"Waterfall"

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Over the last couple days, I wrote out notation for the bass part in "The Way Life's Meant to Be."  Last night, I put the Electric Light Orchestra section of my music collection in reverse alphabetical order so that "The Way Life's Meant to Be" was near the top and easier to find.  After notating a page, I took a break and tried figuring out a different bass part.  I got some of the bass part in "Waterfall" (which was close alphabetically), and I noticed something interesting.

At about 1:00, there's this phrase:

I was immediately reminded of the bass part in the second movement of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 because it does this same sort of thing:

(notation found here)

There's a diatonic descent (with almost every note doubled), and after every pair of notes, there's a change in the octave.  While the note values are different, the phrase in "Waterfall" is even in D major, the same key as Bach's!

Despite the similarities, I'm not sure that this phrase in "Waterfall" is meant to be a quotation of Bach.  I've found this same sort of phrase in a few other pieces (it's in Grieg's Holberg Suite, Op. 40, which seems significant because ELO covered his "In the Hall of the Mountain King" on On the Third Day), but I do think its appearance in that Bach piece is the most famous (that movement is probably more well-known as Air on the G String).  Between that and the fact that the phrases are in the same key, I think that if it was intended as a quotation, it's a quotation of Bach's work.

"The Way Life's Meant to Be"

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I've been going back to write down some things I recorded earlier.  Yester-day, when I wrote down the chords for "The Way Life's Meant to Be," I noticed the electric guitar part, which I'm surprised I didn't figure out when I first got the chords last October.  They're double-stops, but they're based on the same notes as the chords they're played above.

I also discovered that I had a couple notes in the bass part in the wrong octave.

Like last time, I double-tracked my acoustic six-string to get something of the feeling of an acoustic twelve-string (which I think is used on the track).  I didn't start my two tracks at precisely the same time though, so the very beginning (just the first second or two) sounds a bit off-kilter.

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention that to-day's Jeff Lynne's birthday.

"Summer and Lightning"

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A couple days ago, I figured out the chords for "Summer and Lightning" (up until about 2:42, when things change).  This morning I figured out the bass part, too, which makes listening to this a bit more interesting.

This is just the first section.  I'm almost certain I don't have the guitar strumming rhythm right, but that's not a priority right now.  I think it's twelve-string acoustic guitar on the record, but since the only twelve-string I have is electric, I just doubled-tracked my six-string acoustic guitar to get something of the same effect.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

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I wrote out the notation for the bass part in "The Diary of Horace Wimp," and I figured I might as well post it here.  I have a few other projects with this same format (just for different bands), and I've been doing the same thing for some of those.

The part at the very beginning (alternating between Bb and Eb notes before the descending whole notes) might not be entirely accurate as far as when it starts (the bass starts out quietly, and I might have just extrapolated that from when that same section is repeated later).

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

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Last night I learned the bass part to "The Diary of Horace Wimp."  There are really only two different sections: one for the verses and one for the chorus.  Rather than play just the bass part for the whole song (which would be boring), I played the verse for Sunday (so I could also include the tubular bell part I learned back in April) and the chorus right after it.

While notating the chorus (I've been on a notating spree recently; plus, it just makes it easier to record since I don't have to keep everything in my head), I noticed that (starting at what the "voice from above" says) the note values become progressively shorter:

"You can do it" is in the backing vocals, and between that and the increasing frequency of the notes, there's a sense that Horace Wimp is gaining confidence in himself.

"Hold on Tight"

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This morning I listened to Time for my Collection Audit project, and I workt on my transcriptions a bit.  I ended up deciphering all of the French in "Hold on Tight."  Previously, I had just "toi à ton rêve."

The whole French verse is (I think):

Oh, accrochez-toi à ton rêve
Accrochez-toi à ton rêve
Quand tu vois ton bâteau partir
Quand tu sens ton cœur se briser
Accrochez-toi à ton rêve

Essentially, it's the same as the first verse:

Mm, hold on tight to your dream
Hey, hold on tight to your dream
When you see your ship go sailin'
When you feel your heart is breakin'
Hold on tight to your dream

Its being almost exactly the same (just in translation) helpt immensely in deciphering it.  Otherwise, I would have had just "accrochez-toi à ton rêve," "quand tu vois ton," and the second "quand tu."  But I recognized that what little French I had followed the same structure as the other verses.

