markus heuger's
beabliography

Beabliography

Abstract 0372

Mulder, Juul (2001), "Semantic shifts in Beatles' chord progressions. On the perception of shifts in song contexts induced by chords." In: Yrjö Heinonen, Markus Heuger, Sheila Whitely, Terhi Nurmesjärvi and Jouni Koskimäki (eds.), Beatlestudies 3. Proceedings of the Beatles 2000 conference. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä (Department of Music, Research Reports 23), 2001, 113-128.

This exploratory study was conducted to investigate the theory proposed by Tillekens in his thesis "The Sound of the Beatles" (1998). Based on the analysis of the first 46 Beatles songs he proposes a systematic relationship between the chords used and the semantic context of the lyrics. In these songs, he argues the traditional tonic, subdominant and dominant chords each can be replaced by approximately five other chords following a diagonal structure. This replacement follows a distinctive semantic logic. Shifts in the conversation context of a song correspond to shifts in chord progressions along two dimensions. The first dimension is called display. It covers the private area, the peer group area and the public area. The second dimension is called realization and its one extreme is internal monologue, the other public statement.

To test this theory subjects were given three chords and they were asked to place these on the dimensions twice: after hearing the second and the third chord. The first chord was given to set the key. Of the nine types of semantic shifts (three movements per dimension: up, down and zero) some were done better than others. Overall less than half of the items were judged according to the theory. The categories that were judged best were those where the movements on both dimensions went in the same directions. The zero movements were perceived worst. Results seemed to suggest that subjects had difficulty semantically differentiating both dimensions and they appeared to have made another semantic interpretation of the chords, which is discussed in the text.

Another way of looking at the data is by type of chord transition comprising six categories: sevenths, relative majors, basic chords, relative minors, parallel minors and neapolitan chords (a.k.a. parallel majors). They were depicted in a component plot to visualize their mutual relations. A two-dimensional solution explaining 61% of the variance resembled the theoretical scheme depicted in the thesis, though there was a reversal of the last two categories in relation to the second two. It is concluded that people are capable of interpreting the remarkable chord progressions in Beatles songs in terms of semantic shifts in the accompanying conversation context, though in a limited and slightly different way than was predicted by the theory.