"From the Sun to the World"

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After writing about "From the Sun to the World," I figured I should post an audio example of what I know.  I figured out some more of the introductory piano part (so that I can play at least one whole part in it), but it doesn't bear any more resemblance to the Moonlight Sonata.

The tempo varies a bit because I use the original tracks as templates when I make my own recordings and I don't always match them that well.  Also because I'm not that good of a keyboard player.

"From the Sun to the World"

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I finally (FINALLY!) got around to looking into "From the Sun to the World" to look at the resemblance between it and Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which almost two months ago I said I was going to do.

I looked up the Moonlight Sonata on Wikipedia, and I learned how to play (rather poorly) the first three measures:

The beginning of "From the Sun to the World" resembles this only slightly.  As far as I've figured it out, it also has octaves in the left hand and arpeggiated chords in the right.  (Although there's also a second part, which was probably overdubbed, that has descending arpeggiations of the same chords, using different inversions after each group of three notes.)

The octaves in "Moonlight Sonata" descend diatonically (C#, B, A) before going to F# and then ascending to G#.  The octaves in "From the Sun to the World" are much simpler.  For the first two chords, it's A.  Then it drops to E before returning to A.

The first three measures of the Moonlight Sonata arpeggiate C# minor, A major, and D major, and the arpeggiated chords in "From the Sun to the World" don't really resemble these at all.  I'm fairly certain that it's A minor, D minor, E major, A minor.

So, as far as the parts, there's some resemblance, but there isn't much in common note-wise.

ELO II

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About a week ago, I listened to ELO II so I could finally write a post about it.

"In Old England Town"

A particular musical element of this caused the greatest delay in this post.  I'd thought that a section of the guitar part resembles that at the very end of the Beatles' "Carry That Weight" (which carries over into a bit of "The End"), but I didn't really want to say anything until I learned the parts.  I haven't learned all of the guitar phrase in "In Old England Town," but I did learn enough to compare it to that in "Carry That Weight" (a phrase which I did learn in its entirety), and I discovered that while the phrase in "In Old England Town" is much longer, it at least starts the same.  Both phrases are arpeggiated chords beginning with C majors and then going to C major 7ths.  "Carry That Weight" then goes to an A major, but "In Old England Town" continues various arpeggiations so that there's a chromatic phrase from that initial C all the way to (I think) D.

I'm not sure if that arpeggiated change from C major to C major 7th was directly inspired by "Carry That Weight," but considering that the Electric Light Orchestra was founded "to continue where 'I Am the Walrus' left off" or whatever it was, I'm more likely to think Beatle connections intentional than just coincidences.  (I've seen that "I Am the Walrus" statement quoted in a few different places, but I haven't been able to find an original source for it.)

Speaking of which, that guitar phrase isn't the only Beatle connection that "In Old England Town" has.  Along with that arpeggiated part, I learned a few other sections.  "In Old England Town" starts with alternating G#s and Gs before going down to repeated Es (something like G# G G# G G# G E E E E E), which bears some similarity to the beginning of the Beatles' "Day Tripper," albeit reversed.  The riff in "Day Tripper" starts with E G G#.  In any case, both are sort of in-between E major and E minor (at the beginning at least; I think "In Old England Town" changes keys later).  There's slightly more evidence for this connection than that with "Carry That Weight;" ELO covered "Day Tripper" on Rockpalast in the early 1970s (either '73 or '74, I think).  It's on the British edition of the Live: The Early Years DVD.

Later in "In Old England Town," there's the line "Ablution, evolution" (at least I think that's the line; I was having a lot of troubles transcribing the lyrics), which might have some connection to the Beatles' "Revolution."  "Revolution" doesn't contain the word ablution, but it does prominently use "evolution" and other "-tion" words in the rhyme scheme.

Also in the lyrics is policeman, abbreviated as "p'liceman," which is the same abbreviation as that in the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus."  There aren't many other ways to cut a syllable out of policeman, so that might just be coincidental, but - again - considering the whole "continue where 'I Am the Walrus' left off,"” there might be something to that.

I think one of the lines is "Ten thousand tons of waste dropped then ejected," which has a slight connection to some lines in "Kuiama" later on the album: "Now ten thousand miles / Is a long, long way."

"Roll over Beethoven"

I already mentioned this in a previous post, but ELO actually includes a quotation of the famous motif from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor (although half a step higher than Beethoven) near the beginning of their version of Chuck Berry's "Roll over Beethoven."

"Kuiama"

While trying to transcribe "Kuiama," I noticed anaphora in the bridge - one of the few sections that I actually did complete a transcription of (although there's always the possibility that I misheard something).  Four lines begin with "no more," and a fifth has it very close to the beginning:

No more silver rain will hedge your ground
And no more guns will sound
No more life be drowned
No more trenches where the soldiers lie
No more people die
Beneath that big black sky

"From the Sun to the World"

The opening piano part in "From the Sun to the World" bears some resemblance to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.  At some point, I'm going to write a separate post about it because 1) I need to write about it more in depth than here and 2) I need more time to look into some things and this post has been held back long enough.