As an amateur linguist (French is my third language, and I've studied it for eight years), I have a lot to say about this.  First, "accrochez-toi" has a subject-verb agreement error.  "Accrochez" is the imperative form for 2nd person plural, but "toi" is a 2nd person singular pronoun (as are "tu" and "ton").  It should be either the singular "accroche-toi" (which leaves the line a syllable too short) or the plural "accrochez-vous" (which would require changing ton to votre, making the line a syllable too long).

I can't think of any specific examples, but I think sung French is often intentionally mispronounced just for the sake of filling in the meter.

"Accrochez-toi à ton rêve" omits the "tight" that's in the English verse; it's just "Hold on to your dream."  (This also made me realize that it's a flat adverb: tight instead of tightly.)  If I understand my French-English dictionary correctly, serré is the word for tightly, but if you were to add that to "accroche-toi…" to get a closer translation of the English line, there'd be one syllable too many.

I'm not sure if "partir" or "briser" are the right forms either.  Both are infinitives in the French (so a literal translation would be "When you see your ship to sail / When you feel your heart itself to break"), but it's more complicated in the English.  "Sailin'" (actually, maybe the whole "go sailin'") is a participle (a verbal adjective modifying "ship").  I'm not as proficient at French participles as I probably should be, but I did some research and found that "-ant" is added to the infinitive stem to form a participle.  So I think it should be "Quand tu vois ton bâteau partant."

"Is breakin'" is a verb in the indirect statement "Your heart is breakin'" (it's the present progressive form).  In English, the word that, which indicates an indirect statement, is often omitted, like it is here.  It's condensed to "When you feel your heart is breakin'," rather than "When you feel that your heart is breakin'."  If I remember French class correctly, in French, that (que) is always required.  And since "is breakin'" is in the indicative mood, briser needs to be conjugated from the infinitive form, so it should be "Quand tu sens que ton cœur se bris."

I find it interesting that there's a reflexive pronoun in the French that isn't in the English.  The French is "Quand tu sens ton cœur se briser" ("When you feel your heart itself to break"), but the English is just "When you feel your heart is breakin'."

"Danger Ahead"

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After I figured out (most of) the bass part for "Loser Gone Wild," I also figured out (I think all of) one of the guitar parts in "Danger Ahead."  I was going to record that yester-day, but I didn't have the time.  Now I don't think I'm going to record it at all because it's just a handful of chords and a couple diatonic phrases, so it wouldn't be that interesting to listen to (especially because there are, at most, seven measures of rests between some of those parts).  So I guess I'll just write it down and wait until I learn a part that's more substantial.  Based on that guitar part, I'm pretty certain that the song is in E major, and knowing that might help in figuring out other parts.

"Loser Gone Wild"

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Yester-day I listened to Secret Messages for my Collection Audit project.  The bass part for "Loser Gone Wild" sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out, and I have almost all of it now.  There's a faster section at the end that I haven't attempted figuring out yet.  Unfortunately, the qualities that made this easy to learn also make it sort of boring to listen to by itself.  The first minute or so just alternates between A and D notes.  I'm not sure I have the rhythm right for the "But in the evening…" section.  Here, sometimes I have a quarter rest and sometimes I hold the note.  I neglected to listen carefully enough to the original recording to see what it does.

Out of the Blue

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Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to Electric Light Orchestra's Out of the Blue.  Last March I started a project where I look into ELO's music specifically (which I started because of this project, actually), and I've already written a fair amount about Out of the Blue there, but I noticed some more things this morning. 

"Starlight" 

I've had this album for years (it was actually the first original ELO album I got), but it wasn't until this morning that I deciphered the line "You've gotta stop" in "Starlight."  Had I noticed that sooner, I probably would have understood long ago that there's a musical/lyrical connection there.  After "You've gotta stop," the music stops before the lyric continues with "Foolin' around." 

