Peter & Gordon's The Ultimate Peter & Gordon

About a year ago, I listened to The Ultimate Peter & Gordon and noticed a couple things about some tracks.  I listened to the album again recently for my Collection Audit project (and found some more things to write about), so I thought I'd finally get around to writing about those original ones too.

"Broken Promises"

Each verse ends with the lines "Broken words / Broken promises / Cause broken hearts."  While Gordon sings "hearts" to just a single note (a G), Peter sings it to the phrase D E F# E (and there's a more complex figure for the final line).  The way that Peter sings it, the "hearts" are literally broken into separate pitches.

I think it's also significant that the phrases "Broken words" and "Broken promises" don't have any melismas like that.  It's as if the speaker/singer is more concerned about the broken hearts than about what caused them.

"To Know You Is to Love You"

The introductory couplet and the whole first verse is sung in harmony (save for Gordon's "And I do," which Peter echoes rather than harmonizes), but in the second verse, Peter drops out for the line "Oh, everyone says there'll come a day" (so Gordon sings it alone).  He joins back in for the next line, which is "When I'll walk alongside of you."  There're two voices there, which - to some degree - represent the singer/speaker and the girl he's addressing, but since those two voices also represent the single I earlier in the song, it doesn't work that well as an effect.

The Byrds' "You're Still on My Mind"

About two weeks ago, I figured out the chords for the Byrds' "You're Still on My Mind" (from Sweetheart of the Rodeo).  Even before I figured them out, I thought there was a cyclical nature to them.  Figuring them out revealed that it's just a I IV V I pattern, but that has some interesting implications when the lyrics are considered.

The song is in A major, so with that standard I IV V I progression (played twice for each verse), it's A major / D major / E major / A major (although I should mention that an E major underlies the introductory figure).  At first, all I noticed was that the song returns to A major (the tonic or "home" chord) for the end of the line "'One more,' I keep sayin', 'and then I'll go home,'" so the music reflects the lyrics there.  But then I realized that the cyclical returning is present in other lyrics too.  Each verse ends with the line "An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you're still on my mind," and the "you're still on my mind" is sung above an A major chord.  In the same way the "you" is "still on my mind," there's a constant returning to that A major.

The opposite sort of thing is present in the second verse.  When the speaker/singer notices "the people... dancin' and havin' their fun," he's briefly distracted from his own plight, and the chord progression modulates away from that A major chord to D major.  But when he starts "thinkin' about what you have done," the progression returns to A major again.  In the third line, in order "To try and forget you," he "turn[s] to the wine," and - again - the chord progression modulates from A major to D major to musically portray that turning, only to return to A major again at the end of the verse because "you're still on my mind."

The I IV V I progression is pretty run-of-the-mill and a bit uninteresting, but because these lyrics connect with it in a clever way, it's elevated above its usual mediocrity.

The Apple in Stereo's "Dance Floor"

Last week I listened to the Apples in Stereo's Travellers in Space and Time, and I thought a part in "Dance Floor" sounded pretty easy to figure out, so I did that.  I'm still not really sure what instrument it's played on, but I think it's a synthesized string instrument.  A couple days after I figured it out, I realized that it would be pretty easy to notate too, and while I was doing that, I also figured out a part in a higher register:

(click the image to enlarge it)

I feel I should draw attention to the fact that this begins on a downbeat.  Either there isn't a way to make that more obvious in the program I use or I don't know how to do it, so when I edited the image, I just took the half rest from the first bass clef measure and used it to replace the whole rest in the first treble clef measure.  (Although now the notes in that first bass clef measure are off-center).

This is the figure as it appears at the beginning of the song.  When it recurs, some of the four-measure phrases are either omitted or repeated, but the notes remain the same in each occurrence.

The Who's "The Seeker"

Back in June, I realized something about the Who's "The Seeker."  I listened to it recently as part of my Collection Audit project, so I thought I'd finally get around to writing about it.

The second verse starts with the lines "I asked Bobby Dylan; I asked the Beatles / I asked Timothy Leary, but he couldn't help me either."  Instead of Bob Dylan, he's called Bobby Dylan.  The meter of the line might be partially responsible for the diminution, but that diminutive both literally and figuratively belittles Dylan because he "couldn't help me."

Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You"

Last month, I learned the bass part for Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking about You."  I'd recently listened to the Hollies' first five albums for the first time, so I realized that I have four versions of the song.  Along with Berry's original and the Hollies' cover, I had a version by the Yardbirds and a live version by the Beatles.  So I figured I should learn it.

I tried something different and notated the whole thing using my MIDI software.  After a couple weeks of printer difficulties, I printed the notation and indicated some structural way points.  I should mention that I'm a bit unsure of the last two measures of the solo.  I'm pretty sure the figures are different from what they are during the verses, but I don't know if what I have is exact.  I'm pretty confident on the rest though.  Chuck Berry's recording fades out at the end, so there are only about five measures of that last figure.  I continued it for the eight measures that it has in the verses and then resolved it with a C whole note.

Click the images to enlarge them:

Bob Dylan's "Standing in the Doorway"

As I've been going through my music collection for my Collection Audit project, I've rediscovered some things I'd forgotten about and/or haven't written about.  A couple days ago, I listened to Bob Dylan's Time out of Mind, and I re-realized that the line "I'll eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm dry" at the beginning of the last verse of "Standing in the Doorway" is a quote from the folk song "The Moonshiner."  I have only Tommy Makem & the Clancy Brothers' version, in which the line is "I'll eat when I’m hungry, and I'll drink when I'm dry."  The Wikipedia article for "The Moonshiner" notes that Dylan recorded the song in 1963 and that it's included on one of his Bootleg Series albums.  I don't have any of those though, so I couldn't say how much of a connection his recording has with either the version of "The Moonshiner" with which I'm familiar or "Standing in the Doorway."