In my opinion blues is pentatonic music, like rock, soul and many other music genres which can be found around the world. Based on the minor sound, sadness over major.
If you look at our 12 tones. Look at the piano keyboard, play all white keys and you are in western modal music territory. In the key of C. Now only play the black keys, you're in the pentatonic world of Eb minor pentatonic. So Eb minor penta is like the outside of the C. If you start building chords based on Eb minor pentatonic you quickly will find stuff like I IV V which simple sound very logical and strong. But also playing I and II sounds cool. In the pentatonic world things are a little different indeed. In my opinion the thing about pentatonics is that a flat 7 chord is never a dominant chord. It can be a I, IV, V, but also a bIII for example. Just pick one note out of the pentatonic scale and make it a major flat 7.
The Beatles were in my opinion super creative to blend both the blues with western music. Elvis is just pentatonics, blues stuff. But in Beatles songs some parts are pentatonic/blues and other parts are western classic. So they switch between these things like they are switching keys.
As for Beatles analyses, this is the best thing I have ever found:
Super interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing this!
In my opinion blues is pentatonic music, like rock, soul and many other music genres which can be found around the world. Based on the minor sound, sadness over major.
If you look at our 12 tones. Look at the piano keyboard, play all white keys and you are in western modal music territory. In the key of C. Now only play the black keys, you're in the pentatonic world of Eb minor pentatonic. So Eb minor penta is like the outside of the C. If you start building chords based on Eb minor pentatonic you quickly will find stuff like I IV V which simple sound very logical and strong. But also playing I and II sounds cool. In the pentatonic world things are a little different indeed. In my opinion the thing about pentatonics is that a flat 7 chord is never a dominant chord. It can be a I, IV, V, but also a bIII for example. Just pick one note out of the pentatonic scale and make it a major flat 7.
I've written a piece about this years ago:
https://melodiefabriek.com/music-theory/western-classical-music-and-the-blues/
The Beatles were in my opinion super creative to blend both the blues with western music. Elvis is just pentatonics, blues stuff. But in Beatles songs some parts are pentatonic/blues and other parts are western classic. So they switch between these things like they are switching keys.
As for Beatles analyses, this is the best thing I have ever found:
https://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-a.shtml
It was very exciting for me to discover that you can loop any two dominant 7th chords over a funk groove and it will sound good.
I love those Alan Pollack analyses, and have referred to them many times.