CHIRP: The Chicago Independent Radio Project

DJ Bylamplight writes

Beatles Mystery Chord Solved By Math

For years, audiophile nerds alike have obsessed over what makes up the opening chord to the Beatle’s song A Hard Day’s Night. To the lay listener it sounds a little odd but to the astute listeners out there it was a source of frustration as the chord is impossible to reproduce on guitars alone.

That’s because George Martin (Beatles producer) added an F note on piano real low in the mix! Supposedly, this was discovered by Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics but a quick search on the web suggests that George Harrison admitted the secret F note once in an interview. Nonetheless, Brown used a common mathematical calculation called the Fourier transform which is also used in pitch bending, time stretching, spectral gating (i.e. to strip noise) and other sound hacks.

At the end of the day, that opening Beatles chord still sounds pretty thick and juicy. Are your ears ready for this?