"Limelight"

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).

"Limelight"

Last week I learned the bass part* for "Limelight," but because that's the only part of the song I know, I didn't bother recording it.  I did notate it though.  The standard disclaimers that this isn't official and that I might be wrong apply:

While notating this, I found a few parts that connect to the lyrics.

For the line "Holding on isn't always easy" (later "Holding on wasn't always easy"), there are rests, almost as if the music can't hold on either:

For the second line in that couplet, "I ain't gonna change my mind" (later "Nothing can change my mind"), the bass plays only Bb notes.  There's a constancy of pitch, reflecting the determination in those sentiments:

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*There are actually two bass parts in "Limelight."  In the "credits" section on the APP website, there's the distinction between just "bass" (played by David Paton) and "fretless bass" (played by Ian Bairnson).  On the CD re-issue of Keats, there's a bonus track that's an interview with Bairnson, and in response to the interviewer's question about his bass playing, he says:

You do actually hear some of my bass playing from time to time, for example on "Limelight," an Alan Parsons track.  David played bass on that, but after he'd left and gone home, I was in doing [the] guitar solo and bits and pieces like that, and at the very end of the song "Limelight," there's that kind of piece where it, where the tempo disappears.  You know, it's just, just before the last line: "After all the years of waiting..." da di da di da.  That stuff.  And Alan said, "Oh, we need something in these gaps," so we hired a fretless bass, and I played the bass licks in between these bits.

I haven't learned that part yet; what I notated above is David Paton's bass track.

"Limelight"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to the second disc of The Essential Alan Parsons Project (which I started yester-day), and I found two things to write about.  The first is pretty simple:  in the song "Limelight" (originally from Stereotomy), there are the lines "Limelight, don't let me slip right through your fingers / There's a long way to fall" (when it's repeated later, it's "don't let it slip right through your fingers").  Both times, there's a melisma for "fall," where the later notes are lower in pitch than the earlier ones, so the word itself is falling in pitch as it's sung.