Guitar & Musician Forums

I swear every one of their songs has like 2 or 3 little moments where they do something unique but the rest is super straightforward. Whether it’s a moment of harmonic/tonal ambiguity, borrowing from the parallel minor, a secondary dominant, weird phrasing on a melody, a key change, whatever. The songwriting never overwhelmingly strange but their songs so consistently have these little moments where they’re breaking from standard diatonic pop songwriting. It’s so cool.

I really want to get more into analysing music and seeing what makes the songs tick. And like you say, The Beatles have such and extensive catalogue of interesting songs that move away from standard diatonics I think this might be the perfect place to start!

Someone recommended “The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles” by Dominic Pedler to me a few years ago and it was the single most helpful book I have ever read in understanding practical music theory.

My undergrad theory teacher was a mega Beatles nerd. It seemed like any basic theory concept he could pull a passage from a Beatles piece out of thin air. I credit with him connecting a lot of theoretical concepts to me actually hearing them / knowing them in songs I had heard.

I think the thing that made them so special regarding songwriting is that they really weren’t able to convey why things sounded good the way they did. Yet they made songs that way anyway. It’s why I always describe music theory as descriptive, and not as a set of rules.

GearNerd wrote: Mon Feb 16, 2026 6:24 pm Someone recommended “The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles” by Dominic Pedler to me a few years ago and it was the single most helpful book I have ever read in understanding practical music theory.

Just checking out this book now. It looks like something that would be really interesting and useful and right up my street!