Easy Beatles Jam Session

As I explore music for ukulele jam sessions, I keep discovering Beatles songs I’ve never heard of before. In London, I chuckled at the politically incorrect “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and the funny “Octopus’s Garden.” George Harrison’s “I’ll Follow the Sun” and other songs by individual members of the Beatles are all so very interesting. They wrote more than 300 songs though not all were performed or recorded.

Sadly, on this day 10th April 1970 the band officially broke up.

When John in Milton suggested we do a thematic jam session on easy Beatles, I was all in. Coincidentally, Mark in London had designed a T-shirt for the five year anniversary of our ukulele club in London using the Abbey Road theme — perfect for our Easy Beatles ukulele jam session. Thanks John and Mark for making this happen!

If “easy to play on the ukulele” can be defined by the number of chords and the difficulty of chords, then Eleanor Rigby has to be the easiest Beatles song. In the simplest case, just two chords will do: C and Em or F and Am. The choice depends on your voice range.

As I’m not an expert on the Beatles, I asked John to categorize the ten songs he chose and the ten I chose into difficulty levels and rank them. We discussed the illusion of using chords as a measure of difficulty. Some songs with few and easy chords, like “Get Back“, are not easy to sing. Was there a formula to Beatles’ songs?

A few years ago in music theory class at Maui College, I gave my students an assignment to read the article “The Harmonic Language of the Beatles” and answer questions for discussion. They were surprised that academics would research the music of the Beatles. As a mathematician, it’s no surprise that there is a formula to music for this is the domain of music theory. Just google “Beatles chord progressions” and you’ll discover plenty of articles, tutorials, and youtube clips.

I asked my ukulele friends in London (who went with me to the Irish Ukulele Hooley) to check out the Easy Beatles ukulele song sheets I compiled. They added a few more. We tried out the songs in a blue moon jam of 31st March 2018 and came up with even more songs. Another ukulele group also has made a list of easy Beatles songs.

Clearly there is a lot of interest in easy Beatles songs, for already a dozen enthusiasts have signed up for tomorrow’s ukulele jam session. Let’s hope everyone downloads and prints the 32 page songbook of 23 Beatles songs we will be doing over the course of two hours in this part of Boston: Wednesday 11 April 2018 @ 7 pm  & the link for the songbook PDF.