The Beatles: Differences Between John And Paul Mccartney

The Beatles are debatably the greatest musicians to ever step on this planet. Their music always sounds soothing to the errors and seems to bring delight to every listener’s ears. As far as the average person knows, there was never time when the Beatles argued or were on the verge of splitting up due to conflict between the members. That is without regarding the transition from Pete Best to Ringo Starr on the drums, which was just for musical purposes. When you think of Beatles music, a person thinks of quality music with wonderful melodies and music that is just purely amazing. Behind the music making there was actually a strange confliction between the two main people of the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Both John and Paul had …show more content…
As one author puts this battle, “an ongoing more-or-less-friendly tussle between two contrasting stylists”(Macauthor, 47). The two artists most distinctive differences was their melodies that each one mainly produced, Paul producing more vertical melodies and John creating more horizontal melodies. The different melodies are very prominent in the music that each one produced throughout their careers. The other main difference between John and Paul was their extremely different personalities and how their personalities came to impact their music. Through the investigation of the two musician’s melody styles and personalities, the average person will be able to see that there was a constant struggle between the two musicians that was debatably beneficial or detrimental. As mentioned above, John’s melodies were more horizontal. A horizontal melody consists of “smaller range[s] of melodic intervals, closer to the intonations …show more content…
A horizontal melody cannot stand on its own, while a vertical melody can stand strong on its own. Listening to the songs mentioned, should help explain with the comprehension of this concept as all the songs portray a strong John, horizontal, influence or a Paul, vertical, influence. If the concept is hard to grasp through the engagement of listening, the sheet music provides a great opportunity to assess the characteristics of different melodies. Seeing that John’s music centers around one note, the sheet music is rather stagnant with little fluctuations giving the viewer the impression of horizontal notes. Overall, it’s noticeable that these two musicians dealt with melodies in a very different manner and it can be distinguishable when listening to their musical