From: awp@world.std.com (Alan W Pollack)
Subject: Notes on "Yes It Is"
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 00:49:24 GMT

	                 ==============================
	                || Notes on "Yes It Is" (YII) ||
	                 ==============================


KEY	E Major

METER	2/4 (6/8)

FORM	Intro -> Verse -> Verse -> Bridge -> Verse -> Bridge -> 
			Verse -> Outro (w/complete ending)
		


GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST


Style and Form
--------------
- Comparisons of this song to "This Boy" are inevitable and ubiquitous.  
  Yet, for all their similarities, "Yes It Is" (YII) is arguably the more 
  fully developed and "mature" of the two songs.

- Behind the standard two-bridge-no-solo form, and in spite of its B-side
  status, YII features lyrics that are more clever, an harmonic palette more 
  rich, and a mood more sharply characterized than the earlier song.
  

Melody and Harmony
------------------
- The verse melody is constrained to an almost entirely pentatonic range of 
  six notes; from E up to C#.  The bridge opens this range way the heck up 
  to G#; an unusually high note for John.

- The roster of chords appearing in the song is relatively standard but
  both the ordering of their progressions, as well as the voice leading
  transitions between some of them, is extraordinary.  Only the bridge section 
  and the first phrase of the verse are made up of chord progressions that 
  approximate cliche patterns of the period.  The remaining three-quarters
  of the verse is pure Lennon/McCartney with its twice-surprising deployment
  of flat-VII and the last-minute deceptive cadence to the relative minor
  key.  

- This latter gambit of, in a song that is otherwise clearly in a
  Major key, hovering around the relative minor chord to such an extent
  that the identity of the actual home key becomes a tad or more ambiguous,
  was something for which the Boys had a real penchant; e.g. check out our
  studies of "Not A Second Time", "And I Love Her", and "I'm Happy Just
  To Dance With You."  YII is not quite as extreme an example as these
  others, but the principle is the same.  To the extent that AILH, IHJTDWY 
  and YII are in the same key, I wonder if they somehow had some a subliminal 
  association of the gambit itself with the world of 4 sharps!

- Back in "This Boy" we had already commented on their use of an harmonic
  technique that had been popular in the late-Romantic/Impressionistic periods
  of so-called classical music; the one in which the resolution of 9/11/13th 
  chords is delayed until the point at which the root of the chord has already
  changed,  conjuring a feeling as if one chord has melted into the one that 
  follows it.  The same technique is brought forward in the current song to
  the point where some of the higher-order dissonant chords are found to
  *never* quite resolve.
  
- The bridge section offers a short-lived but real modulation for a change; 
  something we haven't seen all that often in our studies.


Arrangement
-----------
- The three part vocal arrangement of the verse is dense and dissonant,
  and its level of compositional sophistication begs some intruiging
  questions about the working mode of the group and the involvement
  of George Martin as a coach.  Bootlegs of the unmixed final take 14
  belie the cream-finished haziness of the officially released product
  and betray just how dry and close-up the vocal parts were originally
  recorded.

- In the bridge we have John's double tracked solo in the first half
  with George and Paul coming back in to give him appropriately moaning
  support for the big climax.

- The rhythmic scaning of the words contains a large amount of syncopation
  and two-against-three cross rhythms which cut across the evenly lilting
  triplet rhythms of the backing track.  You might go as far as to describe
  this as the rhythmic analogue to the dissonant harmonic elements described
  above.

- George's "tone pedal" guitar adds an etherial touch that is as novel
  as it is complementary to the vocal texture.



SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH


Intro
-----
- Given just two measures of the 'I' chord, this intro sets forth the basic
  backbeat and instrumental arrangement for the entire song.

- The piece begins with a guitar pickup of low B natural 'on FOUR'.  As we
  did back on "Don't Bother Me", I propose that this song be parsed as though 
  its measure lengths were half as long as the 4-in-the-bar count-in heard in 
  the outtakes would imply; otherwise, the phrase lengths come out looking 
  absurdly short. 
  

Verse
-----
- The first verse is an unusual fifteen measures long.  It starts off
  with a couplet of two phrases, each of which is four measures long.
  This is balanced out by a closing phrase of six measures plus
  one last measure of plain breathing space before the next verse
  begins:  


	|E		|A		|f#		|B		|
E:	 I	 	 IV	 	 ii	 	 V	  




	|E		|A		|D		|B		|
	 I	 	 IV	 	 flat-VII  	 V




	|E		|-		|A		|D		|
	 I6				 IV		 flat-VII 
	  3**

	  ** first inversion w/G# in bass

							|verse #2 & 3 ...
	|c#		|E		|-		|-		|
	 vi		 I				 
						       A:V


- The second and third verses, both of which are followed by a bridge 
  section, use a rhetorical repetition of the closing hook phrase to
  extend this section out to a more typical sixteen measures.  This allows 
  the sustained E Major chord at that point to be punningly leveraged as
  not only the plain I, but also the V of the key of A, which nicely
  sets up the modulation to that key just in time for the bridge.

