The British Invasion

Fact gathering work sheet.

Use this sheet to make notes to help you fill out your PowerPoint, these notes will only be
the starting point, you will need to add your own information to improve your grade.

These are the sections we will fill out today.

Influences of the style

History…
The USA was bigger than the UK, so they wanted to make their music popular to the
Americans. So they took American genres and put a British twist onto it and sold it back to
Americans to make a lot more money than in the UK. A lot of British invasion bands started
by doing covers of American rock and roll songs. Grew in popularity through the mid 60’s
through the start of the 70’s
The British Invasion – Key Features
Simple song structures and chord progressions
Use of guitar/drums and vocal harmonies (doo wop)
The use of a 7th chord
Key Features 2
Mostly upbeat, short songs with provoking lyrics (example here). The Beatles ‘A day in the
life’ was banned by the BBC for its political lyrics. Many songs were about love, but bands
like The Kinks would use the songs to tell stories, for example ‘waterloo sunset’ tells the
story of people living in a big city and their day to day lives.
Artist Profile 1 – The Beatles

Artists Profile 2 – Own Choice (Or The Kinks if you can’t decide)
Instruments 1
Drum kit- Was used to keep the beat in the song – the back bone of the rhythm section
Electric guitar- The electric guitar would play the solo lines in the songs and these developed
form simple blues solos in the style that came before. Reverb was often used on the guitar
solos to give it the sense of being in a larger room.
Rhythm Guitar- The rhythm guitar often provides the harmony by playing the full chords
Backing vocals- Very important in this style because of the close harmonies to help support
the main vocals
Instruments 2
Bass Guitar- This would often pay a simple role of providing the root of the chord for chord
progression. Sometimes it would play a simple walking bassline, again this was influenced
from blues music.
Lead vocals- Often the main focus of the band, they could be just a singer or they could also
play one of the instruments in the band- in the Beatles John Lennon played guitar and Paul
McCartney played bass
Structure
Verse Chorus structure
Used by bands like the kinks to tell stories
Here you would find an example of a structure of a typical 60’s pop song I would suggest
something like ‘can’t buy me love’ by the Beatles.
Formal structure of [23] "Can't Buy Me Love" Website

Chorus     0:00-0:09
Verse 1     0:09-0:26 Verse 2    
0:26-0:42
Chorus      0:42-0:53
Verse 3     0:53-1:12
Solo           1:12-1:28 Chorus     1:28-1:40
Verse        1:40-1:57
Chorus      1:57-2:11

Middle 8 sections were often the place where the song would modulate
Use of Technology
Overdub- This is where you combine tracks together, for example you can record the
rhythm section live in the room, then on another track you could ‘overdub’ or record vocals
separately, keeping the sound of the drums ect… off the vocals. The only reason you could
do this was because of multi-track recording.
Multitrack recording – as the 60’s continued the more tracks became available. At the end
of the 50’s most studios had 4 tracks to record on so they were limited to what they could
record without bouncing tracks.
Towards the end of the 60’s you had up to 16 individual tracks to record.
Use of Technology 2
Reverb on vocals- Echo chambers (specially designed rooms with a lot of reflective surfaces
in it. You would place a microphone at one end of the room and a speaker at the other the
shape of the room would change how the reverb sounded) were used to create natural
reverb. It made it sound bigger and like it was in a larger room.
Pan- How it was use and what is it. (hint hint- lady Madonna by the Beatles) Song
Tonality
Very simple chord progressions. Bands started to experiment with combining strong (major)
and weak (minor). Influenced by rock and roll and variations on a 12 bar blues. Standard
modulations were common- for example in the middle 8 section would often sound
drastically different to the other sections. For example- they would be minor if the other
sections were major.
Tonality 2
Bands started to experiment with some chart extensions, the use of 7 th chords were used to
make the songs more exciting. (explain a 7th chord)
A normal chord would have notes 1, 3 and 5 for the 7th chord you added the 7th notes of the
scale, this makes the chord more interesting to listen to.
Melodic Features
Catchy simple melodies. Guitars would use a pentatonic scale to solo, borrowed from blues
and rock and roll. The use of hooks is very important in this style- what is a hook??? Good
example
Use of riff on instruments like electric guitar- ‘Norwegian Wood’ is an example of a riff (add
more examples)
Rhythmic Features
4 beats in a bar- designed to be danced to
BPM would vary bit usually around 120 BPM – again to encourage people to dance to the
music
Syncopation- offbeat rhythm/melody (examples)