"Mr. Radio"

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A thing I forgot to mention in my post about No Answer is that the famous motif from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 seems to be hidden in "Mr. Radio."  At about 2:15, the cellos (and I think also the bass part of the piano) has a phrase that isn't too dissimilar.  While the intervals don't match Beethoven's ("Mr. Radio" has Ab to F and then F to D where Beethoven's motif is G to Eb and then F to D), the rhythm is roughly the same.  (I tried notating it, but I'm still not good at figuring out the rhythms for notation.)

Considering that ELO used that motif in other songs (near the beginning of "Roll over Beethoven" and after "I think she'd die for Beethoven" in "Rockaria!"), it wouldn't be too surprising if the similarity here were intentional.  And actually, in referencing "Roll over Beethoven" and "Rockaria!," I found that they didn't use the motif exactly as Beethoven wrote it anyway.  "Roll over Beethoven" has it half a step higher (G# E F# D#), and "Rockaria!," which has only two notes of the motif, has it as G and E, not G and Eb.  They all have roughly the same rhythm though.

"10538 Overture"

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I wasn't planning on figuring out any parts yet, but…

I was thinking about the arpeggios at the beginning of "10538 Overture," and I thought I'd figured them out in my head.  I hadn't, but I was close enough that it didn't take too long to get to this, which I'm fairly confident about.  Some of the notes sound a bit weird because I had to play the same note on different strings for different arpeggios.  Otherwise, my fingers would have to be four frets and five strings apart.

I also did the French horn part (the quotation from Also Sprach Zarathustra), but it's the fake French horn setting on my keyboard.  I know a few of the cello parts, but the fake cello doesn't sound convincing, so I didn't include them.  I don't have an actual cello (and don't know how to play one), which could become a pretty big concern.

No Answer

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I listened to No Answer yester-day to review some things before writing a post about it.  I have things to say about only three of the songs though.

"10538 Overture"

As far as I can tell, the French horn part in this (at least I think it's a French horn) has the same motif as that in Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra - C, G, and then an-other C an octave higher than the first one.

It might just be a coincidence, but some of the cello parts near the end contain a phrase from "Frère Jacques" - the part that corresponds to "Frère Jacques" in the lyrics - C D E C.

Lyrically, there's some resemblance between "10538 Overture" and the Beatles' "A Day in the Life."  Roughly, both are about a man's death related through the news.  "A Day in the Life" starts out with "I read the news today, oh boy" where "10538 Overture" has "Did you hear the news that came across the air today?," and where "A Day in the Life" has "He blew his mind out in a car," "10538 Overture" mentions that "Someone has been found on the rocks down in the bay."

"Nellie Takes Her Bow"

In the middle section, there's a quotation and then variations on "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen."

"Whisper in the Night"

This is the first of at least three ELO songs that contain the phrase "midnight sun."  Here, it's in the line "Face the midnight sun."  It's also in "So Fine" ("We'll find the land of the midnight sun") and "Do Ya" ("I've seen babies dancin' in the midnight sun") - both from A New World Record.

Introduction

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I try to listen to all of my music every other year (and so far I've been successful in doing so).  While doing this in 2014, I found a similarity between the Electric Light Orchestra's "All Over the World" and Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" - they both have a list of places.  Since ELO have a few other connections to Chuck Berry (they covered his "Roll over Beethoven" and mention him in "Rockaria!"), I thought this was an intentional similarity.

Finding that similarity reminded me that there were a lot of elements in ELO songs that I thought were references to other musicians or to other ELO works but that I'd never actually explored.  In June, I got the box set of all of their albums (I'd been missing four of them), and in listening through them all, I took notes.  I listened through them again in November and found more things.  Because I kept finding things, I didn't think there was much of a chance of writing an exhaustive post about all of the references in their music, so I decided to try something different.

Recently, I've become sort of obsessed with the notion of learning every part to every song by a particular band.  I've been doing this with the Zombies since 2012, and in doing so I've discovered a lot of fascinating things that I'd been completely oblivious to as just a listener.  At the beginning of this year, I started doing the same type of project with the Alan Parsons Project and a few Beach Boys albums.  I considered doing ELO then, but I didn't want to try doing too much at once.  Apparently I'm not good at setting limits for myself because now I am endeavouring to do that project.  I figured that if I've found so much just by listening, there must be a lot more to discover through learning the parts.

The notes I started taking at the beginning of last year now cover a whole page, and after recently listening to all of the albums again (just before starting this project) I added an-other hand-written half-page.  To start off this project, I'm going to go by album and write a more detailed account of what I've found so far, which - along with the references to other musicians - includes other interesting musical/lyrical things.  Then I'm going to start digging into the music (which will probably be slow going at first and which will be limited by my not owning some of the instruments).

There are some things in my notes that I'll have to verify, which might take awhile, but I felt I should get started with my ELO analysis.