"The Tell-Tale Heart"

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I listened to Tales of Mystery and Imagination this morning, and I noticed that the bass part during the third part of "The Tell-Tale Heart" has a rhythm that evokes the heartbeat that the narrator of Poe's story and the singer of the song hear.  (This is not the most interesting audio example; it's pretty much just a minute of C notes, but the rhythm is the salient point.)

Last May, while doing a different project, I noted how the ABA form of the piece goes well with the mental states of the speaker/singer, but including that heartbeat rhythm makes it even better.  This isn't the only instance of a lyrically-conscious bass part on the album either; the bass part in "The Raven" has a three-note phrase that's apparently meant to resemble the three syllables of "nevermore."

Gaudi

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While listening to Gaudi earlier this week, I noticed a few lyrical/musical connections.

In "Standing on Higher Ground," some (but - interestingly - not all) of the "standing on higher ground" lines go upwards at the end.  "Ground" has a melisma, and the second syllable is higher, apparently to reflect the difference in elevation.  I actually didn't notice this until I tried to record a version of it yester-day.

In "Money Talks," after the line "You roll the dice," there are rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs in the guitar part, apparently to reflect the tumbling of the dice.

"Standing on Higher Ground"

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Like the crosses inscribed in the guitar part in "Too Late," I'd thought I'd found an-other hidden religious element in "Standing on Higher Ground."  I'd thought that the synth bass part was just three notes (three is an important number in Christianity), but then I learned that part and discovered that it's more than three notes.  So while I was wrong, I still learned part of "Standing on Higher Ground."

However, when I tried recording a version, it ended up sounding terrible.  I couldn't match the tone of the synth, plus I had to play it manually instead of programming it (I have yet to learn how to program things), so the tempo varied a bit.

So I know that synth bass part, the two four-note phrases, and the chords, but until I become more experienced with synthesizers, I won't have a recording to prove it.

"Too Late"

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I listened to Gaudi this morning and discovered a few things.  I'm going to separate them into a few posts over the next couple of days.

The Gaudi album is about Antoni Gaudi, whom I don't really know anything about, but in skimming the Wikipedia article about him, I learned that he put religious images in his work.  The Alan Parsons Project did the same thing in at least one of the songs on Gaudi.

Last year, I read John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven and learned that Bach inscribed crosses in one of his cantatas.  I tried scanning the page in Gardiner's book where he has the notation, but - while legible - it didn't turn out too well:

This same type of cross inscription is present in the recurring guitar phrase in "Too Late."

I had to squish the notation a bit in order to point it out, and since I did the notation myself, it's possible that I don't have the rhythms right.

I looked at the lyrics to see if there was anything that would confirm this (instead of its just being coincidental), and while I didn't find anything, I did notice an interesting bit of alliteration in the lines:

How do you feel when the tables have been turned?
What will you do now the bridges have been burned?

These lines take advantage of the alliteration in two common phrases: "the tables have turned" and "burning bridges."

"No Answers Only Questions"

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This morning, I listened to Vulture Culture.  I have the version with bonus tracks, including "No Answers Only Questions."  I noticed something interesting in this verse:

Why do we fight?
Why do we fall?
Why do we stand there, backs against the wall?
Why don't we change?
Why don't we try?
Why don't we turn round, help the other guy?

These are the lyrics as they're rendered on the APP website, but because of homophones, that third line could also be written as "Why do we stand their backs against the wall?"  "There" changes to "their," and "stand" becomes transitive where before it was intransitive, along with other shifts in syntactical function.

I think that - rendered that second way - it still makes sense within the song.  Instead of asking "Why are we disengaged?" (or "inactive" or "passive" or whatever other word you want to use) it asks, "Why are we scrutinizing others?" which seems to be only a shade away from the first line in the verse ("Why do we fight?").

"Don't Answer Me"

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I listened to Ammonia Avenue to-day, and I noticed a small lyrical thing about the chorus in "Don't Answer Me":

Don't answer me, don't break the silence
Don't let me win
Don't answer me, stay on your island
Don't let me in

I'm pretty sure that the "stay on your island" part is a reference to and an extension of John Donne's "No man is an island."