"Secret Messages"

Last week, I figured out the chords for "Secret Messages" and noticed a small feature:  underneath the line "Where words cascade like rainbows tumbling from the sky, then I'll be there," the chord progression descends (G minor | F major | Eb major | D minor | C minor), mirroring the downward direction of "cascad[ing]" and "tumbling."

"Can't Get It out of My Head"

Last month, I watched this video of ELO miming to "Can't Get It out of My Head" on Dutch television:

I noticed that in one of the Moog phrases (at ~1:21 in the video, but at ~2:27 in the album version), there are some trills.  Despite what it looks like in the video, I think these notes are E F E, C D C, G A G, E F E.

These descending trills may have been modeled after part of the solo in Del Shannon's "Runaway" (performed on a heavily modified clavioline).  Jeff Lynne talks about the song (starting around 39:14) in this BBC interview.  He mentions that the tape was sped up, so while it sounds higher, originally, these trills were played as E F E, D E D, C D C.  Obviously, in terms of pitch, these groups of notes are closer to each other than those in "Can't Get It out of My Head," but they do descend.

"Here Is the News"

Last month, I figured out the chords for "Here Is the News," and I noticed that the chords for the chorus are different each time.

First, it's:

|: G major | F major :|

Then:

|: G major | F major :|

A major | G minor

A major | D major

And finally:

|: G major | F major :|

|: A major | G minor :|

That the chord progression is different every time mirrors the novelty of the news.

"Across the Border"

About a month ago, I figured out the rest of the chords for "Across the Border."  While doing so, I noticed a nod to Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock."  The first line of the first verse of "Across the Border" is "In the heat of the day many miles away," which is quite similar to the first line of "Let It Rock":  "In the heat of the day down in Mobile, Alabama."  Obviously, the phrase "in the heat of the day" is exactly the same; more generally, "many miles away" refers to a location in the same way that "Mobile, Alabama" does.

I think it's also worth mentioning that Jeff Lynne later recorded a cover of "Let It Rock" on his Long Wave album.

"The Way Life's Meant to Be"

I listened to Time back in October and noticed a feature in the rhyme scheme of "The Way Life's Meant to Be."  Along with line-ending rhymes (ABCB), there's internal rhyme in the first and third lines of each verse:

Well, I came a long way to be here today

And I left you so long on this avenue

And here I stand in the strangest land

Not knowing what to say or do

This pattern is broken in the fourth verse:

And when I see what they've done to this place that was home

Shame is all that I feel

Oh, and I wonder, yes, I wonder

Is this the way life's meant to be

"Feel" doesn't rhyme with "be," but more significantly, there's a slant rhyme between "done" and "home."  The change in the established rhyme scheme mirrors the change that "this place that was home" has undergone.

"Songbird"

In "Songbird," "long" in the line "She'd been gone for so long" is sung with a melisma (A G), musically giving a sense of that duration.

"Goin' out on Me"

In "Goin' out on Me," the bass repeats a four-measure phrase in the introduction and roughly the first half of the verses.  Rhythmically and melodically, it bears a strong resemblance to the bass part in the Beatles' "This Boy."  I'm not exactly sure what time signatures the parts are in, but I notated them in 6/8 in order to illustrate their similarity:

"Sci-Fi Woman"

In the line "Too soon to know if this should carry on" in the bridge of "Sci-Fi Woman," "on" is sung with a melisma (B A A), musically giving a sense of that continuation.

In the lines "I never really thought / There would be no more," "more" is sung with a melisma (F# A), so while it's negated, there's a sense of amount.

"One More Time"

I noticed a number of things about "One More Time."

The end of the line "Hey baby, we're rolling on the road again" in the first verse has some kind of effect applied to it.  I'm not sure if it's technically delay or echo, but in any case, it gives a sense of the recurring of "again."  The same effect is at the end of the line "Hey baby, we're flyin' out across the world," giving a sense of breadth, and on the title line at ~2:46, giving a sense of that "more."

"Apart" in the lines "We gotta give it ev'rything we've got / 'Til the joint is fallin' apart" is sung with a melisma (C Eb D C), musically giving a sense of its meaning.

I don't know if this is coincidental or not, but the solo (at ~1:15) bears a striking resemblance in both intervals and rhythm to the vocal melody in the title song of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera ("In sleep, he sang to me...").  The two parts are something like this:

"Losing You"

The words "all alone" in the line "And I'll be all alone, on my own" in "Losing You" start with the same initial sound, so there's a sense of that singularity.

"Down Came the Rain"

In the chorus of "Down Came the Rain," "rain" in the titular phrase is sung with descending melismas (B A the first and third times, B A G the second), musically giving a sense of that "down."

"All My Love"

In "All My Love," some of the titular phrases are sung with melismas, giving a sense of the entirety of that "all."  In the lead vocals, the "love" at the end of the bridge is sung to the notes G A Bb (and in the coda, it's sung to various other groups of notes), and at the end of each section, "all" in the backing vocals is sung to D notes an octave apart (this breadth also gives a sense of the entirety).  At the beginning of each verse, "all" in the lead vocals is also held for over a measure, and this too gives a sense of the entirety.

Coinciding with the lines "I see it all / The way we fall for one another's make believe" (that's how they're formatted in the liner notes), there's a descending phrase (I think it's a combination of synthesizer and strings:  E Eb D Db A), and this mirrors the "fall" in the lyrics, although it's used more metaphorically.

