PMCPP PRESENTS: Getting Better

GETTING BETTER
PMCPP Analysis #19
Key: C Major
Rhythm: Chunk

This song's piano part is pretty much impossible to hear in the mix unless you're listening really carefully, but trust me it's there. If you actually manage to hear the electric keyboard in between all the overly chime-y guitars and loud seizure inducing bass part, you might want to unhear it anyway. Here we goooooo!

THE PIANO: The piano isn't actually playing throughout the entire song like most Paul songs, which usually entail smacking the piano in straight quarter notes for whole 4 minute periods. Instead, this piano part is just consisted of 2 basic chords repeated in the Treble clef (there's no bass part for the keyboard) every... couple of measures. Weee. It's like Paul started writing a piano part, quit halfway through, and then couldn't be buggered - that's a word - to take the random chords lying all over the place out of the mix.

The chords in question are a C Major chord in the 2nd inversion (G-C-E) and a D Minor chord in the same inversion. (A-D-F) These two chords are played in seemingly random orders as the song goes along. After a looooong while an E Minor chord and an F Major chord are added - both also in that inversion - but only played a couple measures a piece in the song. The C and D chords are still going almost the entire time, even when the actual chord implied by the song isn't a C or D. They appear in the same measure during a G chord, for crying out loud!

Hilariously, and as if to prove how god-damn easy this song is, the entire sheet music for this song contains almost nothing but repeat signs in the piano line.

LAZINESS IN SONGWRITING: Well, it's in the key of C. Not even a fun bluesy version of C, but just regular straight forward C. Over a pedal point at parts of the song, no less! To give Paul the slightest of credits, I can at the very least say he didn't make the Pedal the entire song works over a C as well. If he had, I would probably have shot myself in the writing of this analysis.

The entire song works over a pedal of G, which might have just been Paul trying to trick us into thinking he was using a sharp or something, somewhere in the tune. There's no sharps to be found though, don't bother looking. In fact, in a move that makes him LOOK like he's trying to avoid anything fun to play, he made the main chord progression as follows;

C-Dm-Em-F-G.

Yeah.

Our friend Paul couldn't be buggered - I'm sticking with that damn word! - to write a bass part either. He literally just made it up as he was going along. Funny enough, he couldn't think of anything better than two G's leaping up a couple octaves apart.

WHY PAUL GOT AWAY WITH IT: I guess people realized the album would be "Getting Better" after this song ended.