I listened to The Sicilican Defence this morning and noticed a particular synthesizer phrase in "P-Q3." It starts at ~2:36 and is something like:
There's a ritardando beginning around the seventh measure, and I'm not sure of the note value of that last F.
Some of the phrases in this melody (measures one, three, and five) alternate between progressively lower notes and notes of a fixed pitch. I think this is a feature from baroque music, although the only specific piece that I know has this is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Here it is (alternating with both descending and ascending notes) in the pedal part:
In the line "You can grow a hedge that is vertically straight over ten feet high" in "Pyramania," the phrase "ten feet high" is sung to a group of ascending notes (B C D), musically giving a sense of this height.
While searching for an easy part to figure out yester-day, I noticed two small features in "The Cask of Amontillado," specifically in the line "When you're chained in the dark all alone." "All alone" alliterates, and because there's only one initial sound, there's an illustration of that singularity. "Alone" is sung with a melisma (Eb C D C Bb), musically giving a sense of degree (for "all").
I'm not sure if "the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth" really applies to the album's concept though. The liner notes of the CD re-issue describe the concept as "man's inhumanity to man."
I was going through some old notes last night, and I found one about "Stereotomy" from 7 March that I'd forgotten about. Almost all of the "Turn me to stone" lines are sung to a single pitch: the first two (at ~1:35) are sung to F notes, and the later two (at ~5:10) are sung to A notes. (The last two [at ~5:37] are both sung to more than one pitch). This constancy of pitch musically represents the immobility of being a stone.
Aside from the introduction, my first post for this project was a recording of the palm-muted guitar chords and electric piano phrase in "Eye in the Sky," and I commented that one of the chords "sounds a bit weird, but I don't know if that's because it's wrong or just because the rest of the parts aren't there." It turns out it was wrong.
After I listened to Eye in the Sky last month, I discovered that I'd never written down the electric piano phrase, so I re-learned it (and wrote it down). I had written down the chords, but in revisiting the song, I discovered that what I'd thought was a Bb major is actually a G minor. It doesn't particularly come across in my new recording because it's mostly the bottom three strings of the guitar that are played (G D G').
When I made my recording five years ago, I was limited in my keyboard sounds, but since I got a Nord Electro 5 about two years ago, I can now more accurately reproduce the Wurlitzer that Eric Woolfson played on the track. I added some chorusing and panning too, but I'm not sure if the original has that or not.
Unlike last time where I played the chords for the whole song, this is just the introduction and the first verse. Were it not for my previous mistake in the chord progression, I wouldn't have even recorded that much because all I know of the verses are the chords, and they're a bit boring to listen to on their own.
Here are the chords, which I still might have wrong, but which are at least a bit more accurate than what I used in my last recording:
Introduction/Coda
|: B minor | G major :|
Verses
|: D major | B minor :|
G major | G minor | D major | E major
D major | G major | D major
Choruses
|: D major | F# minor :|
G major | G minor
|: B minor | G major :|
EDIT (29 April): YouTube deleted my video, citing it as "inappropriate content" (!?), so I posted it on Twitter:
In the lines "A dreamer must be / Someone who has more determination than me" in "Inside Looking Out," "determination" is sung with a melisma (F# F# F# F# B B: the "na" is sung with two syllables/notes - F# B), musically giving a sense of that "more."
In "Standing on Higher Ground," in the second of each pair of "Way above it all"s, the "all" is sung with a melisma (G F), musically giving a sense of breadth.
I noted before that in "La Sagrada Familia," "tears" in the line "And for all those years our eyes and ears were filled with tears," is sung with a melisma (D C# B F#) for a sense of amount, but a couple months ago, I discovered that "filled" is also sung with a melisma (Bb A) for a similar effect.
"Tears" is also sung with a melisma in the stand-alone "Filled with tears," although it's the same pitch (F# F#).
In the lines "Risin' on the crest of a natural wave / That never seems to break my way" in "Step by Step," the "way" is sung with a melisma (D D C C, I think), so while "break" is negated, there is a musical sense of fragmentation.
In "Children of the Moon," the line "The seas were empty; there was hunger in the land" exhibits a sort of parallelism: both clauses illustrate a lack. Because "sea" and "land" are opposites, however, this lack is emphasized, and its widespread nature is demonstrated.
I listened to Eye in the Sky yester-day because it was Eric Woolfson's birthday, and I noticed a few things.
In the line "That's how it goes" in the title track, "goes" is sung with a melisma (F# E D), musically giving something of a sense of (metaphorical) movement.
I figured out the chords for "Prime Time" this morning, and while playing along, I noticed a small feature in the lyrics. In the line "Every move I make feels like a winner," the "every" is sung with three syllables, giving a sense of number.
In "Light of the World," "rise" in the line "I can fly so close to the sun that I can not see it rise" is sung with an ascending glissando (D to F), musically giving a sense of its meaning.
In the backing vocals near the end of "In the Real World," "hearts" in the line "Too many lonely hearts" is sung with a melisma (G F# D, I think, and only the first time), musically giving a sense of amount.
In "Limelight," "all" in the line "I'm gonna show them all" is sung with a melisma (F Eb), musically giving a sense of breadth. The last time (~4:20) is an octave higher than the first two (~1:55 and ~3:44).
I still have a handful of notes from Stereotomy and Gaudi from the end of last year that I need to flesh out into posts, which I hope to do over the next month or so.
When I listened to Stereotomy back in December 2018, I noticed that in the title track, "forever" in the line "Stereotomy, we can make it forever" at ~3:04 is sung with a melisma (F Bb A G), musically giving a sense of duration. When I listened to the album again last December, I noticed not only that this feature is repeated at ~4:45, but that it also appears in "Stereotomy Two" (at ~0:17), albeit with a slightly different articulation (F A Bb G).
Recently, I was thinking about the synth phrase at the beginning of "I Robot." I vaguely remembered a comment Alan Parsons had made about the perceived shift in its rhythm, and I eventually tracked this down again in the liner notes in the legacy edition of I Robot:
I played a 7-note sequence which was continuously 'looped' by the synth [the EMS Synthi-A]. I was fascinated by the fact that the sequence could be interpreted in different ways according to where, within the seven notes, the downbeat (or the first beat of a 4 beat bar) was placed. Most people hear this sequence as having a certain rhythmic pattern when it first starts, but without anything on the sequence actually changing, the entire feel changes when the drums enter and establish a new downbeat.
I figured out how this works. When the part fades in, the perceived rhythm is:
(This is two iterations of the sequence; I felt that having more than one would be a better illustration.)
Since there's nothing to indicate where the downbeat is and that C note is held the longest, it seems to occur on the first beat. But actually, that C note is tied across the bar line. The sequence is really:
Last night, I figured out about half of the bass part in "Time" (up until ~2:18, just before the bridge). I was particularly interested in the bit underneath the lines "Who knows when we shall meet again / If ever":
(This is from the second verse; the last measure is a bit different in the first verse.)
Both this bit of the bass part in "Time" and most of the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose" use the octave interval, and that gives a bit of cohesion to The Turn of a Friendly Card.
I was thinking about "Winding Me Up" yester-day and discovered a small feature in the first verse. In the line "There wasn't any doubt," "any doubt" is sung with melismas (D C | C B), so while negated, there's a sense of the broadness of possibility of "any."
