Struggling to revise for A level music: I Want to Tell You, and not sure where to start?
Panicking because there isn’t much time left until the exam?
Not to worry, this is the place to be!
As an A* ex-A level music student myself, I know all the best tips and tricks for doing well in your exam. I have tried to make all this information as concise as possible so you can get the best value for your time spent reading. Using this guide to the Beatles’ I Want to Tell You, you can boost your grades with as little effort as possible!
.Make sure you write EVERYTHING down and learn it thoroughly. Reading alone will not help you absorb this information!
This post is all about A Level Music: I Want to Tell You.
A Level Music: I Want to Tell You
To start with, here is a link to the Beatles’ recording of I Want to Tell You.
I’m tentatively assuming most of the people reading this will already have the A level Anthology of Music recommended by Edexcel. If not, here is a link to where you can buy it.
Amazon: A level music anthology
Unfortunately, the anthologies are very expensive. However, if you are lucky, you can find a second hand one on Amazon or Ebay.
Sadly, I Want to Tell You is not yet out of copyright and won’t be for more than seventy years. Yep, copyright law is a disaster!
Context of I Want to Tell You
I Want to Tell You was written in 1966 for the Beatles’ seventh studio album, Revolver, and it was recorded at EMI studios in Abbey Road. This was the first album the Beatles did not intend to perform live: in fact, they stopped touring that year. The band’s guitarist, George Harrison, was its principal songwriter.
I Want to Tell You is about George’s inability to communicate his feelings and thoughts. George took inspiration from Indian music and LSD for this song.
The Beatles are to this day considered the most influential popular music act of all time. They are also the most successful of all time, outselling every other artist by some considerable margin. They caused such hysteria in the 60s that the phenomenon was dubbed Beatlemania. Although they began as a rock and roll cover band, as the years went by the created works of Baroque pop, psychedelia, and folk rock, to name some examples.
The members of the Beatles were John Lennon (rhythm guitar), Paul McCartney (bass guitar), George Harrison (lead guitar) and Ringo Starr (drums). All of them sang some songs in the Beatles catalogue.
One more clarification! The Beatles’ recording and the Edexcel score are quite different for this song. I am going to be talking about the recording, as that is what the Beatles intended.
Structure of I Want to Tell You
I Want to Tell You begins with an 8-bar introduction. This is written as a repeated 4-bar in the score. However, listen to the song (as you should be doing as much as possible!) and you will hear that only the electric guitar plays in the first four bars, although more instruments enter in the fifth bar (or the repeat of bar one). This makes the fade-in more dramatic.
Verse 1 begins in bar 5. It is 11 bars long, which is unusual, as most verses in popular songs are eight bars long.
Verse 2 begins in bar 16, and it is followed by a bridge in bar 27. These two sections are then repeated, with verse 3 lyrics sung the second time. Finally, verse 3 is repeated yet again, meaning verse 3 is sung twice.
The whole song ends with an outro, which begins in bar 36.
The structure is notated really weirdly in the score (honestly, just ignore the D. S. markings), so I would massively recommend just listening to it to find out the structure. Unfortunately, this is one instance of Edexcel making things much more confusing!
Instrumentation of I Want to Tell You
George sings I Want to Tell You as he was the principal songwriter. This was convention for the Beatles. However, Paul and John both sing backing vocals, something else the Beatles had done since their early days.
The backing vocals are overdubbed, which means they were recorded after the rest of the song.
The song uses a fairly typical instrumentation for its time: lead guitar (played by George), bass guitar (played by Paul) and piano (also played by Paul). Ringo is, as always, on drums. There are also some other percussion instruments thrown in the mix, notably the maracas and the tambourine.
The electric guitar is played through a Leslie speaker, which gives it an unusual sound.
Note the fade-in at the beginning – electric guitar is the only instrument for the first two bars, followed by drums and piano in bar 5 and tambourine in bar 7. Beware though – these bars are notated differently in the score. Again, listen to the recording!
