"One Good Reason"

I ran across the phrase "one good reason" yester-day, which reminded me of the Alan Parsons Project song.  This morning, I figured out the chord progression in order to confirm a suspicion I had.  Unless I'm mistaken, the chords for the verses are something like this (with vertical lines dividing the measures):

C major | C major | C major | C major

C major | C major | C major | C major

Eb major | Eb major | F major | F major

Ab major | F major | C major | C major

C major occurs far more frequently than any other chord, and it's the only chord for the first two lines, where it's held for eight sequential measures.  Because the songs stays on just one chord for so long, there's a sense of the singularity of "one good reason."  Alternatively, there's a sense of the stalled nature of the exchange, with the narrator refusing to do anything until he receives this "one good reason."

This same sort of feature is also present in the coda, where the phrase "one good reason" is repeated over a C major chord.

"One Good Reason"

I was thinking about "One Good Reason" yester-day and noticed a small feature in the bridge.  There's anaphora (the repeated "no") in the line "No win, no lose, no give, and no take," and this provides a sense of the sameness that's mentioned in the previous line:  "I keep making the same mistake."

"One Good Reason"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

An-other one of the parts from Ammonia Avenue that I thought would be pretty easy to figure out is the bass part in "One Good Reason."  The rhythm was actually the hardest part.  This is just the first two verses, although I ended on a D note for the first bridge ("I keep making the same mistake…").  I don't think there's a "proper" bass part for the bridges, but there's a repeated D note in the bottom register of a synth part.

The bass parts during the rest of the song are pretty much the same as those that I have in my recording, so I didn't play through the whole song.