Drive My Car | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

two of the repeated harmony examples are

“you can do something in between”

and

“but I can show you a better time”

I don’t know that much about music, but my sense is that two Beatles (John and Paul?) are singing two different notes in unison for these lines — and whatever the two notes are, they are only one whole step apart, like A+G.  I see now that the chord during those lines is A7 with a sharp 5th (= F natural) so that kind of throws a monkey wrench into my theory: Is one of the two singers singing the weird note F? If so, what is the other note being sung in close proximity (I think a whole step — so it would be logically G)?

Or maybe it’s 3 Beatles — Paul, John & George — singing F-G-A.

I just watched it, and when it came to the lines I’m wondering about, he only provided one singing part, even though he broke down the other parts into the harmonies.  I can’t believe the 3 Beatles are singing in unison at that point.

Thanks. Interesting, that means it’s either not in A major or they just threw in an oddball chord at that point (maybe a G7sus which in relation to the key of A would be oddball)

Richard said
@Sea Belt, Drive My Car is definitely in the key of D Major.

That’s an unusual bar (with C natural and F natural), again according to ‘The Beatles – Complete Scores’, which is not necessarily correct.

  

The Ultimate Guitar website, which isn’t necessarily reliable (though they do agree it’s in D), says the chord during that part “but you can do something in between” is A7#5 — the sharp fifth being an F natural. So that chord has two of the notes (F and G), but it does not have the C natural, unless the Complete Scores meant to say C sharp which is what it should be for an A7#5 . That said, the Beatles could have been outside the box enough to throw in a C natural even in an A major chord.

Richard said
According to https://www.virtualsheetmusic……-5977.html

that vocal varies between C natural and C# (so the corresponding chord varies between A7 and A7#5).

The score can be played on that webpage for the details.

  

The three part harmony on that link Richard provided has one mystery which I don’t know because of my musical ignorance. And that is the second line, the one in between (pun intended) shows basically all the syllables are the note F, however, the first note of each stanza or measure is denoted natural. Now I’m assuming that this means that ONLY the first note is natural and the rest are to revert to their normal sharp. In the key of D major, there are two sharps, C and F. So that means this middle singing part goes

F natural F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp, F natural F sharp F sharp.

If this is so, that means that he’s not merely clustered closely with the dominant G part which is the top part on the musical notations page, but clustered as close as possible — G and F sharp sung together several times — which is clearly dissonant, and I’m not sure I’m hearing that on the record, but maybe I am.

Now the problem with the other theory, that that first natural sign on the middle singing part indicates that all the F notes in that singing line are to be natural, that means that the note for the word “can” would be F natural which would be sung with the top line F sharp yet another dissonant cluster. I’m going to go with theory number one and assume that they’re singing in that dissonant cluster all along except for the initial notes which go with the words “you” and “in”. By comparison, the bottom singing part with its variation on C natural and C sharp, is less problematic. It’s common in bluesy music for the major third which is a sharp compared to a minor third to be toyed around with by dipping down to its minor third. In fact, the minor third in a major key is one of the main “bluesy” notes. 

I guess that makes sense, given what the notation shows, but it seems weird for that second word (“can”) to be sung as F sharp and F together. The 3rd line C is not problematic. I guess what I’ll have to do next time I come upon a piano (I don’t have one at home) is just play those three parts together simultaneously and see if they sound like the song — or better yet get three singers together to do it faithfully. Or perhaps if someone could make a YouTube where they show 3 singers independently singing those notes, and then show them singing it all together.

Also, it seems unprofessional of that person who did the notation on that middle line at the very beginning — there’s no need to put a sharp on the C note, since it’s in the key of D which already sharps the C — and you can see the C sharp sign like a quarter of an inch away! It’s like the guy who did the notation was worried “oh no, what are people going to do when they see a natural sign on the second note? we better make sure that they…” what? Of course they’re going to assume (correctly) that the first note that DOESN’T have a natural sign must be the normal sharp C.