The Beatles – In My Life
Long-time readers of the blog may know that I am a Beatles fan, and quite a few posts have dealt with their songs – more precisely, ukulele “arrangements” that were often really chord accompaniments. Those are excellent exercises for anyone getting acquainted with chords. My Beatles posts are fairly old, mostly from around 2011-2013, so it was time to return to the band. This time, however, I am not merely strumming chords; I also play the melody. In My Life has a very special atmosphere, and I would like to write in another post about the musical reasons behind that. The song appeared on the band's 1965 album Rubber Soul. Lennon wrote the lyrics and, as was almost always the case, the music was composed together with McCartney.
For me, lyrics are always secondary to melody and chords. A lyric can be good, interesting and meaningful, but if the music is rubbish I do not care about the words either; I am not going to listen just because “oh, what a profound message there is in the second verse!” The reverse is equally true: the lyrics can be as silly as they like and I will not mind if I enjoy the music. In the case of In My Life, the songwriting pair achieved an extraordinary unity of music and words, creating something lasting in both. The melody, the chords AND the lyrics are all captivating. Among other things, the song reflects Lennon's nostalgic feelings, and at the age of only 25 he expressed them in a way capable of provoking remarkably strong emotions in listeners of almost any age.
If somebody does not know the song, or the title does not immediately bring it to mind, here it is:
Another interesting feature of the song is its Baroque-style solo, which was played by the “fifth Beatle”, George Martin, on piano at half speed one octave lower and then sped up to double speed, causing it to sound an octave higher at the normal tempo. Now for my version. It does not include that solo, but it does contain both the chords and the melody. One more thing about the arrangement: the original key is A major. I usually like to keep my arrangements in the original key, although I occasionally make exceptions – most recently with Dune Buggy. I play In My Life in G major, a whole tone lower. Why? Simple: I started arranging this song completely by accident. During one practice session I was alternating G major and D major while breaking the chords into arpeggios, and suddenly realised: wow, that sounds like the beginning of In My Life. I then added the other chords and started practising the arrangement. My mistake was checking the original key only later. By the time I discovered that the song was actually in A major, I had already memorised the whole arrangement in G. One more thing about the recording: on a sudden impulse I made it in a car park, which explains the background noise. It had been quite a while since I last made a car-park video... I had a little spare time and thought, why not? I also tried to record from an angle where you can see exactly what I am fretting and how. I plan to make a slower explanatory video as well, demonstrating the individual fingerings and melody. So please enjoy:
You can find the lyrics and chords by clicking here .
