Index
Home
Vorige
Savoy Truffle
Composer(s) : Harrison
Year : 1968
Chords/Tabs: Savoy Truffle
Notes on "Savoy Truffle" (ST)
KEY G Major
METER 4/4
FORM Intro -> Verse -> Refrain ->
Intro' -> Verse -> Refrain ->
Bridge -> Verse (Instrumental) -> Refrain ->
Bridge -> Verse -> Refrain -> Outro (w/complete ending)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- In the true _White Album_ spirit of masquerading in diverse musical
styles, we find George here turning in a heavily syncopated, bluesy,
rock and roller that has a strong contemporary dance band undercurrent.
- The preachy lyrics though are a Harrisonian dead giveaway if you ask me.
Melody and Harmony
- The musical vocabulary here is split down the middle between stylized
blues and a more progressive harmonic style that makes you feel
constantly on the move, on the threshold of some new breakthrough.
- The blues show up from the extent to which I-IV-V create an harmonic
backbone for the song in spite of the use of several other chords.
You also find heavy use of the almost-minor blue 3rd in the tune
pitted against the Major I chord, as well as the flat 7th showing
up repeatedly in the saxophones.
- What I call the progressive style is found in the signature use
here of root chord progressions of 3rd using chords that are not
indigenous to the home key. This effect is further enhanced by
the use of chromatic scale riffs to bridge the chords.
- The tonal "rule book" says that the home key of this song "must be"
G Major because that's the key in which we end, but it's somewhat
beside the point. The song spends most of its life in the parallel
key pair of E Major/e minor, with the shift to the relative Major
key of G at the end of the refrain a bit of a non sequitar. There
are other Beatles songs that exploit this triumverate of keys (i.e.
a parallel Major/minor pair + the relative Major), but never quite
with such audacity.
Arrangement
- The backing track contains the predictable elements of guitar,
drums and bass, but what you remember most vividly after the fact
is the saxaphone section which alternates between jazzy obligato licks
in unison, and syncopated mass chords.
- It sounds like George handles the vocal chores entirely by himself.
double tracked for the most of the verses and the two bridges, and
harmonizing for the all of the refrains and a couple of verses.
- Paul's bassline is a perpetual motion tour de force that sounds
as though it attempts to double with the sax part here and there.
- A couple of not so random details:
- All the refrains feature chordal accents from the brass and
keyboard on the offbeats of 2 & 4, but in only the second refrain,
the guitar provides its own antiphonal accents on 1 & 3.
- Someone (Paul?) is heard shouting "wooh" in the last measure of
the second and the final verse.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Intro
- A couple beats of drum fill are followed by two measures of
vamping on the E Major chord.
Verse
- The verses are 12 measures long, built out of three phrases
roughly parallel in shape. Each starts with some jump down
and ends with an chromatic wiggle upward.
|E |- |- |- |
E: I
|F# |- |A |- |
V-of-V IV
|G |- |B |- |
bIII V
- The first pair of verses cheat by dropping a beat from the first
measure. This unusual effect ironically makes it sound like George
is dramatically holding back at that point in spite of the fact that,
strictly speaking, he's rushing ahead by a single heartbeat.
- Your x-ray hearing demonstrates how I-IV-V are deployed as the harmonic
backbone of this section, with the F# and G Major chords working as
helpers. Note how neither of the latter are part of the E Major home
key, and how each of them is entered by root motion of a whole tone;
upward in the first case, and downward in the second.
- The overall harmonic shape of the verse is wide open, ending on V.
- The second verse is preceeded by a repeat of the 2 measure intro vamp.
Refrain
- The refrain is a simple, single four measure phrase:
|e |- |C7 |G |
e: i VI
C: IV
- The home key changes to the parallel minor key making it all the easier
to modulate to the relative Major key of G. The latter is established
only by the relatively weak plagal cadence.
Bridge
- The bridge is eight measures long and contains an AA repeat of a
single phrase:
------------------------------ 2X -------------------------------
|e |A |e A |G B |
i IV i IV bIII V
- Again the harmonic shape is wide open and determined by I-IV-V. The
start off on e minor makes the Major IV chord sound somewhat modal. In
context, you'd never believe that the G chord in this section is the same
one that shows up at the end of the refrain.
- The last two measures of the above phrase are perhaps the most strongly
syncopated ones on the whole track.
Outro
- The outro is just one last appearance of the refrain; it's fifth.
- By this point of the song you are so accustomed to hearing the 4th
beat of the last measure filled in as a pickup to the next section
that when it is left entirely silent at the very end you almost fall
out of your seat.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- And then there's the ambiguously erotic line, "I feel your taste all
the time we're apart." I suppose that's included to keep you ever so
slightly off balance from complacently accepting the song as entirely
about entirely concerned with a virtual addition to candy bars. Perhaps
I am projecting.
Regards,
Alan (awp@world.std.com)
---
"You've got an inferiority complex, you have." 062898#153
---
Copyright (c) 1995 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 The Beatles [White Album]:
(c) 2025 Serge Girard
(c) Alan Aldrigde, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics