"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.

"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.