Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone"

Last week, I had a post about Noel Paul Stookey's "Wedding Song (There Is Love)," and in listening to a Peter, Paul, and Mary compilation album in order to transcribe that, I noticed something about their "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."

In every verse except for the last, there's at least one line that's sung by only one voice.  In every verse, the sixth line (usually with the "Gone to graveyards, ev'ry one" structure) is sung by only a single voice, and in a few, the recurring "Where have all the... gone" lines are sung by only a single voice too.  This shifting between three voices and one voice helps to musically represent the absence that the lyrics allude to.

In some - but not all - of the lines with the "Young girls have picked them, every one" structure, the "every" in "every one" is sung with three syllables rather than two.  This pronunciation emphasizes the complete absence.

That sort of syllabic extension is also present in "passing" and "ago" in the recurring lines "Long time passing" and "Long time ago."  Both are sung to three syllables instead of two, which further represents the length of time.

Fifth Anniversary

To-day marks five years of playing guitar.  I won't say too much about that because everything I would say is in the post I wrote last year.  Really, the only thing that's changed is that I've learned more about guitar chord inversions.

In order to mark this anniversary, I recorded the first song that I learned to play - Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'."  When I learned how to play it, I actually had not heard Dylan's original version; I was going off Peter, Paul, and Mary's version, so my version follows their arrangement.

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Four Years

Four years ago to-day, I had a headache.  I don't remember why (if I ever knew at all), but despite that headache or perhaps even because of it, I finally sat down to figure out how to play the guitar that I'd owned for three months.

I listened to the Peter, Paul, and Mary version of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" with the chords and their corresponding pictures set out in front of me, and I learned to play it on the $100 guitar I'd gotten at the grocery store.

The main motivating reason that I wanted a guitar in the first place was because of a song by the Byrds - "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star."

So you want to be a rock and roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play 

They just made it sound so easy.  It wasn't until months later that I would learn that it was actually a satirical song aimed - in part - at the Monkees, whose television show I had recently discovered and was watching and enjoying.

During those four years, I've learned a lot about music.  I got an acoustic guitar, then a mandolin, a bass guitar, a second electric guitar, and - just a month ago - an electric twelve-string.  It seems I write something like this every year or so, but I always see it as a process.  There isn't really an end to anything; it's just a continual process of getting better and learning more.  Recently, I've taken greater steps toward that.  Currently, I'm in the midst of February Album Writing month, and in order to challenge the monopoly that stringed instruments have held on my composing virtually since its inception, I'm constricting myself to non-stringed instruments.  Electric piano has formed the basis so far, largely due to Rod Argent's influence.

But because I've been thinking a lot about music lately, I thought I would create a blog that's more suited towards long text posts than my tumblr is.  Here, I can actually flesh out ideas I have without feeling guilty that I'm taking up too much space on anyone's dashboard.  (I can also avoid the insane fanatics that creep on the tumblr tags.)

Academically, I'm an English major, and I've taken that method of thinking and applied it to song lyrics.  I've come up with some interesting ideas, yet there doesn't seem to be any place to discuss song lyrics to any great depth, or at least not the songs lyrics that I listen to.  So that's why I started this - to talk about the music I enjoy and the thoughts I have about it.

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