"Tortoise and the Hare"

Yester-day, I was thinking about "Tortoise and the Hare."  Initially, I had just a small realization about the first half of the bridge, but the more I lookt into the song, the more I found to write about.

The bridge starts with the lines:

Your friend is heavy

But he was ready

And never stopped for a while

sung to a melody something like this:

The lines "Your friend is heavy / But he was ready" establish a rhythmic pattern, but this is broken by "stopped," which is sung with a value that's shorter than what's expected (a quarter note instead of a half note).  In a way, this truncation matches the meaning (even though the line describes how the tortoise "never stopped").

In an opposite manner, "while" is sung with a long note value (two full measures, I think), lending a sense of this duration.

The second half of the bridge is:

While you were sleeping

He went on keeping

The final line in his mind

The line "The final line in his mind" exhibits assonance (the long i).  This sound is sustained in the same way that the tortoise maintains his focus on his goal.  That the sense is spread across the line break ("He went on keeping / The final line in his mind") also demonstrates this endurance.

"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."