"Big Wheels" 

There's a musical connection between "Big Wheels" and "Steppin' Out."  After some measures of tied whole notes, the bass part in "Steppin' Out" has this figure: 

 

(click here for a larger image) 

I use the MIDI component of my digital audio workstation to make these examples of notation, and where I would have tied a half note and a dotted quarter note, it put two dots on a half note.  I guess it ends up with the same value, but I haven't seen double-dotted notes anywhere else. 

When the bass part finally starts in "Big Wheels," every other measure has the same rhythm as that in the bass part in "Steppin' Out."  The phrase also alternates between fourths, although here it's a semi-tone higher: 

 

(click here for a larger image) 

"Birmingham Blues" 

Near the beginning, there's the line "Yeah, I've been rollin' like a stone," which recalls "Like a rollin' stone" in "Steppin' Out." 

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Both of those last two things make the album more coherent.

I noticed a couple more things about Out of the Blue when I listened to it for my Collection Audit project recently.

"From the End of the World"

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I was going through my music collection last night, learning some parts, and I happened upon "From the End of the World."  I learned the first minute or so of the bass part, but the more I listen to this, the more I think that it's actually the bass register of a synth part, not actual bass guitar.  There's one point where it alternates between measures of G and F notes, and in between the last two, there's a part (which I haven't figured out) that seems too fast to be played physically, which makes me think it's a programmed synth.  Since I don't know anything about those (yet), I guess it's just as well that I recorded it with bass guitar.

"Mission (A World Record)"

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On Friday I listened to A New World Record for my Collection Audit project.  In the liner notes for the CD re-issue, Jeff Lynne says, "The '76 Olympics were on TV and so we heard the phrase 'a new world record' over and over.  It was Richard who suggested it for the title of the album."  Coincidentally, the day I listened to it was the first day of the 2016 Olympics.

Anyway, I thought the little guitar phrases in "Mission (A World Record)" would be easy to figure out.  They're interesting in that they have both F# and Bb notes.  The phrases I copied for my recording are at the very end, where the same phrase is played in two octaves.  There are some more guitar parts that follow that, but I haven't figured them out yet.

A New World Record

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Collection Audit:

Yester-day I listened to Electric Light Orchestra's A New World Record, and I noticed something about the string parts in a couple songs.  Aside from the key, the same string part is in "So Fine" and "Livin' Thing."  I guessed on the keys based on the notes in the parts themselves, but here they are in notation (with the disclaimer that I might be wrong; notation still isn't my strong point). 

"So Fine" 

 

"Livin' Thing" 

 

Having what is virtually the same part in two songs (which are back-to-back in the track listing) helps give the album a greater consistency.

Here's a thing I noticed about a couple songs on A New World Record when I listened to it recently for my Collection Audit project.

"Down Home Town"

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I recently learned about the song "Dixie," which had been lurking on my periphery for a while (by which I mean I was sort of aware of it, but it was only recently that I actually lookt into it), and I instantly remembered Electric Light Orchestra's "Down Home Town."  I just confirmed that it quotes "Dixie," lyrically and musically.

At about 2:42 in the backing vocals, there's the line "Wish I was in the land of Dixie," and then the trumpets play almost all of the tune "Dixie," near the end of which some more lyrics (the overlapping "Look away"s) from "Dixie" appear.  At about 3:30, those backing vocal parts ("Wish I was in the land of Dixie" and the overlapping "Look away"s) appear a second time.

"Ticket to the Moon"

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For some reason, the chorus from "Ticket to the Moon" popped into my head yester-day.  I already had my bass out, so I learned some of the bass part, but there's still a lot of it I'm not sure of yet.  Instead, here are the first eight measures of piano. which I also learned.  This morning, I even notated as much as I played in this recording.  Eventually, I plan on posting the chords, notation, or even tabs for some of these songs, but since I started this project only a year and a half ago, I don't know very much yet (and a lot of the parts I do know are still incomplete).

"Evil Woman"

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I listened to Face the Music a few days ago, and the bass part for "Evil Woman" sounded like it consisted of only three notes in some places.  I figured it out yester-day, and - for the most part - it is just three notes.

