"Another Morning"

I listened to Days of Future Passed yester-day because it may have been the anniversary of its release (on their social channels, the Moody Blues said it was, but the liner notes of the 2008 CD re-issue say that the album was released on the 11th).  In any case, I was thinking about "Another Morning" even before I listened to the album and realized a small thing about it:  in the lines "Time seems to stand quite still / In a child's world, it always will," "will" is sung with a melisma (B A F# E) musically giving a sense of duration for that "always."

"Tuesday Afternoon"

If an internet source I found is to be trusted, it was fifty years ago to-day that the Moody Blues played at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.  That was also a Sunday, so now I finally understand why one of the "afternoon"s in that version of "Tuesday Afternoon" is changed to "Sunday afternoon."

"Dawning Is the Day"

I listened to A Question of Balance yester-day because it was the fiftieth anniversary of its release, and then I learned the Moog and flute parts in "Dawning Is the Day."

There are actually eight measures of Moog before this, but I didn't think they would be interesting to listen to on their own (the Moog just plays arpeggios).  I don't yet have a Moog, so I used a synthesizer sound on my keyboard.  I also used the mellotron flute sound instead of actual flute.

The liner notes of the CD re-issue explain that "How Is It (We Are Here)" was Mike Pinder's "first use of an early Moog synthesiser."  I'm assuming that the same instrument was used for "Dawning Is the Day," but I don't know specifically what model.  I would guess either the IIIp or the Minimoog.

As an interesting side note, I discovered a couple years ago that Graeme Edge is quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for Moog.

"Love and Beauty"

Yester-day, I figured out the chords in the verses in "Love and Beauty" and discovered that they're extremely similar to a section of the chords in "Go Now."  "Go Now" is in Ab major and in 3/4 time, and the chords for the first half of the verse are:

Ab major | C minor | F minor | Ab major | Db major | Bb minor | Eb major

This section is then repeated (although the Eb major lasts only one measure the second time).  With simplified note values and a simplified bass part, it's something like:

I think "Love and Beauty" is also in Ab major (although I'm not certain, and I think there's a key change for the chorus), but it's in 4/4.  The second half (or so) of the verses has this chord progression:

C minor | Ab major | C minor | F minor | Ab major | Db major | Eb major

Excepting the first C minor, this is only one chord different (it lacks the Bb minor).  Again, with simplified note values and a simplified bass part, it's something like:

Provided I've figured these parts out correctly, they both have a diatonic descent in the bass register until they skip down to Bb and then up to Eb, and the first few chord voicings alternate between the root position (first, third, fifth) and the second inversion (fifth, root, third) to mirror this.

"Love and Beauty" was written by Mike Pinder, and according to the liner notes of the 2008 re-issue of Days of Future Passed (with bonus tracks), it was among the first songs that "revealed that the band had left their old R&B-influenced style behind."  The similarities of these chord progressions don't seem to bear that out, however.  It seems that in starting to write songs that forged the band's own identity (rather than continuing on with R&B covers), Pinder - whether consciously or not - went back to the chords from "Go Now" as a model for his own composition.

"Nights in White Satin"

I haven't been very active on this blog lately, so I thought I should post something.  A couple years ago, I'd started writing out the flute solo in "Nights in White Satin" in notation.  I finally finished it this morning.  I tried to be precise in the note values, and I discovered a note I'd missed (so my notation is more accurate than the recording I made), but I still wouldn't guarantee that what I have is completely accurate.

"True Story"

Last week, I learned the chords for "True Story," and I realized something about the song I hadn't noticed while just listening to it.  I'm pretty sure that much of the guitar part uses the Bo Diddley beat.  In an effort to confirm this, I listened to all of the Bo Diddley in my music collection and did some research on the internet, but I couldn't find anything that defined it clearly enough to make me confident in my assessment.

"Watching and Waiting"

Yester-day I figured out the chords for "Watching and Waiting," and I noticed a musical feature that connects to the lyrics in this section:

'Cause here there's lots of room for doing
The things you've always been denied
So look and gather all you want to
There's no one here to stop you trying

The chord progression here is |: G major | D minor | G major | F major | C major | D major :|.  I'm pretty sure the song is in C major, so that D major chord contains a F# accidental.  That foreign tonality musically represents "the things you've always been denied."

"Another Morning"

Recently, I was thinking about the mellotron brass phrase near the beginning of "Another Morning" (at ~0:24), and I realized something that I think I'd noticed a while ago but had forgotten about.

First, here's that phrase (I should note that I'm not entirely confident about my notation):

This phrase is just an arpeggiation of an A major chord (inverted so that - in ascending order - the notes are E A C# E), and this is a common feature of bugle calls.

For comparison, here's "Assembly":

and here's "First Call":

While both of these are in C major, they're made up of notes with the same sort of arpeggiation (G C E G).

I don't think the mellotron brass phrase in "Another Morning" is an actual bugle call, but it's certainly characteristic of one.