"Don't Hold Back"

Recently, I learned the bass part for a section of "Don't Hold Back."  I'd already learned the chords, so I could put the two together and make a short recording.  This is the verse starting at ~2:31, the first half of which is the guitar solo.  The other verses are almost the same; the last two measures are all that's different.

"Damned If I Do"

I listened to Eve yester-day and noticed an interesting feature in "Damned If I Do":  after the line "But each time you walk away," there's a diatonically ascending phrase in the electric piano part (G A Bb C D Eb), and because it's step-wise, there's a musical sense of this "walk[ing]."

"Pyramania"

I listened to Pyramid yester-day and noticed an interesting feature in the verses of "Pyramania," particularly the second verse.  The meaning kind of spills over the line breaks, so I'm not sure about the best way to format it, but it's something like:

I've been told someone in the know can be sure that his luck is as

Good as gold, money in the bank, and you don't even pay for it

If you fold, a dollar in the shape of the pyramid that's printed on the back

There are a number of groups of three here.  The three-syllable clauses or phrases "I've been told," "Good as gold," and "If you fold" are each set apart from the rest of the line because they rhyme with each other and because they're sung with longer note values (usually two quarter notes and a half note, in contrast to the multiple eighth notes that follow).  Unique to the second verse, these three syllables are also three individual words, and, of course, there are also three lines in the verse (as I've formatted it, at least).

These various threes in the structure of the verses reflect the three sides of the pyramid, which is the theme of the song.

"The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part One)"

Recently, a clip from an interview with Sally Woolfson was posted on the Alan Parsons Project's social media accounts.  (Here are the links to Twitter and Instagram, and here are links to the first and second parts of the full interview [from 2020] on YouTube.)  "The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part One)" is used as background music in the clip, and while listening to it, I realized that in the lines "And not all the king's horses and all the king's men / Have prevented the fall of the unwise," the phrases "all the king's horses" and "all the king's men" are sung to notes of all different pitches (F E D C A and D C Bb A, respectively).  This provides a sense of the entirety and breadth of those "all"s.

"Separate Lives"

I listened to Vulture Culture yester-day and noticed an interesting feature in "Separate Lives."  In the lines "'Cause we don't see eye to eye / And we can't stand face to face," the phrases "eye to eye" and "face to face" are sung so that the two "eye"s and the two "face"s are sung to different pitches.  (Each phrase is sung to the notes F# G E.)  Even musically, then, there's a sense of this disparity.