Released in February 1965 as the B-side to The Last Time, Play with Fire could very well be the first baroque pop song. There aren't many singles before that contain a harpsichord in that fashion. According to Wikipedia, She's Not There by The Zombies is the first baroque pop song in 1964. While The Zombies would go on to do baroque pop later in their career, I would argue their earlier output was more influenced by jazz and soul. Play With Fire was released before The Beach Boys and The Beatles would go on to use the instrument fairly often in the mid 60s.
I'm 18, I play keyboards and I want to start a band with no guitar (bass, drums, piano), in the style of 60s baroque pop bands like The Zombies, The Kinks, the Beatles, but with a more modern twist. For a point of inspiration, this Stranglers song: https://youtu.be/UZJFFStQemI. If you sing, play drums, or play bass and are interested, let me know!
I'm a rock guitarist. I'm just looking for a sense of direction. What I want to do is be able to do something remotely like what George Martin did for many Beatles songs. Think Yesterday, Strawberry Fields, I am The Walrus. More modern example: Ys by Joanna Newsom. I'd like to work toward this however long it takes and wherever I need to start from
People say study what you want to play but finding George Martin Beatles transcriptions is not the easiest thing in the world much to my confusion. Does google suck? Is there a good database? I did find some YS transcriptions though. Wow, I'm confused as hell about that. I hope it's not just her harp and singing, I didn't look at it hard, but I'm worried about that all the time when looking for transcriptions
Is there a general study curriculum I might get into? Basically I feel like "learn to write 4 part chorales" might not be the thing I should do, because that's baroque and contrapuntal and not necessarily what I'm trying to achieve? Honestly, I find the baroque era of music to be really boring. I get that passage in In My Life was very Bach, but as 'baroque pop' goes, I'm not very interested in that passage.
I love Something Else, VGPS, and tunes like Autumn Almanac and there are quite a few examples that are clearly baroque pop: Two Sisters, Village Green, etc...
Just trying to see if I'm missing any! I love it when they play in this style