"Help Yourself"

In "Help Yourself," there's the recurring section "But you can never change / You just keep on being you."  That this repeats without any variation illustrates the "never chang[ing]."

"From out of Nowhere"

I have a handful of notes about From out of Nowhere to write about, and I'm going to try to write a post a week, going song by song.

I noticed a couple small features in the chorus of "From out of Nowhere":

Let me go

Let me fly

To a place that I love

Let me fly away

And start again

"Go," the first "fly," and "away" are all sung with melismas (I think they're E F# E, E F# E, and D C# B, respectively).  These all provide a musical sense of movement.

"Alone in the Universe"

I was thinking about "Alone in the Universe" yester-day and realized that - like "When the Night Comes" - the lyrics contain the phrase "all alone" and since "all" and "alone" start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.

"The Sun Will Shine on You"

I'm pretty sure I'd noticed this before, but evidently, I'd neglected to write about it.  In the line "Before you learn how to fall" in "The Sun Will Shine on You," there's quite a drop between "to" and "fall" (an octave:  F# to F#).  Musically, this illustrates that "fall[ing]."

"When the Night Comes"

I listened to Alone in the Universe recently and noticed a couple small features.  In "When the Night Comes," there's the line "When the night comes and I'm here all alone."  Because "all" and "alone" start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.  Additionally, "When the night comes" is sung by multiple voices, but "and I'm here all alone" by only one.

"Ticket to the Moon"

I figured out the chords for "Ticket to the Moon" last night and noticed an interesting feature.  As I noted before, each phrase in the vocal melody in the chorus ascends, giving an impression of taking off and going to the moon.  The chords, however, descend.  It's a repeating progression of D minor | C major | Bb major | A major.  This opposition between the descending chords and the ascending vocals illustrates the narrator's conflicted feelings.  He's obligated to leave ("I paid the fare; what more can I say / It's just one-way"), and yet he would rather stay and "see the sunrise / In your eyes."  The opposite trajectories of these musical elements demonstrate that he's pulled in two different directions.

"Julie Don't Live Here"

The other thing I noticed when I listened to Time yester-day is that the line "I remember when I thought your street was paved with gold" in "Julie Don't Live Here" seems to be a reference to Revelation 21:21:  "And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass."

"The Bouncer"

I listened to Time this morning and noticed a couple of things in the bonus tracks.  In "The Bouncer," "forever" in the line "That's how I want it to be, want it to be forever" is sung with a melisma (although I'm unsure of the specific notes), giving a sense of duration.

"Do Ya"

In some ways, Electric Light Orchestra formed out of a band called the Move.  For Christmas last year, I got a compilation album of the Move (Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of the Move), and I've been listening to it fairly regularly.  One of the tracks is an earlier recording of "Do Ya" (the Move version includes a question mark:  "Do Ya?"), and I recently noticed a small difference between the two.  In the Move version, two of the lines are "They come a-runnin' just to get a look / Just to feel, to touch her long black veil."  In the ELO version, one word has been changed so that these lines are "They come a-runnin' just to get a look / Just to feel, to touch her long black hair."  This probably isn't a very significant difference, but I thought I'd note it all the same.

For what it's worth, Jeff Lynne comments on the two versions of the song in this interview (starting at ~23:28).

"Little Town Flirt"

I recently learned the bass part for the cover of Del Shannon's "Little Town Flirt" that's included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue of Discovery.  I wrote it out in notation and put the chords in above the staff, but - as always - there's the disclaimer that I may have something wrong.

Looking into the song reminded me of some old notes I'd forgotten about, and I also found a few new things.

"Around" and "by" in the line "She plays around with ev'ry guy that goes by" are sung with melismas (E D E D C and A B A B A B A G respectively), musically giving a sense of breadth for "around" and of movement for "by."  "Apart" in the line "When she starts to tear it apart" is sung with a melisma (E C A) for a sense of the word's meaning, and "go" in the line "That's when she'll let you go" is sung with a melisma (C D) for a sense of movement, although more metaphorical.

All of these features are also in Del Shannon's original, although some of the articulations are a bit different.

"Waterfall"

I recently learned a section of the Clavinet part in "Waterfall."  This is the verse starting at ~2:18.  I included the bass part too, although the rhythm for the last measure or so isn't right.

From what I can tell, Richard Tandy had a Clavinet D6.  In this picture dated August 1978, it's visible at the very bottom:

[source]

(For the record:  I think the other keyboards here are a Yamaha grand piano [the liner notes for A New World Record specifically list "Yamaha C7 grand piano"], a Yamaha CS-80, a Mellotron M-400, and - easier to see from an-other angle - a Moog Polymoog and a Wurlitzer 200).

From the Clavinet user manual (available here):  "The register tabs on the left-hand panel are marked AB, CD and are connected to the sound pick-up for a wide variety of settings.  As required, they switch both pick-ups either singly or parallel, whereby the polarity of one of the pick-ups is reversed to cancel overtones or to add them.  Thus the AB and CD registers produce tone colours in every position...."

I have a Nord Electro 5, which - as far as I can tell - separates out these AB and CD tabs into four distinct sounds.  To try to replicate an authentic sound, I recorded B and then overdubbed D.  I'm not sure if that's what Tandy used, but I thought it sounded the closest.