01.21.10 by Rich

Information Design…Meet The Beatles

Science can enhance our experience of art- have you seen Avatar?- but it can also inform our understanding of it. For example, Information Design, pioneered by Edward Tufte and others in the 1970s and particularly en vogue these days, is a medium of processing info graphically. We recently stumbled across this example, Charting The Beatles, an exploration of Beatles music through infographics. And, as fans of both (the band and infographics), we thought we’d share.

The project is an open collaborative effort to visually chart the wealth of information that exists on the Beatles. Inarguably the most celebrated band in popular music, the band produced a large body of work, inspired countless biographies and studies of lyrics, sales statistics, recording sessions, personal conflicts and more. So the data that exists to chart produces no shortage of compelling graphics. Here are a few examples taken from the project’s site.

Authorship and Collaboration

This graph (based on authorial attributions quantified by William J. Dowdling in the book Beatlesongs) traces songwriting contributions within the band.

NOTES: Color patterns offer clues about the band’s gradual fracturing as each member becomes more independent. Red stalks (signifying jointly written songs) decrease in the second half of the timeline; the split-color bars give way to solid bars of a single color. George Harrison also began to compose more music as he matured as a songwriter, signified by the increase in green bars (Lennon and McCartney’s lack of support through Harrison’s development is widely cited as a factor contributing to the band’s eventual breakup).

Song Keys

The shape of these pictographs is defined by what keys the songs were recorded in for each album. The relative distribution of keys (with mid-song key changes considered) have been mapped over a graph framework based on the Circle of Fifths. The pictographs are in order of album recording.

NOTES: The differences between each pictograph reflect the different relationships between songs within each album. For example, the pictograph for Abbey Road hints at the tonal architecture of the Abbey Road Medley, as the pictograph’s shape has a more narrow pull towards A-major/minor and the home key of C-major.

Earlier pictographs gravitate towards the upper right, the keys where the standard pop/rock blues I-IV-V chord structure is easier to finger on a guitar. Later pictographs fan out as the band’s use of song keys became more varied, and as more songs were composed on the piano.

The data are based on the song key appendix in Ian McDonald’s book, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties.

Working Schedule, 1963-1966

This graphic (the “Tufte Gently Weeps” edition) compares the Beatles main activities from the years of 1963 to 1964. There are parallels in timing between each year, but the similarities between ’64 and ’65 are particularly notable.

“[1965] was a curious year for the Beatles, one in which they consolidated all the successes and excesses of 1964 by virtually repeating everything already achieved. They made a second feature-film, Help!, they toured North America…and Britain again…John even had a second book published.”

-from Mark Lewisohn’s book, The Complete Beatles Chronicle

Join this project

These pieces are just four examples of a larger open collaborative project currently in the works for chartingthebeatles.com. If you are interested in contributing Beatles infographics (anything is fair game) or being involved in this project in any other way, please contact me at info@chartingthebeatles.com. Visit the Charting the Beatles flickr group for more info.

• Tags: Design, Have you checked out...?, Inspiration, Technology
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