Hacker News Reader

Comment by noman-land | Hacker News Reader

I loved this series a lot. Watching these classic songs just tumble out of them was very magical and electric.

What I loved is the dramatic irony.

Everyone who watches it already knows, note for note, the finished song being crafted. Only they don't. We get to watch the song's creators stumbling towards the light. We feel satisfaction as they approach the "true" sound.

As in a pantomime ("it's behind you!"), John says "attracts me like a cauliflower", and we all silently shout "like no other lover"

Silly ideas can sometimes yield musical dividends. Jack Harkness's theme from Torchwood has a distinct stuttering, marching rhythm; turns out the composer originally scored it for a scene where Jack crashed through a barn wall on a tractor to catch some bad guys and he set the tune to the rhythm of the phrase "here he comes on a ruddy great tractor".

I found their approach to writing lyrics extremely interesting. They're not singing words in the beginning, just syllables and "word shapes". The music is dictating what the words should sound like, and they fill in the meanings behind the word sounds retroactively over time. The lyrics are being molded like a lump of clay where you don't know what you're going to end up with when you first start. Just pushing around clay until it looks nice. Hey, that kinda looks like a nose.

This was my favorite part, the banality of it. The music they made was so transcendent and impactful, it feels as if it must have been made differently by some super-human geniuses. But all they really did was just kinda screw around until something they liked came out, and then they built on it.

I'll never be a Beatle, but it does feel validating that I can at least attempt to write music in exactly the same way they did, even if the results won't be quite as good.

Taste is the secret in most good art: what to put in and leave out.

Yes, and this stood out to me -- "They were much better at saying what they didn’t want to do than at making sensible plans for what they did want to do."

To me, choosing what not to do when you have ideas pouring out all the time is vital.

This is a neat perspective.

I think it can help for avoiding creator's block (more commonly known as "writer's block," but I'm being more general here).

It's easy to avoid getting started because you don't think you have a good enough idea yet. But when the thinking gets long, try just diving in and making something. Now you have something to react to, and you can often quickly identify things you don't like about it.

Then you think of ways to avoid these things you don't like, and dive back in to make the next something. Gradually you fill in the negative space, and after enough iterations are left with something good.

This has always been my mindset on most areas of my life.

When an opportunity in life comes into view, I always focus on what could be a negative result. My friends say that's pessimism, I say it's trying to avoid some types of potential reality. It has served me well for the most part.

The thing I loved about it was that it was no different than any other band practice or rehearsal or writing session. The process is pretty much the same from the unknown teen getting started, right up to the mega-famous Beatles.

To be honest, I expected to like it more than I did. It just felt like a bit much after a while. I'll give the 2nd and 3rd episodes another go at some point.

It's really long, and at a few points (well, stretches) quite boring. But still very interesting and well made. It's just crazy to see how genius pours out of these lads, and how Paul tries to keep everything together and (spoiler alert?) finally succeeds. Also, the dynamics between the individual members, and with Yoko being the de-facto fifth member (in John's eyes) or just quite a distraction for John and generally nuisance (in the other's eyes) are very interesting to witness.

I agree with all that and I expect I'll get around to watching the rest. I just felt it could have been stronger as a more tightly cut film.

I think they could have made different versions because I know some Beatles maniacs that would have watched the unedited footage on a loop.

The way Jackson structured it (day-by-day) made it very amenable to watching a single episode over many days. My wife and I would watch a day or two per night and it took us a couple of weeks to watch the whole series.

I try not to let my expectations influence how I interpret a work. I don't think it's fair to the work.

Maybe it's because I've loved the Beatles for a long time but I found every second of that film to be completely gripping. I could have watched another 8 hours.

The banality is what made it so fascinating to me. How classic songs, that have been drilled into my mind and into the fabric of culture for decades were just bits and pieces floating in the minds of a small collection of people, decisions and circumstances. They just bounce around and snowball until something comes out.

The end result sounds so utterly perfect that it's jarring and exhilarating to see some bored lads shooting the shit and suddenly a masterpiece just falls out of nowhere. Then they just go home and eat dinner. What the fuck.

I couldn’t have said it better. And we also have to acknowledge the incredible, ego-free work Peter Jackson did because the original films and sound are pretty heinous.

Yep. They come to work in the morning. Go to lunch. Play a bit more. Go home for dinner. It’s not 9-5 but it feels weirdly banal.

Sure some of them are likely on drugs or showed up too late from a hangover. But it’s just so.. banal

The 3rd part is a lot of fun. Billy Preston shows up and they start having a really good time in the studio. Then they decide to give a concert on the roof and the staff work to stall the police.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com