A Hard Day's Night (Album) Pitch Analysis For Accompaniment

This short piece is part of a project seeking to clarify deviations from concert pitch evident in Beatles songs, in this case the album A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Some potential reasons for the mastered pitch discrepancies evident in many early Beatles songs briefly are dealt with in another article upon Please Please Me. Again, my source material is the stereo remaster released in 2009 (not mono versions, digital or otherwise, which may potentially differ).

The Beatles performing on Dutch TV in June 1964. — The Beatles performing on television in the Netherlands in June 1964. Source: Beeld En Geluid (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision).

The major technical development in A Hard Day’s Night’s production compared to its predecessors was the use of a Telefunken four track tape machine for session recording rather than emi’s btr (British Tape Recorder) twin track and mono machines. Four track recording was available at emi Recording Studios (Abbey Road) from 1959–60 but rarely was used for pop music—and not on Beatles recordings until late 1963.¹ However, the older but well regarded btr2 (mono) and btr3 (twin track) machines continued to be used for mastering and other purposes throughout the 1960s.

While the great majority of songs on the first two Beatles albums fall flat of concert pitch, a number on A Hard Day’s Night are slightly sharp (see the list and notes below for details). As noted in my first article on Please Please Me, all these small discrepancies likely were inadvertent and resulted from the vagaries of the early generation tape recorder technology used in 1964 (as opposed to deliberate varispeed manipulation, which was commonly deployed for various purposes on Beatles recordings from about 1966). While accompaniment consonance will vary from song to song, you should be able to get excellent results with ‘If I Fell’ and ‘Things We Said Today’ (also ‘I’ll Cry Instead’ once the mastered pitch discrepancy is accounted for).

The approximate mastered pitch of each song is listed below (in Hertz and cents: one semitone equals 100 cents); song keys are also noted. As you can see, six tracks on A Hard Day’s Night conform to concert pitch and can be accompanied with a normally tuned instrument with good results. For the rest, you’ll need either to retune your instrument to each song or use DAW or other software to pitch shift the song to A440. When doing the latter, input the opposite figure in cents to those quoted below to shift songs from mastered to concert pitch.

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

key: g major
pitch: A4=442 Hz (+8 cents)

I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER

key: g major
pitch: A4=440 Hz

IF I FELL

key: d major
pitch: A4=440 Hz

I’M HAPPY JUST TO DANCE WITH YOU

keys: c sharp minor; e major
pitch: A4=444 Hz (+16 cents)

AND I LOVE HER

keys: e major/c sharp minor; f major/d minor
pitch: A4=438 Hz (–8 cents)

As Alan Pollack points out, there’s some ambiguity over the major or minor character of the home key (which also modulates a semitone at the start of the lead guitar part). The mastered pitch falls slightly flat of the A440 convention but you should get good accompaniment results once this discrepancy is accounted for.

TELL ME WHY

key: d major
pitch: A4=443 Hz (+12 cents)

The guitar panned to centre doesn’t seem to be tuned to the piano as well as it could be resulting in a slightly dissonant chorus-like effect but 443 Hz is a reasonable compromise for accompaniment.

CAN’T BUY ME LOVE

key: c major
pitch: A4=443 Hz (+12 cents)

Partly recorded in Paris and London,² ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is also slightly sharp of concert pitch in final form.

ANY TIME AT ALL

key: d major
pitch: A4=443 Hz (+12 cents)

I’LL CRY INSTEAD

key: g major
pitch: A4=437 Hz (–12 cents)

THINGS WE SAID TODAY

keys: a minor/a major
pitch: A4=440 Hz

WHEN I GET HOME

key: a major
pitch: A4=440 Hz

YOU CAN’T DO THAT

key: g major
pitch: A4=444 Hz (+16 cents)

I’LL BE BACK

keys: a major/a minor
pitch: A4=440 Hz

Surviving Beatles session and master tapes reportedly are in good condition but there’s some obvious wow/flutter, tape stretch or a similar issue intruding in ‘I’ll Be Back’ as its pitch wobbles quite audibly in a few places (at least in the 2009 stereo remaster).³ That said, quite good accompaniment results can still be achieved.