- The flat-VII chord is used in two different and unusual ways in 
  the second and third phrases respectively.  In the first case it
  is used as a surprise surrogate for the ii chord heard in the
  corresponding context of the previous phrase.  The resolution of
  of this same chord to vi (the relative minor of the home key) in 
  the third phrase is even more unusual, and quite evocative of the 
  bittersweet message of the song's lyrics.  

- Some quick examples of the free dissonances created by the lead
  vocal against the underlying chords: an A9 in measure 2, an f#11
  in measure 3, and a D added sixth (called a 13th by some) in measure 7.  
  I believe one senses a feeling of exquisite yearning in the implied 
  resolution of the note D-natural upward to D# over the barline between 
  measures 7 and 8; the effect is ironically enhanced by the fact
  that the voices actually drop out for measure 8, leaving this
  D-D# literally implied rather than spelled out.


Bridge
------
- The bridge is ten measures in length and it follows a similar plan
  to that of the verse, with the second of its somewhat parallel phrases
  being elongated; i.e. a 4 + 6 subdivision of the 10 measures:


	|b		|E		|A		|f#		|
A:	 ii		 V	 	 I		 vi




	|b		|E		|c#		|E		|
	 ii		 V	 	 iii
		      		      E:  vi		 I	 




	|F#		|B	 	|
	 V-of-V 	 V



- Formal contrast is provided in this section by the change of vocal
  arrangement, a temporary cutback in the level of dissonance, a large-
  scale opening up of the melodic melodic range, and the clear, obvious 
  build to a climax; the latter following on the heels of a verse which 
  had no such sense of dramatic shape.

- The modulation that is first hinted at by the E7 chord at the end of
  the second verse is not fully consummated until the third measure 
  of this bridge.  In fact, the continued use of D#'s in the melody 
  of this further serves to blunt one's sense of a modulation having
  taken place in so many words, or perhaps I should say chords :-).
  
- The reappearance of the c# minor chord right at the start of what is 
  the quickening toward climax touches one as being somehow ominously 
  appropriate.


Outro
-----
- The full ending is crafted out of a last-minute variation on the
  sixteen-measure form of the verse,  the two final reprises of the hook
  phrase now being harmonized as follows:


	|E	|-	|G#		|A		|E		|
	 I		 V-of-vi	 IV		 I



- The appearance of G# Major at this turn half-surprisingly hints that
  a belated modulation to the relative minor key of c# might yet actually
  take place, but it even more surprisingly resolves deceptively to IV
  and from there to the final I chord.

- The riff of pedal guitar notes which float away after the last chord
  has already been sounded -- D# - B - G# - C# -- close things up in the
  freely dissonant mode that characterized most of what preceeded.



SOME FINAL THOUGHTS


- Over the long run, John is nothing if not consistent in the style of
  his wordplay.  The red/blue pun which runs through the current song has 
  as its precedents not only the black/blue obvious example of "Baby's In 
  Black", but also the "this/that" motif of "This Boy", and many others as
  well.

- A number of equally familiar verbal pirouettes reappear here, 
  some of which go beyond cleverness to hint at emotional content with
  almost subconscious indirection.  We have, for example: a vague reference 
  to something spoken offline from the song proper ("remember what I said 
  tonight"), a hint that the hurt of love lost is exacerbated by a feeling 
  of public humiliation ("everybody knows, I'm sure", and "but it's my 
  pride"), and just plain small talk cliches thrown in for good measure 
  (the title phrase, and "it's true.")
  
- Most potent of all is the ironic place of honor given in the song to the 
  persistence of memory; ironic because of the manner in which the tyrannical, 
  debilitating power of such memory is contrasted with the simple, mundane 
  objects and sensations of life which are capable of triggering such hot 
  flashes.   Granted, John had already dealt with this theme as early as
  the song "Misery", but you can intuit that a more permanent and serious 
  attachment was at stake in our later song from a subtle shift in
  emphasis.  Back in "Misery" the tears were shed over the memory of "all
  the little things we've done".  Here in YII we're now talking about 
  "the things we *planned*."



Regards,
Alan (awp@bitstream.com *OR* uunet!huxley!awp)


---
"Can you take me back where I came from ?"	            	090892#66
---

                Copyright (c) 1992 by Alan W. Pollack
                          All Rights Reserved

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