Index
Home
Vorige
Carry That Weight
Composer(s) : Lennon and McCartney
Year :
Chords/Tabs: Carry That Weight
Notes on "Carry That Weight" (CTW)
KEY C Major
METER 4/4
FORM Intro -> Refrain -> Bridge -> Refrain -> Outro (segue al subito)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- "Carry That Weight" (CTW) picks up on and extends the majestically fervent
gesture of
"Golden Slumbers'" mid-section to provide one of the single
most "symphonic" moments in the Beatles cannon. Aesthetically, it is
at least as far removed from the likes of their earliest hits as is
something like
"I Am The Walrus;" maybe even more so. At the same time,
you find a foreshadowing here of Macca's later oratorio style if you
listen carefully.
- In spite of its substantive A-B-A form CTW's sense of musical independence
and self-sufficience is successively quite undermined by the combination of:
- the building rhythmic momentum that sweeps through it at both ends;
- the built-in manner in which its refrain cycles back for "more;"
- and the borrowing of its bridge and outro sections from
"...Money."
- In contrast to the continual uneven phrasing and changeable harmonic
rhythm of
"Golden Slumbers'"
, we find CTW closely following a more predictable, four-square
course of action.
Melody and Harmony
- The refrain tune is purely diatonic C Major, covers a full octave and
is dominated by fanfare-like triadic outlines. The bridge tune, by contrast,
is in the melodic minor mode, covers a range slightly smaller than an octave,
and is primarily stepwise, though it does, indeed, continue the fanfare idea
with its own single triadic outline (on the last three syllables of the
"invitations"); which uncannily turns out to be a literal inversion of the
same figure heard in the refrain (on the phrase "a long time.")
- Harmonically, the refrains establish C Major as home key by elementary
means. The bridge provides a contrasting interlude in the relative minor
key of A by making a complete traversal of the diatonic circle of 5ths.
Arrangement
- The basic backing track used in
"Golden Slumbers'"
of piano, drums, and bass clearly
continues through this song, though the overdubbed massed strings and
brass effects are even more prominently in evidence. Lewisohn reports
the the overdub of a timpani part on this pair of songs, but I hear no
difference in the percussion parts between the outtake of the original
basic track and the finished product.
- The bass work is particularly impressive, alternating between evenly
accented perpetual motion for the refrains and syncopated scale work
for the bridge.
- The vocal arrangement is choral throughout. The ensemble sounds relatively
homogenized in the refrains, though you can clearly pick Ringo's unique voice
out of the crowd. In the bridge Paul's voice clearly dominates.
- The chord changes generally fall exactly on the downbeats, but the tune
throughout makes a repeated motivic point of heavy syncopations that fall
out just ahead of the downbeat.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Intro
- The transition from
"Golden Slumbers'"
to CTW is made without skipping a beat by filling
out the final measure of the former with a drum figure that rhythmically
motivates the start of the latter. Compare this with the very similar
transition from
SK to
MMM.
Refrain
- The refrain is a four-square 16 measures in length, featuring what is
close to a literal repeat of the following eight measure phrase:
|C |- |G7 |- |
C: I V
|G7 |- |C |- |
V I
a:III
- The first half of the second phrase is a repeat of the second half of
the first phrase, making for a syncopated looking (and sounding!) poetic
pattern of ABBC.
- The pounding of evenly accented eighth notes on the backing track in the
8th measure of this phrase in its first iteration of each refrain is a
particularly stunning dramatic effect.
- The second time the eight-measure phrase is repeated we find the bassline
walking downward to B in the last measure. In the opening refrain, this
functions simply as a passing tone against the sustained C Major chord.
The outro, however, is handled differently as we'll see below.
Bridge
- The bridge section turns out to be none other than an old friend, the
opening section of
"...Money."
The section is repeated twice here, just
as it is in the song from which it is taken, with the first iteration
fully instrumental and the second one sung to words. Given the faster
quarter note pulse at which I've been parsing the second half of the
medley, this section comes out to be 16 measures per iteration rather
than the eight we came up with in on earlier article on
"...Money."
|a |- |d9 - 8|- |G7 |- |C4-3 |- |
a: i iv VII III
(V-of-III?)
|F |- |b dim. |E |a |- |G13/11 |- 5/3|
VI ii V i
C: vi V
- The harmonic pivot from C Major to A Minor and back again is straightforward.
- Your Harmony 101 instructor would adjure you to parse the final pair of
measures as entirely G Major with double appoggiaturs in the first of the
two measures, rather than as a C Major triad in the second (aka 6/4)
inversion.
- This passage appears here not merely as a reprise, rather, it is doubly
"transformed" by its formal/functional shift from opening verse to
mid-flight bridge section, and the extent to which the grand orchestration
here brings out an heroic potential that was latent but not yet actualized
in the passage's initial exposition.
- The guitar solo is executed with some very cooly executed bent notes that
remind you, after all, this is a rock album.
Outro
- The outro grows out of the second refrain. It actually overlaps with
the last two measures of the latter. And it, too, turns out to be yet
another transformed reprise of a part of
"...Money." to wit, the latter's
own coda theme:
|last 2 measures of 2nd refrain|
|1 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |
|C G6/3|- |A |- |
Bass line: |C B | |A
I V ?
- The difference in harmonic context is what transforms this reprise. At
the end of
"...Money"
the ostensible home key is A Major, and this passage
distinctively, but also clearly slides into that home key by way of the
bluesy sounding, cross-relation-creating III chord of C Major.
- In the context of CTW, the immediate home key is C Major. And this makes
you hear the same chord progression now drifting away, and uncertainly so,
from its home key. Challenge yourself: just how does your ear interpret
the function of that A Major chord? Maybe, V-of-ii, strange as it sounds?
- Okay, to the extent that the next song demonstrably opens in the key of A
Major, this chord is the I chord of the new home key, and in hindsight,
you'll see the preceding G Major chord pivoting as a flat-VII in the new
key. But you don't know what's coming just around the corner at this
very instant. Therefore, it's a brief instant of exquisite harmonic
ambiguity.
- The four measure outro phrase goes into a second iteration that is cut
short. The fourth beat of the third measure is leveraged as an upbeat
to the start of
"The End." The trickest thing about the transition is
the slight increase in tempo for the new track. Unlike some of the
arithmetically strict metrical modulations we've seen elsewhere on
this album, this one is an inexact; a rather abrupt acceleration, shades
of "step on the gas and wipe that tear away."
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- And if you haven't yet noticed, it's getting very near
"The end."
Regards,
Alan (awp@world.std.com)
---
"... being middle-aged and old takes up most of your time, doesn't it?"
011700#190
---
Copyright (c) 2000 by Alan W. Pollack
All Rights Reserved
This article may be reproduced, retransmitted, redistributed and
otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains
intact and in place.
Ook op Abbey Road:
(c) 2024 Serge Girard