"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.