All My Loving.

[gary mac]

Looking for a bit of help with All My Loving by the Beatles.

All these years of bass playing and I have never played this number, however I was asked to learn it for last nights rehearsal.

So over the weekend I dug out my copy of the Beatles 62-66 and had a listen and then tried to copy maccas walking line.

Can't say that I nailed it note for note, but it was fairly close. My take on it was that the chord progression in the verse was F sharp minor, B, E, Csharp minor, A, F sharp minor, D, B, F sharp minor, B, E, C sharp minor, A, B, E, stop.
(sorry that was a bit long winded)


Anyway, got to the rehearsal and I was told to do it in D and off we went.

I got some strange looks and realised I wasn't playing what they were.


This is where I am a bit confused...

Won't list all the chords again but transposing from F sharp to D< I thought the progression would now be

Dm, G, C, Am, F, Dm, Bb, G etc.



Whereas they were playing D, Em A D Bm G Em C Em etc.



If you've bothered to read this far, what do you think?

Am I missing something obvious or have the guitarist got it wrong?


Cheers, all the best Gary

[KevB]

If you can download a copy of GuitarPro from somewhere I'm pretty sure I have the file for All My Loving, it would enable you to transpose the bassline into the new key and allow you to double check you were still playing the right notes in the new key.

[johnnylager]

[quote name='gary mac' post='164428' date='Mar 27 2008, 12:49 PM']Am I missing something obvious or have the guitarist got it wrong?[/quote]
2nd option, obviously.

[bigjohn]

Without going to far into it I don't see how transposing from F sharp to D could mean the relative pitch of the notes change.

F sharp > B > E

The same run played in D would be

D > G > C

[quote name='johnnylager' post='164445' date='Mar 27 2008, 01:11 PM']2nd option, obviously. [/quote]

Is correct

Edited March 27, 2008 by bigjohn

[queenofthedepths]

As the saying goes, the guitarist is always wrong... just played along myself and your chords are right, buttt when it comes to the strange key change, the whole thing does indeed go to pot - the actual song is in F# minor, so if you put it in D major (why?!), that changes everything... the new chords you were playing were in D minor, whereas theirs (presumably not actually exactly D, Em A D Bm G Em C Em) should have been D major, but I can neither work out why you'd play it in D major nor what would be the right chords... if I were you I'd get them to play it in a minor key or it'll just sound strange!

[jwbassman]

Always best to find out what key the rest rest of the band want to play the song in first.. i've been through this a few times too, you go away and put in the hours to learn the part and the next minute you find you have to transpose on the fly to make the guitarist/vocalist (*delete as appropriate) sound good

Sorry not familar with this particular track so not much help sorry...

[Adrenochrome]

Make the guitarist do it properly. The walking bass line goes down to an open E anyway so shifting it down to D isn't gonna help that much unless you got a 5-string or lower tuning on a 4-string.

[gary mac]

Thanks for all the info chaps.

I don't know why they chose this key and I told them it sounded very strange. But I did get the look from a couple of them, you know the one that says, " what do you know, you're just the bass player".

[pete.young]

If the first chord is F# minor, then the home key of the song is E .

Transpose it down a tone to D, and the chord progression becomes

Em A D Bmin G Emin C A Emin A D Bmin G A D

The transposed progression you wrote out is to play the song in C .

[rbatts2000]

Ahh, it's the old 'change-key-to-suit-the-singer' routine. We've recently had to do this for Lola by the Kinks and I just can't get used to the lower key - it just sounds ba-a-ad! <----done in the style of Alan Partridge. :-)

[bass_ferret]

You were playing the right notes, not necessarily in the right order.

[bassmandan]

[quote name='pete.young' post='164501' date='Mar 27 2008, 02:34 PM']If the first chord is F# minor, then the home key of the song is E .

Transpose it down a tone to D, and the chord progression becomes

Em A D Bmin G Emin C A Emin A D Bmin G A D

The transposed progression you wrote out is to play the song in C .[/quote]

bang on!

just because a song [i]starts[/i] on a given chord, that doesn't automatically mean that it's in that key. The tonic chord of the original is E but the song starts on the second key chord: F#m

primary chords: I = E, IV = A, V = B and secondary chords: II = F#m and VI (relative minor) = C#m

transpose to:

primary chords: I = D, IV = G, V = A and secondary chords: II = Em and VI (relative minor) = Bm

[gary mac]

thanks, that's cleared it up. As I feared I was missing the obvious.