"The Tell-Tale Heart"

I listened to Tales of Mystery and Imagination earlier and noticed something about "The Tell-Tale Heart."  Even before I started this project, I noticed that the ternary structure of the song mirrors the mental state of the narrator.  In the first section, the narrator is paranoid because of the old man's eye, and to reflect this, there's the standard rock song instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums, along with a raucous vocal.  In the middle section, after the narrator has killed the old man, he calms down.  The instrumentation becomes lighter (with strings and woodwinds), and the vocal is smoother.  Once the narrator starts to hear the old man's heart beating again, he becomes distraught, and the instrumentation returns to what it was in the first section.

Listening to the song this evening, I noticed that this change in mental state is also illustrated in the rhyme scheme.  For the most part, the first and third sections have an ABCB rhyme scheme; the sounds at the end of each line bounce around in the same manner as the narrator's addled mind.  In the second section, however, the rhyme scheme is AAA; it's stable and consistent, as if the narrator has found peace of mind.

"The Raven"

I figured out the melody for the vocoder part in the first two verses of "The Raven" to-day* and noticed a motif.  I thought I'd mentioned this before, but I couldn't find it in any old posts: in the first verse the bass part has a three-note figure (usually A notes), which is apparently supposed to represent the three syllables of the raven's "Nevermore."  There are also three-note figures of the same pitch in the vocoder melody.

I might have the notes' positions within the measures wrong, but the first verse is something like:

The first measures in the second and fourth lines have three C notes and three A notes respectively.  Like the bass part, these three-note figures seem to represent (or maybe even foreshadow) the three-syllables of "Nevermore."  Additionally, that this vocoder melody and the bass part both have three-note figures of the same pitch gives the song some cohesion.

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*It wasn't until drafting this post that I discovered that I'd already figured it out once.  I'd forgotten it and hadn't written it down though, so it was like learning it from scratch.

"What Goes Up"

I'd forgotten about this, but in looking through some notes I made, I discovered that a couple weeks ago (11 July), I realized that the first "What goes up" in "What Goes Up" ascends (C C Eb), musically illustrating that "go[ing] up."

The following "Must come down" isn't sung to a descending phrase (it's Bb Bb C), but that phrase as a whole is lower than the phrase to which "What goes up" is sung.  Similarly, "What must rise" is sung to an ascending phrase (C C Eb), and "Must fall" is sung to a descending phrase (F D).

When I referenced the song just now to find specific notes, I also discovered that it contains the phrase "writing on the wall."  As I mentioned with "Children of the Moon" (which also contains this phrase), "the writing on the wall" ultimately comes from Daniel 5 in the Bible.

"Old and Wise"

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to Eye in the Sky yester-day is that the end of the line "And the sadness would be lifted from my eyes" in "Old and Wise" ascends, as if to portray that "lift[ing]" musically.  "Lifted from my eyes" is sung to the phrase Bb Bb C D Eb Eb ("my" is sung with a melisma).

"Step by Step"

This morning, I listened to Eye in the Sky and started thinking about the backing vocals in the choruses of "Step by Step."  Specifically, I was wondering about the intervals between the pitches (I think I may have wondered about this before, but I couldn't find any notes I'd written to myself about it).  This afternoon, I figured out the melodies, and I discovered that - for one of the voices, at least - those backing vocal phrases are all conjunct melodies.  Each pitch is either the same as the preceding pitch or ascends or descends by a second (whole steps and half steps), so the "step by step" in the lyrics is represented musically.

As always, there's the disclaimer that I might be wrong, but I think the melodies are something like this:

The lyrics are:

Step by step
Move a little closer to me
Step by step
One day at a time
Move, move, move
Move a little closer to me
Step by step

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

I learned some of the flute phrase at the beginning of "The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part One)" to-day, and I noticed that it has some similarity with a section of the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose."  Here's the flute phrase (I think I have all but the last two measures):

(I'm not sure of the extent, but at least some of this is doubled on harpsichord.)