This is just a verse and a chorus, but I'm pretty sure the bass part remains the same throughout.

I remembered the guitar part that I figured out in January too, although I do have it written down somewhere, so I still have it in case I forget.

"Mama"

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I listened to ELO II this morning for my Collection Audit project, and I found an-other mention of blue, which I missed when I did my initial notes on the album.  In "Mama" there's the phrase "blue horizon" in the first verse.

Especially on the early albums, I'm still having trouble making out the lyrics, so I don't know how much I'll be able to write about them.

"Wishing"

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For the last week or two, I've been really into "Wishing."  There are still some phrases in it that I want to talk about, but I feel that text isn't the best medium in which to do it (especially since the phrases in question are beyond my limited notation skills, so I would be unable to provide notated excerpts), so I'll wait on that.  I have to do some more research anyway.

In the meantime, I learned the bass part.  This isn't the complete song, but the sections are repeated, and there's at least one of each here.  I learned the guitar chords too, but the first verse has some kind of effect (I think echo) that I don't have a good way of producing, and I haven't figured out the right rhythm for the rest.

In learning the parts and playing along, I found two things that demonstrate the titular wishing, or - more specifically - the lack of fulfillment that's related to it.  There's a grammatical error in the bridge:  "I wish that everything was gold" instead of "I wish that everything were gold" (because subjunctive verb forms are weird).  So there's an imperfection there, which is similar to the lack of fulfillment the speaker/singer has because he's away from his "little darling."  (I don't know if Jeff Lynne intended that line to have an error or not, but the point stands either way.  I will say though that "I wish that everything was gold" sounds better when sung than "I wish that everything were gold," even if it is grammatically incorrect.)

While the song is in A major, the verses and bridges end with a G note in the bass, which doesn't provide a resolution, and - furthermore - is an accidental.  So there's a musical sense of that yearning.  In the verses and the bridges, the lyrics above that non-resolving, accidental G note are "I'm wishin'," which seems to emphasize that feeling even further.

"Wishing"

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When I listened to Discovery a couple days ago, the opening part of "Wishing" sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out.  I'm almost certain that it's done with a Moog in the original recording, but I don't have and can't afford one, so I used some other synth voice on my keyboard.

This afternoon I was playing around with this again, and I think I learned the guitar chords too, but I'm suspicious of a few and have some other phrases in the song that I want to look into, so I recorded just the opening for now.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

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I listened to Discovery yester-day, and even before it got to this part in "The Diary of Horace Wimp," I was pretty sure that the tubular bell part (after "And she did" in the Sunday verse) was just a scale.  I figured out that it's a Bb major scale, although the last note is the same pitch as the first.

This is an extremely small part of the song, but at least now I can be pretty sure that the rest of the song is in Bb major too.

Alone in the Universe

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Yester-day, I finally got Alone in the Universe!  I think it's a bit cut-throat to start analyzing it and figuring out parts from it right away, so I'm going to wait a year or so before I start doing that.  For now, I just want to enjoy it as a listener.

I also got a two-disc set of Del Shannon songs, partially so I could hear his "Little Town Flirt," a cover of which is a bonus track on Discovery.

"Steppin' Out"

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The same day I learned the opening bass part for "Nightrider," I also learned the opening bass part for "Steppin' Out."

The phrase that's at the very end of my recording is an ascending chromatic phrase (every note from F# to D), which - in some ways - helps to emphasize the "steppin' out" that's in the lyrics and title.  There's an incremental progression from note to note.

"Nightrider"

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A couple days ago, I learned the opening bass part to "Nightrider."  When I was recording this to-day though, I discovered I had a few notes wrong and had to correct them.

"Midnight Blue"

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Two days ago, I learned most of the bass part for "Midnight Blue."  Last night I did some more work on it, and I thought I had it figured out, but when I tried recording it this afternoon, I kept messing up just because I couldn't remember where I was in the song.  So I notated the whole thing, and - in doing so - I realized that I actually had a few parts wrong.

I'm still unsure of a phrase in the chorus:

With those eighth note phrases, I might be projecting a tonality onto a percussion part.  Also, I'm pretty sure there are A notes both times (2nd and 6th measures), but the second pair sounds really different (originally, I thought they were C notes), which I'm assuming is because of the surrounding notes, so I'm interested to find out what those are.

