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Chord controversy...Ticket to Ride by the Beatles


daddymack

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I know many of you probably cover Ticket to Ride by the Beatles. I learned this decades ago, and as I am adding material to my songlist, I felt this one would be a good choice with the vocal harmonizer.  As I went over it, I kept stumbling on one change, and I couldn't remember what I did there (eventually I did, though), and when I looked it up on line, I found 1) several different chords used for the change and 2) none of them sounded right to me. 

In the key of A,

F#m                          D7

She's got a ticket to ride

F#m                          ???

She's got a ticket to ri-i-ide

I found people using G major, G ma7, Dmaj7...

what I used to do, and barring some brilliant input from y'all, will continue with, is playing Bmi, ring the open high E string and play an A chord...(following the melody of f# e c#) but how could all these possible variants exist and no one definitive chart be available?

So, how do those of you who play this play that change?

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Hmm.

Checked the recording. Using a piano, I got

F#m                          D7

She's got a ticket to ride

F#m                          Bm7 A/C# Gma7/D

She's got a ticket to ri-i-ide

with those three chords lasting a quarter note each. The important thing (if any of this is important) is the rising bass under the descending melody.

 

The Beatles Fakebook just gives it as G.

 

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OK, back to business after all that guitar talk :)

If you listen carefully or slowed down you hear that it is played as an arpeggio of a-b-d on the guitar (7th fret d-string, 4th g-string, 3rd b-string/alternately open b, a and d on 7th fret in different order). Quite a stretch if you let all notes ring as they did.

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Sounds like a G Maj7 with another note added. I think it's a flat 5 which is the ending melody note of "ride". And the maj7 is the first not of "ride". So I would play a G Maj7 -5.

 

There's also been talk of the opening chord of "Hard Day's Night", that it's impossible to play the complete chord on a single guitar. 

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Rock A. Billy wrote:

OK, back to business after all that guitar talk
:)

If you listen carefully or slowed down you hear that it is played as an arpeggio of a-b-d on the guitar (7th fret d-string, 4th g-string, 3rd b-string/alternately open b, a and d on 7th fret in different order). Quite a stretch if you let all notes ring as they did.

thanks for the isolated track... harmonically, what you are hearing works within the chording/notes I am playing...again, I don't hear a single chord there, and it seems to fit closely with the signature riff ( aa e c# a b ). If played only on the gbe strings, it could be chorded as D-E-A.

Also, as the song progresses, in subsequent choruses the single chord of GMa7 works, but not first time around. Damn those crafty limeys!

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Well it sounds to me like they are playing more than one chord.I hear a D chord. I hear a G/D chord and I think I hear a D6 chord. And it seems (as someone said) to be either played or mixed differently.

Many years ago I attended a seminar by Ben Mink the guy who co-wrote KD Langs material from her Constant Cravings era.  He was joking that if anyone wanted to replicate some of those songs they woould go crazy because he had layered a whole bunch of oddball chords together to get that really fat sound.

I suspect something like that is going on with Ticket to Ride - but maybe by accident.  Can you hear how out of sync the drums are in the verse? Possibly because the end of the guitar riff is basically doing lazy triplets and the drums seem to be playing the a+ of 3 and the + of 4. It's like the early Elvis stuff with the straight eights and the swing all together.

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Are you guyz "deef" or sumptin'???  :smileyhappy:

 

Try this;

II_______II_______II___O.__II_______II

II_______II_______II___O.__II_______II

II___O.__II_______II_______II_______II

II_______II_______II_______II_______II

II_______II___O.__II_______II_______II

II_______II_______II_______II_______II

 

 

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