"Nellie Takes Her Bow"

Because to-day's Jeff Lynne's birthday, I listened to No Answer this morning.  I noticed a small feature in "Nellie Takes Her Bow."  In the title line (but only in its first occurrence, at ~1:08), "bow" is sung with a melisma (A G).  Because of that descent, there's a musical sense of the word's meaning.

"Alone in the Universe"

Back in October, I figured out some of the bass part in "Alone in the Universe."  I noticed something about it, but I kept forgetting to write about it (plus I had to verify it).

A good portion of the bass part has this rhythm:

This is also the rhythm for much of the bass part in "Without Someone" from Balance of Power.

"Blue"

On the 1st, I learned some parts for "Blue," a bonus track on the deluxe edition of Alone in the Universe.  There are still a few chords that I'm missing, but I have most of them, along with the slide guitar/piano instrumental section, which is what my recording focuses on:

There's an almost incredible amount of sustain in the slide guitar part in the original.  I triple-tracked mine, but it still falls short.

While I was learning the parts, I also noticed something to write about: "shore" in the line "A million miles from the shore" has an echo effect applied to it.  Musically, this gives a sense of space, those "million miles" specifically.