

It took Dalhousie University professor Jason Brown six months and some advanced mathematical analytical techniques to crack the code behind one of the most mysterious sounds in music: the "prraaaaaangg" sound at the beginning of the Beatles’ "Hard Day’s Night."

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"The Chord:"

Guitarists have puzzled over how this chord is played for decades because it contains a note that would be impossible for the Beatles’ two guitarists and bassist to play in one take, and experts have concluded that no multitracking was involved in this part of the song. The secret sauce, as it turns out, includes five piano notes apparently played by producer George Martin. Brown made the discovery by disassembling the sampled amplitudes into the original frequencies using Fourier transforms.

"What about the other three D3s? Only one can come from George’s twelve-string, and even if John played another one on his six-string, there’s still another to account for," reads part of the conclusion of Brown’s report. "Beatles’ record producer George Martin is known to have doubled on piano George Harrison’s solo on the track. Could ‘the chord’ be part piano?"

"Pianos have three strings for every note; a hammer strikes all three at the same time to produce a sound. That solved the problem of the three F3s; all could have come from a piano playing F3."

In that frequency range, a hammer inside a piano strikes three parallel strings, which accounts for the three notes. That explained most of the mystery, but Brown also had to figure out where a few other mystery notes went (John Lennon’s guitar, George Harrison’s guitar and George Martin’s piano).

The report, Mathematics, Physics and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ (.pdf), quotes George Martin’s autobiography, All You Need Is Ears, in which Martin "makes a point of saying ‘it shouldn’tbe expected that people are necessarily doing what they appear to bedoing on records,’ and likens recording to filmmaking, where all sortsof effects are carried out in the background in order to createillusions."

"We see that sometimes mathematics can unravel the bestmysteries." Well played, sir.

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(via Chronicle Herald Metro)