The majority of this phrase is just a diatonic descent that skips between octaves.  This same sort of feature is in a section of the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose":

(Of course, there's the disclaimer for both of these that I might have the part wrong.)

The rhythms are quite different, but they're both diatonic descents that skip between two octaves.  To some degree, using this same technique in two songs gives The Turn of a Friendly Card album a bit of cohesion.  I feel it worth mentioning that "May Be a Price to Pay" and "The Gold Bug" are also musically related as are - of course - "The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part One)" and "The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part Two)."

[For what it's worth, I've previously written about this section of the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose" and its resemblance to one of Bach's orchestral suites.]

"Lucifer"

I learned a part for "Lucifer" to-day, and while it's not listed among the instruments in the credits on the Alan Parsons Project's website, I think it's kantele.  It first appears at ~1:42 and is repeated at ~3:02.  I was writing out the notation as I learned the part, and it reminded me of the kantele part in "I Robot," so I found my notation for that and compared the two.

Here's what I think is a kantele in "Lucifer":

And here's the kantele part in "I Robot" (starting ~4:26):

There's a bit of similarity in the melodies, but only in that there are a fair number of conjunct note groups (more in "Lucifer" than in "I Robot").  The main similarity is rhythm.  In both, almost every other measure consists of a whole note that's tied to a note in the following measure.

Of course, both "Lucifer" and "I Robot" are also instrumental tracks that start their respective albums, so this might be an intentional resemblance.

"Children of the Moon"

The Alan Parsons Project page on Facebook posted scans of an article about the new Eye in the Sky boxset.  One of the pictures in the article shows some of Eric Woolfson's hand-written lyrics, including those for "Children of the Moon."  I realized something about the first line ("Pay no attention to the writing on the wall") that should have been obvious a long time ago.  While the phrase "the writing on the wall" has taken on a broader application, it ultimately comes from the Bible, specifically Daniel 5, in which a hand writes on a wall in the king's palace and Daniel interprets the writing.

"Somebody Out There"

A couple days ago, I learned some of the guitar parts for "Somebody Out There."  I recorded just the second chorus because there are two guitar tracks there:

The first chorus doesn't have that second part, and the choruses near the end of the song are slightly different (although I haven't lookt into the specifics yet).

I also re-learned the synth parts that I recorded last October, and I'm not very confident that what I had was correct.  I played only single notes for one of the parts, and now I'm pretty sure that there are at least pairs of notes, so I didn't include those this time.

"Since the Last Goodbye"

Last night I learned the bass part for one section of "Pipeline," so now I know at least a little bit of a part for every song on Ammonia Avenue (although I haven't recorded all of them because many are fragmentary).  I listened to Ammonia Avenue to-day and noticed a small thing about "Since the Last Goodbye."  The "falling" in the line "Remember all the leaves were falling" is sung to the notes C# B B, so there's a descent in the music (albeit a small one) to mirror the descent mentioned in the lyric.

"The Ace of Swords"

Last month, I learned the bass and string parts (or at least one of the string parts) for the introduction in "The Ace of Swords," so I added them to the harpsichord and oboe parts I already knew.  Of course, after I recorded this, I realized that I played the string part an octave too low.  There's still a clavinet part I have to learn, so once I get that, I'll update this again and try to remember to put the string part in the correct octave.

Instead of trying to match the original recording, I just set up a click track and played the parts to that, which is why my recording doesn't have the ritardando at the end.

"The Eagle Will Rise Again"

Back in March, I figured out the ascending, arpeggiated keyboard part in "The Eagle Will Rise Again" (I'm still not exactly sure what instrument it's played on, but I think it's virginal).  I've been slowly writing out the notation for it (doing it piecemeal), and I recently remembered that (back in June) I figured out the high violin part in the fourth verse.  I haven't been recording examples unless I know at least two parts, and here I've had two parts for "The Eagle Will Rise Again" for a few months.

My recording is the third verse (just the keyboard part) and the fourth verse (the keyboard part and the violin part).  The closest I could get to virginal was the harpsichord setting on my keyboard, and I used the violin setting for the violin part, which is why I don't have the glissandi between some notes.