"Silence and I"

Recently, I was thinking about "Silence and I" and realized that there are some ways in which the vocal melody for the lines "We're two of a kind / Silence and I" matches the meaning.  The lines are sung to musical phrases something like these:

(I'm still not very sure of the key, but I think it's Bb minor.)

Excepting the initial note of the first phrase, the two phrases have the same melodic shape and note values, so there's a parity between the two phrases in the same way that "Silence and I" are "two of a kind."

"Two of a kind" is also represented musically in that (again excepting the initial note of the first phrase) each phrase consists of two pairs of two pitches (Bb & C and C & Db).

"Silence and I"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Last night, I tried figuring out some parts for some songs.  I didn't end up getting anything, but I noticed something about the middle part of "Silence and I."  At about 3:39, there's a three-note phrase (D, Eb, F) where the first two notes are quarter notes and the third is a half note.  It's not sure specifically what instrument it's played on, but I'm pretty sure it's a woodwind (I'd guess flute or clarinet).

That same phrase (albeit in a different key, so it's F, Gb, Ab) is also in "Pyramania."  There, it's the vocal melody for "I had read" (and for "I've been told" and "It's no lie" later in the song).

According to the Alan Parsons Project's website, Andrew Powell did the orchestration for "Silence and I."  While he wasn't involved with "Pyramania," he was involved with other songs on the Pyramid album (and even back to Tales of Mystery and Imagination), so I think he deliberately put in that little quotation as a reference to that earlier APP song.