Fade-ins were pioneered by the Beatles back in 1964. Their song Eight Days a Week was one of the first to use the technique.
Tonality of I Want to Tell You
The overall tonality of I Want to Tell You is A major. However, there are lots of moments where the tonal key is ambiguous, the most unclear moment being the bridge. More on this in the harmony section!
I hope you didn’t think it was that simple! This is the Beatles we are talking about after all…
Anyway, see that sneaky G natural in the guitar part of the introduction? That is a flattened 7th, which implies that we are in the mixolydian mode and not the major key. However, there are G#s later in the song. We are therefore going to call this modal interchange, which means we are moving between A major (also known as the Ionian mode) and the mixolydian mode based on A.
Harmony of I Want to Tell You
The harmony of I Want to Tell You tends to be quite static – the same chord sticks around for two or three bars.
The backing vocals use lots of parallel chords, which are quite unusual. They also sing in close harmony, a la Beach Boys, who were a massive influence on the Beatles. Although the backing vocals mostly sing the lyrics, there is one single, solitary vocable at the end, when Paul sings “Ah”.
In bar 8 George uses a secondary dominant chord (B7), which is surprising and adds to the sense of instability.
A defining characteristic of I Want to Tell You’s harmony is dissonance, which generally reflects George’s inability to express himself. Here are some examples of this:
- The acciaccaturas in the right hand piano of, say, bars 5 and 6 make B# an important note. B# is the enharmonic equivalent of C natural, the minor 3rd in A major
- The appoggiaturas in bars 10 and 11 create a minor 9th chord, which is highly dissonant
- In bar 28 George uses a diminished chord
- You can find chromaticism throughout the song – e.g. the D# to D natural movement in bars 30 and 31
Melody of I Want to Tell You
I Want to Tell You is almost entirely syllabic, which is common in pop and rock songs. This makes it easily singable.
The melody is also mostly conjunct, again making it singable. However, there are a few leaps, such as the perfect 4th in bar 5 and the major 3rd in the following bar.
In the final bars (42 to the end), Paul sings a long melisma on “Ah”. This shows George’s inspiration from Indian music. The particular name for this ornamentation is gamaka, which means the embellishment of a note in Indian music.
The range of the main vocal line is a major 7th, which is relatively limited. This perhaps reflects George’s inability to adequately express his emotions.
Rhythm, metre and tempo of I Want to Tell You
As is typical for pop and rock songs, I Want to Tell You has no tempo marking. However, the score does indicate that it is played at 124 BPM, which is quite a fast tempo.
The metre of I Want to Tell You is 4/4, the most common metre for popular songs.
All the quavers in this song are swung. That means they sound like triplets, giving it a lurching, unstable feel.
The rhythm of I Want to Tell You is characterised by on-beat crotchets. These help maintain a strict sense of pulse.
However, this sense of pulse is undermined by the frequent use of syncopation in the vocal parts, examples of which can be found in bars 8 and 13. This syncopation helps to add a speech-like, if rather unstable, feel to the song.
Here are a few more interesting moments in the song:
- The guitar riff of the opening bars incorporates tied notes at the end of the bar. These are not in the score, but add to the lack of stability
- In bar 8, the chord changes on beat 3, which is highly unusual as most songs change chords on beat 1. This adds to the unstable mood
- The triplets of bars 34 and 35 (the first and second time bars) create a frantic feel – perhaps frustration at George’s inability to get his point across
- The shorter rhythms of bars 43 and 44 (e.g. the demisemiquavers in bar 43) hint at the influence of Indian music on the Beatles
Texture of I Want to Tell You
The overall texture of I Want to Tell you is melody dominated homophony.
To be completely honest, the only other interesting thing I have to say about the texture is that the first four bars (in the recording, not the score) are monophonic. This helps the fade-in to be even more dramatic.
There, that was nice and easy!
Coda
And there we have it! A rather detailed dissection of everything you need to know for the A level music: I Want to Tell You questions, from instrumentation and melody to structure and tempo.
This article was all about A level Music I Want to Tell You.
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