the phrase) with beats (of which there are 4 per measure). There is no 7/4 in play here.
posted by scatter gather at 10:14 PM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Each bar has four beats. Each verse has seven bars.
posted by wwwwwhatt at 10:16 PM on August 31, 2011

Response by poster: ahh... so a measure is a bar! I grew up learning music theory in the british system, where we used terms like crotchets and semi-quavers and bars. I just assumed that a measure meant a beat. Thanks for the clarification :)
posted by spacediver at 10:17 PM on August 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

It sounds like he is talking about a larger structure, like a 7-bar phrase, not a bar that suddenly goes to 7/4

The Beatles would drop in a stray bar of 2/4, or 3/4, in a 4/4 song, every now and then....did they do that in "Yesterday" There is maybe a little funny stuff with the "one", at the point (going to the last verse?) where McCartney sings "Yesterday-ay -ay /Yesterday"
posted by thelonius at 10:19 PM on August 31, 2011

The bridge (Why she had to go...) is 8 measures, or two fours. So the measures go 7,7,4,4,7,7,4,4,7--with each measure having four beats. If you tap your feet to the four beats, and count one finger for each group of four beats, you'll get it.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:40 PM on August 31, 2011

Correction: only one seven measure group in the middle, so it's 7,7,4,4,7,4,4,7.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:49 PM on August 31, 2011

The Beatles would drop in a stray bar of 2/4, or 3/4, in a 4/4 song, every now and then....did they do that in "Yesterday" There is maybe a little funny stuff with the "one", at the point (going to the last verse?) where McCartney sings "Yesterday-ay -ay /Yesterday"

If anything, there might be a slight fermata there. The Beatles do have songs where 4/4 is mixed with other time signatures, but "Yesterday" isn't one of them.
posted by John Cohen at 11:02 PM on August 31, 2011

Hmmm. That bridge features a strong 3 feel in the melody, at 2 points, over the 4/4 time:

( "Why she /Had to go" and "I said /some- thing wrong")

which creates an interesting illusion of 3/4, but that feel is resolved to a strong downbeat each time:

("Why she /Had to go I don't / KNOW.... " and "I said /some- thing wrong now I/ LONG
for Yes-ter/DAY-ay-ay-ay"

Now, right there at the end of that part, do they sing one less "ay" the second time, which would be a bar of 3/4?
posted by thelonius at 11:08 PM on August 31, 2011

If you do want to hear some 7/4 measures try Money by Pink Floyd.
posted by doctord at 6:37 AM on September 1, 2011

What makes it complicated is that the lyrical verses either start on the 2 of a measure, or on the final eighth of the previous measure. See here.

So the music is straight 4/4 time, but the lyrics for "all my troubles seemed so far away" and "now it looks as though they're here to stay" start on the "2" of the measure.

Then, in "oh I believe in yesterday", the "oh" and "in" are actually in the previous measure.

so it's:

| [rest] now it looks as though they're | here to stay oh | I believe in | yesterday |

with the 1 and 3 downbeats on the rest , looks, here, the middle of stay, I, the middle of believe, yes, day

For the choruses, the pattern is different.

| why she | had to go I don't | know, she wouldn't | say |

| i said | something wrong now I | long for yester | day |

In the verses, yesterday and suddenly are whole measures, but in the choruses the "day" of yesterday is a whole measure itself. That's why you can get the day ay ay ay. In the first chorus, it's just a straight whole note, in the second chorus, it's four quarter notes connected.

On the final part of the song, instead of repeating into the second "suddenly" verse, it just slows down and reprises the " oh I believe in yesterday" pattern. oh | I believe in | yes ter dayyyy |
posted by gjc at 7:43 AM on September 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Apparently the verses of Lennon's "It Won't Be Long" are also 7 measures, and this page points out that messing around with measures was a trick he liked to use.

I unwittingly discovered recently that another Paul song had 7, but I can't recall it now (Help/Rubber Soul era?). But I'm sure there's tons of songs that use it, Beatles and otherwise, which I'm sure is compiled... somewhere...

The only other song I knew of that used 7 measures is Foo Fighters' "Everlong," also in the verse. I think the fake book said something to the effect that it creates an almost subliminal feeling of being unresolved and off-kilter.

But unusual measures just aren't something I've heard about much, as opposed to time signatures. Wikipedia even has a page devoted to the latter, but I can't find anything on the former. Unless you're actually counting along, or looking at the score, it's not too noticeable.

BTW, the Alan Pollack "Notes" that you mention inspired this old MeFi discussion.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:51 PM on September 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

so, they put a twist on it, then, did they? :)

the 7-bar thing is an amazing songwriting trick to create a feeling of surprise, and forward motion, as is the very interesting syncopation of the "Yesterday" melody, that gjc points out. They keep you in a familiar structure, but just a little bit off.
posted by thelonius at 3:53 PM on September 6, 2011