"Eternity Road"

About a year and a half ago, I thought that there was some resemblance between the guitar solo in "Eternity Road" and the vocal melody in "Lovely to See You."  Recently, I finally got around to looking into it.

The guitar solo in "Eternity Road" has two different parts, separated in the left and right channels.  The last four measures are something like this (I'll admit that I'm a bit unsure of the A in the last measure of the top line):

Usually, there's a glissando between the first two notes of each measure.  In tablature, the parts are something like this:

Left-channel (top line):

B|-6~5-3---|---------|---------|---------|
G|-------5-|-4~2-0-2-|---------|---------|
D|---------|---------|-3~2-0---|-----2-0-|
A|---------|---------|-------3-|-0-3-----|

Right-channel (bottom line):

B|---------|---------|-6~5-3---|---------| G|-5~4-2-0-|---------|-------5-|-4~2-0-2-| D|---------|-3~2---0-|---------|---------| A|---------|-----3---|---------|---------|

The vocal melody in the verses of "Lovely to See You" is something like this:

Really, the similarity is one of rhythm, not so much of tonality. Each measure consists of an initial group of three eighth notes and then a longer note (starting on the "and" of the second beat) that lasts for the remainder of the measure (or, in the case of "Lovely to See You," for most of it; there need to be breaks for breathing). It's worth pointing out, though, that roughly the second measure in "Lovely to See You" (corresponding to the lyrics "For passing my way" in the first verse) is entirely conjunct, as are most of the phrases in this section of the solo in "Eternity Road."

"Another Morning"

Yester-day, I was thinking about the line "Yesterday's dreams are tomorrow's sighs" in "Another Morning" and realized that there are some musical elements that highlight the contrasts between "yesterday" and "tomorrow" and between the eager anticipation of "dreams" and the reflective disappointment of "sighs."  The first half of the line ("Yesterday's dreams") is sung to a generally ascending melody (C D E D D, with the "-day" of "yesterday's" sung with a melisma, E D), but the second half ("are tomorrow's sighs") is sung to a generally descending melody in a lower register (B B B A G B A, with "tomorrow's" also sung with a melisma, in a bit of parallelism).  The dynamics also change:  "Yesterday's dreams" is sung forte, as if full of energy, but "are tomorrow's sighs" is sung more piano, even diminishing near the end of the line.

"Have You Heard - Part 2"

I recently re-encountered a Biblical text that "Have You Heard - Part 2" seems to echo.  Previously, I wasn't convinced that this similarity was anything more than coincidence, but I felt now that I should at least note it.  In Matthew 13:24, Jesus starts telling His disciples a parable:  "He put another parable before them, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.'"  Much of the same vocabulary appears in the line "Scatter good seed in the fields" in "Have You Heard - Part 2."

"After You Came"

I listened to Every Good Boy Deserves Favour yester-day and noticed a small feature in "After You Came."  In the lines "So you just have to laugh / When it hurts so much," "hurts" is sung with a melisma (B A), giving a sense of degree (for "so much").

"Dawn Is a Feeling"

Last night, I learned the bass part for the verses of "Dawn Is a Feeling."  To this, I could add some of the piano part, which I learned in March 2018.  I made a short recording of just one verse:

I used the "Grand Lady D" piano sound on my Nord Electro 5D, recorded in mono.

I also discovered that I'd misunderstood the meter of the song.  Before, I knew only the piano arpeggiations, so I thought the song was in 3/4, but learning the bass part made me realize that those piano arpeggiations are actually triplets and that the song is really in a slow 4/4 (although I think there's an odd measure in the verses that has only two beats), so some of my previous comments may not be valid.

"Nights in White Satin"

Yester-day, I was thinking about the poem that's spoken at the end of "Nights in White Satin," specifically these lines:

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,

Lonely man cries for love and has none.

New mother picks up and suckles her son,

Senior citizens wish they were young.

(That's how they're formatted in the CD liner notes.)

I realized that there's a contrast here that highlights the solitude of the lonely man.  The lovers are a pair; the mother and son are a pair; and the senior citizens - while they may be separate from each other - are united in their common wish; but the lonely man is by himself.

"In the Beginning"

I'm pretty sure I noticed before that in "In the Beginning," the phrase "our great computer" is spoken more loudly than the preceding and following words, but I realized yester-day that this change in dynamics highlights that exalted status.

"Question"

Since I finished transcribing the lyrics in the CD booklet from On the Threshold of a Dream, I've moved on to A Question of Balance (I'd already done To Our Children's Children's Children).  Last night, I transcribed "Question" and noticed polysyndeton (the repeated "and") in the lines "With a thousand million questions / About hate and death and war."  It's only a slight use of this rhetorical device, but to some degree, it provides a sense of amount (the "thousand million" from the previous line).

"Have You Heard - Part 2"

Yester-day, I finally finished transcribing the lyrics from the CD booklet from On the Threshold of a Dream.  While copying the lyrics for "Have You Heard - Part 2," I realized something about the line "Scatter good seed in the fields."  Each syllable in the line is sung to a different pitch, and as a whole, the pitches span more than an octave (A B C D E G B).  Musically, then, there's a sense of the breadth and extending of that "scatter[ing]."

"In the Beginning"

This morning, I started transcribing the lyrics from the booklet of On the Threshold of a Dream into Google Documents so that they're easier to reference.  So far, all I've done is "In the Beginning," but in transcribing it, I noticed something:  the insistently repeated rhymes in "I've miles / And miles / Of files / Pretty files..." and "Face piles / And piles / Of trials / With smiles" help provide a sense of abundance in both of these instances.