"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.

"Laredo Tornado"

I listened to Eldorado yester-day and noticed a small thing about "Laredo Tornado."  The musical section beginning at ~2:27 is rather sparse, in terms of instruments and number of notes.  I think this is meant to illustrate musically the absence mentioned in the lyrics there:  "What can you do / When your dream world is gone / And your friends and lovers, too?"

"Do Ya"

This morning I listened to a live performance of ELO from 1976 and realized that the first two verses of "Do Ya" exhibit anaphora.  "I've seen" is repeated in the first verse:

Well, in this life I've seen ev'rything I can see, woman

I've seen lovers flyin' through the air hand in hand

I've seen babies dancing in the midnight sun

And I've seen dreams that came from the heavenly skies above

I've seen old men cryin' at their own grace sides

And I've seen pigs all sitting, watching picture slides

But I've never seen nothin' like you

And "I heard" in the second:

Well, I heard the crowd singin' out of tune

As they sat and sang "Auld Lang Syne" by the light of the moon

I heard the preachers bangin' on the drums

And I heard the police playin' with their guns

But I never heard nothin' like you

The repeated "I've seen" and "I heard" illustrate the amount and variety of the speaker/singer's experiences and emphasize the contrast between all of them and "you."

"Hold on Tight"

Yester-day, I was thinking about the French in the Beatles' "Michelle."  While not exact, the French lines are basically the same as some English lines in the song.  (I wrote a slightly more detailed post about it here.)  Then I realized that ELO did the same thing in "Hold on Tight" (although, as I explain here, the French isn't translated very accurately) and that this may be yet an-other instance of the Beatles' influence.

"Ticket to the Moon"

I was thinking about "Ticket to the Moon" this morning and discovered a small feature in the chorus:  almost all of the lines (which are all just "Ticket to the moon") are sung to ascending phrases (most are diatonic ascents from D to A).  This articulation gives a sense of the upward journey.