"And My Baby's Gone"

Yester-day, I was thinking about the guitar solo in "And My Baby's Gone."  I think it's something like:

Note that since the guitar is played through a volume pedal and the notes fade in and out, the values here are approximate.

Since I figured out the part earlier this year (and perhaps even before then), I thought it odd that the last two measures have no notes.  (Admittedly, there may be one note there that I'm missing, but it's so faint that it's basically negligible.)  I realized yester-day that this lack of notes may be significant.

Because the second line had been following what the first line established (the fifth and sixth measures have the same rhythm and the same intervals as the first and second), the omission of the longer notes in the seventh and eighth measures is conspicuous.  This prominent musical absence mirrors the narrator's prime concern:  "My baby's gone."

"Cities"

I figured out the chords for "Cities" last night and noticed that the progression in the chorus musically reflects the description of "all around."  Provided that what I have is correct, the chord progression for that section is:

E major | A minor

D major | G major

C major | F major

B major | E minor 

The root notes of these chords move through the circle of fifths (up until the B major, at least), and the broad range of these modulations complements the breadth of "all around."

"Are You Sitting Comfortably"

A couple days ago, I learned the chords for the verses of "Are You Sitting Comfortably."  Obviously, they're not strummed as in my example, but what I have is a start, at least.

To the chords, I could add some of the flute parts, which I figured out in March 2018.  I'm still not a very good flute player, but those parts turned out better than I expected.

I used the same flute for both parts, but I think the lower part should actually be on alto flute.  In the liner notes of the previous album (In Search of the Lost Chord), Ray Thomas is credited with both 'C' flute and alto flute.

"I Don't Mind"

When I listened to The Magnificent Moodies last week, I noticed that at the end of "I Don't Mind," "bewildered" in the line "Why'd you leave me, why'd you leave me oh so bewildered?" is sung so that the first syllable (rather than the second) is emphasized.  This odd pronunciation mirrors the narrator's confusion.

Denny Laine's Instagram post about the anniversary of the album's release notes that "I Don't Mind" is a James Brown song.  I hadn't known this before.  It turns out that I actually had Brown's version in my collection, but I hadn't listened to it yet.  When I did, I discovered that this feature isn't present there; it's specific to the Moodies' version.  (This line isn't even in Brown's version.)  It's worth noting, though, that Brown does this same thing in his "Bewildered" (from the same year as "I Don't Mind" - 1961), although there he emphasizes the third syllable.

"Come Back (I Don't Want to Go on without You)"

According to Denny Laine's Instagram post, yester-day was the anniversary of the release of the first Moody Blues album.  I listened to it and found a couple things to note.  I still have some research to do on one song, but here's a feature I noticed in the first verse of "Come Back (I Don't Want to Go on without You)."  The lead and backing vocals both sing the first two lines ("I don't want to / Go on without you"), but the backing vocals and the instruments drop out for part of the next line ("It's so bad to be alone").  Since this leaves just a single voice, that "be[ing] alone" is illustrated musically.

"Tortoise and the Hare"

I figured out the chords for "Tortoise and the Hare" last night, and I was reminded of a post I wrote about the song a little over two years ago.  I noted that the "heavy"s in the lines "And your load is so heavy" and "While your load was so heavy" are sung with a descending melisma (F F Eb C), giving a sense of being pushed down by that weight.  Alternatively, because these "heavy"s are preceded by "so"s, those melismas could indicate a sense of degree.

"In My World"

I listened to Long Distance Voyager yester-day because it was the fortieth anniversary of its release, and I noticed that the structure of the line "How you turned it upside down, this world of mine" in "In My World" fits the sentiment there.  As far as the specific forms, I'd say this is a combination of inversion ("this world of mine" comes at the end) and pleonasm (the redundancy of "it").  A simpler way to express this thought is "How you turned this world of mine upside down," but the circuitousness of "How you turned it upside down, this world of mine" illustrates the disruption in the narrator's life.

"And My Baby's Gone"

Yester-day, I got a volume pedal for my guitar, and I was trying it out with the few bits I know of "And My Baby's Gone."  While doing so, I figured out the rest of the lead guitar part and the chords.  I also noticed a small feature in the lyrics:  there's a slant rhyme between "All my treasure's a stone" and "My baby is gone," and this illustrates the narrator's unhappy condition.

"House of Four Doors (Part 1)"

Yester-day, I learned the right channel harpsichord in a section (starting at ~2:33) of "House of Four Doors (Part 1)."  I'd figured out the cello part for this section a little over a year ago.

I neglected to take note of which specific harpsichord sound I used on my keyboard, but it was one of the Italian harpsichords, either A or B.  For the cello part, I used the mellotron cello sound, although the staccato notes at the end don't really come off that way.

I noticed a small feature in this harpsichord part, and I wanted to make a recording to help point it out, rather than simply posting the notation.  This part is rather sparse, and the notation alone could make it seem like I'd figured out only part of it.

In the second measure, there's a figure that alternates between notes of a static pitch (D) and progressively lower notes (C#, B, A).  I think this is a somewhat common figure in baroque music.  The piece I always refer to in writing about this is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.  Here's a similar figure in the pedal part:

[source]

It seems that this particular section of "House of Four Doors (Part 1)" is intended to have a baroque feel.  It's evident in the instruments used (cello and two harpsichords), but this specific figure indicates a deeper level of the pastiche.

"Procession"

Here's the harpsichord part in "Procession."  I figured this out by ear, so I'm not sure if it's note-for-note accurate, but it's pretty close, at least.  I don't know if I have the notation quite right for the trills at the end, but it's something like that.