The bass starts halfway through the first verse, so the beginning sounds a bit off.

"Don't Bring Me Down"

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ELO's Jeff Lynne: My Life in 15 Songs

This was worth reading just for finding out that that word in "Don't Bring Me Down" is "groose."  I lookt in the liner notes for the CD re-issue (I'd forgotten that the lyrics are printed in it!) and discovered that there it's rendered as "grrroosss."  The engineer Lynne cites is correct that it means "greetings" in German, although in German it's spelt as "Gruß."

"Latitude 88 North"

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Yester-day, I was thinking about the solo in "Latitude 88 North."  When I figured it out, I noticed that each phrase contains progressively smaller intervals of notes.  The first phrase has notes that span a fifth (B to F#); the second phrase has notes that span a diminished fifth (B to F); and the third phrase has notes that span only a major third (B to D#).  But yester-day I realized that those progressively smaller groups of intervals sort of represent - musically - the freezing that would take place at latitude 88 north.

But then I thought about it some more, and I realized that "Latitude 88 North" shares a theme (of sorts) with "Turn to Stone."  In both, unrequited love leads to immobility.  In "Latitude 88 North," the singer/speaker says, "Then I knew that you were gone / It came to me; I was alone / Now I'm left out in the cold" to freeze, as the progressively smaller intervals in the solo demonstrate.  In "Turn to Stone," the singer/speaker repeatedly says, "I turn to stone / When you are gone / I turn to stone."  The specific method of immobility is different (freezing in one and petrification in the other), but that unrequited love leads to the same result in both songs.

"Mr. Blue Sky"

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After I learned the bass part for "Confusion," I learned most of the bass part for "Mr. Blue Sky."  I did a bit of work on this to-day before I recorded it too.  I had one note wrong, and I figured out a phrase I was stuck on (I was right that the bass part arpeggiates two chords, but because there's a key change there, I wasn't expecting one of those chords to be Eb).

I played an extra F note at the end.  It's not there in the original, but it sort of resolves my recording.  I don't know the next section, and it would have sounded weird to stop abruptly.

"Confusion"

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An-other of the parts that sounded easy to figure out when I listened to All over the World a few days ago was the bass part in "Confusion."  I figured this out last night.  I think I wanted to learn it partially just because of that glissando (I'm a fan of bass glissandi).

"Livin' Thing"

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Collection Audit:

I'm halfway through a compilation album of Electric Light Orchestra (All over the World: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra).  After a post I wrote here two years ago (after listening to this same album), I started a project where I look into ELO's music in some depth (I haven't gotten that far yet), so I've been transcribing these too. 

I noticed the line "Takin' a dive 'cause you can help but slide, floating downstream" in "Livin' Thing," and I think it's a small lyrical reference to the Beatles.  The "floating downstream" part is very similar to the first line of "Tomorrow Never Knows" - "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream."  In my project, I've found more than a few references to the Beatles, so I'm more confident that this is a reference rather than just a coincidental resemblance.

 Via my Collection Audit project, I discovered an-other Beatle reference.

"Evil Woman"

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For my Collection Audit project, I listened to All over the World: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra yester-day (I have a short post about a Beatle reference in "Livin' Thing" in the queue).  As I was listening, I was trying to find parts that sounded like they would be easy to figure out.  One of them was the guitar part in the chorus of "Evil Woman."  My guitar tone doesn't match very well, but I'm pretty sure of the notes.

"Latitude 88 North"

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Last night I figured out some parts to "Latitude 88 North," a bonus track on the Out of the Blue CD re-issue.  This is just the solo, but I also figured out the chords for the chorus (it's just a I vi IV V progression).

Last week, I learned the solo for the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love," and - in the first phrase at least - there's something of a resemblance.  They're in different keys and rhythms, but the first five notes or so are the same intervals.  If you took the first phrase in the "Can't Buy Me Love" solo and pitched it down half a step, you'd be pretty close to the first phrase in the "Latitude 88 North" solo.