A Hard Day's Night (song) - Opening Chord

Opening Chord

"A Hard Day's Night" is immediately identifiable before the vocals even begin, thanks to George Harrison's unmistakable Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string guitar's "mighty opening chord". According to George Martin, "We knew it would open both the film and the soundtrack LP, so we wanted a particularly strong and effective beginning. The strident guitar chord was the perfect launch," having what Ian MacDonald calls, "a significance in Beatles lore matched only by the concluding E major of "A Day in the Life", the two opening and closing the group's middle period of peak creativity". "That sound you just associate with those early 1960s Beatles records".

Listen to the opening chord

Analysis of the chord has been debated, it having been described as G7add9sus4, G7sus4, or G11sus4 and others below.

The exact chord is an Fadd9 confirmed by Harrison during an online chat on 15 February 2001:

Q: Mr Harrison, what is the opening chord you used for "A Hard Day's Night"?

A: It is F with a G on top, but you'll have to ask Paul about the bass note to get the proper story.

According to Walter Everett the opening chord has an introductory dominant function because McCartney plays D in the bass: Harrison and Martin play F A C G, over the bass D, on twelve-string guitar and piano, giving the chord a mixture-coloured neighbour, F; two diatonic neighbours, A and C; plus an anticipation of the tonic, G — the major subtonic as played on guitar being a borrowed chord commonly used by The Beatles, first in "P.S. I Love You" (see mode mixture), and later in "Every Little Thing", "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Got to Get You into My Life" (in the latter two against a tonic pedal).

Alan W. Pollack also interprets the chord as a surrogate dominant, the G being an anticipation that resolves on the G major chord that opens the verse. He suggests it is a mixture of d minor, F major, and G major (missing the B). Tony Bacon calls it a Dm7sus4 (D F G A C), which is the minor seventh chord (plus the fourth, G). (For more information regarding chord functions see diatonic function.)

Everett points out that the chord relates to The Beatles' interest in pandiatonic harmony.

Dominic Pedler has also provided an interpretation of the famous chord, with The Beatles and George Martin playing the following:

• George Harrison: Fadd9 in 1st position on Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string electric guitar
• John Lennon: Fadd9 in 1st position on a Gibson J-160E 6-string acoustic guitar
• Paul McCartney: high D played on the D-string, 12th fret on Hofner 500/1 electric bass
• George Martin: D2-G2-D3 played on a Steinway Grand Piano
• Ringo Starr: Subtle snare drum and ride cymbal

This gives the notes: G-B-D-F-A-C (the B is a harmonic). One of the interesting things about this chord (as described by Pedler) is how McCartney's high bass note reverberates inside the soundbox of Lennon's acoustic guitar and begins to be picked up on Lennon's microphone or pick-up during the sounding of the chord. This gives the chord its special "wavy" and unstable quality. Pedler describes the effect as a "virtual pull-off".

Jason Brown, Professor for the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, whose research interests include graph theory, combinatorics, and combinatorial algorithms, announced in October 2004 that after six months of research he succeeded in analysing the opening chord by de-composing the sound into original frequencies using a mathematical technique known as the Fourier transform. According to Brown, the Rickenbacker guitar wasn't the only instrument used. "It wasn't just George Harrison playing it and it wasn't just The Beatles playing on it... There was a piano in the mix." Specifically, he claims that Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.

In November 2009, Wired published an article where Celemony's Melodyne Editor with Direct Note Access technology was used to analyse the opening chord.

Randy Bachman claims to have heard the original masters of the recordings and could hear the 12-string guitar playing "an F chord, but you put a G on top, and you put a G on the bottom, and you put a C next to that G", "a D on the bass", and "rhythm guitar was a D chord with a sus 4".

A repeated arpeggio outlining the notes of the opening chord ends the song in a circular fashion, fading out with the sound of helicopter blades. This provides, "a sonic confirmation that the thirty-six hours we have just seen will go on and on and on". This was an inspiration of George Martin, who said: "Again, that's film writing. I was stressing to them the importance of making the song fit, not actually finishing it but dangling on so that you're into the next mood." The song contains 12 other chords.