"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

I listened to Discovery a couple days ago and noticed a small feature in "The Diary of Horace Wimp," specifically in the line "She was small, and she was very pretty," which is sung to a melody something like this:

The note to which "very" is sung is held for a longer duration than the surrounding notes, lending a degree of emphasis and perhaps even a sense of its meaning.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

Last night, I figured out the chords for "The Diary of Horace Wimp."  While playing along to the recording in order to make sure I had everything right, I noticed the repeated synth phrase in the coda:

This sounded somewhat familiar to me, so I did some research and discovered that it has some similarity to "First Call," an army bugle call that's also used in horse racing (it appears at the beginning of "Fugue for Tinhorns" in Guys and Dolls):

While the rhythms are different, the intervals of the synth phrase in "The Diary of Horace Wimp" match those in the first phrase of "First Call," so I think this resemblance was intentional.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

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"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

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.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

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.

All over the World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I'd forgotten that the only album on which I have versions of "All over the World," "Xanadu," and "Alright" is All over the World: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra (incidentally, it was also the first ELO album I owned), so I listened to that to-day in order to start transcriptions of those three and work on my transcriptions of the other songs.  Also, I noticed some things:

"Don't Bring Me Down"

There's alliteration in the line "You wanna stay out with your fancy friends," which I think is there as an almost pretentious use of a poetic effect.  Like, the effect is there just to look fancy, just like the friends it describes.

An-other verse begins with

You're always talkin' 'bout your crazy nights
One of these days you're gonna get it right

Because one line has "nights" and the other has "days," I think the sentiment here is a bit sarcastic.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

The line break between

And if he was late once more
He'd be out

seems rather important.  There's almost a whole measure of rest in the vocal part, which, in a way, emphasizes the delay that's mentioned in the line itself.

"Confusion"

The "lean" in each stand-alone "To lean on" after "You feel there's no one there for you to lean on" has a melisma; it's more than the usual one syllable it would be were it just spoken, so there's an unstable feeling, like leaning itself.

"Alright"

At the end of the lines "And as you speak, everything that you say / Goes out on the big transmitter," some effect is applied to the vocal.  It's something like an echo.  In any case, it provides a sense of the projection from the "transmitter."

Discovery

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

---&---

I listened to Discovery twice before writing this post, but I still don't have much to say about it.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp"

Like I've mentioned before, I'm more likely to see Beatles references in ELO songs because of the "pick up where 'I Am the Walrus' left off" quote, even if those references are actually just coincidences.  The list of days in "The Diary of Horace Wimp" might take something from the Beatles' "Lady Madonna" and possibly even Fats Domino's "Blue Monday," which seems to have inspired "Lady Madonna" (and has blue in the title!).

All three songs have a list of days.  "Blue Monday" has the weekdays and Sunday in the verses, and Saturday is in the bridge.  "Lady Madonna" has all of the days in the verses, although it omits Saturday.

"The Diary of Horace Wimp" goes a bit further and has a verse for each day (preceded by the name of the day through a vocoder).  Like "Lady Madonna," Saturday is omitted, probably because it's a syllable longer than the other days of the week, so it would present complications for the choral part at the end ("Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…").

"Midnight Blue"

An-other (very obvious) instance of Jeff Lynne's use of blue.  Also, the line "But what's the difference 'cause they say, 'What's in a name?'" seems to be a reference to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  In any case, it's a quote of Juliet's lines: "What's in a name?  That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet" (II.ii.43-44).

"On the Run"

At the very end, there are Buddy Holly-like hiccups on the words "around" and "away" ("Woman, I gotta move around / Woman, I gotta get away…").  I'm not certain if Holly was the inspiration here, but that is characteristic of his music.

"Don't Bring Me Down"

During the sections where the only line is "Don't bring me down" (I guess they're choruses?), each of the "down"s is broken into syllables via melismas, and the syllables have a downward trend as far as pitch goes.  So the "down"s are literally going down.

—

I also noticed a few things that appear in multiple songs.

I might be making too much of this, but the "standin' (in/at)" that I noted in the Out of the Blue songs makes an appearance here too.  "Last Train to London" has "You were standin' there," and "Midnight Blue" has "I see you standin' there."

"Under(neath) the starry sky" is present in both "Confusion" and "Last Train to London."

"Darling" is a word that seems to be used a lot on the album too.  It's in "Shine a Little Love" and "Confusion" once each, and it starts each of the verses in "Wishing."