The Yardbirds' "For Your Love"

A couple months ago, while listening to Herman's Hermits' cover of the Yardbirds' "For Your Love," I realized that I'd misunderstood some lines.  However, the more I got thinking about it, I realized that how I'd originally understood it is also a valid reading.  I recently listened to the Yardbirds' original version for my Collection Audit project, and when I transcribed the lyrics, I discovered a third reading.

The line in question is the second line in the second verse.  I'd always understood it as "I'd give the stars and the sun 'fore I live," with the meaning that the singer/speaker would want to give the universe to the girl he loves before he'd allow himself to live and be with her.  (In explaining this, I've realized that it actually doesn't make that much sense, but this reading persists for me just because it's the only one I had for so long.)

When I recently heard the Herman's Hermits version, I realized that the line break might not interrupt the meaning.  Instead of two separate sentiments ("I'd give the stars and the sun 'fore I live" and "To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright"), it's just one thought divided by the line break ("I'd give the stars and the sun for I live / To thrill you with delight") and then the shorter promise that "I'd give you diamonds bright."  The "[be]fore" that I had thought was a temporal conjunction could be rendered as "for" and used as a causal conjunction.  (It could be rephrased as "I'd give the stars and sun because I live to thrill you with delight.")

I suspect that the first of those readings ("I'd give the stars and the sun 'fore I live" as a distinct thought from "To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright") made more sense to me because the same structure is present in the first verse:  "I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door / To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright."  Because of the line break, it's read more obviously as the two promises "I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door" and "To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright" rather than the uneven "I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door / To thrill you with delight" and "I'd give you diamond bright."

But if that weren't enough, when I transcribed the song, I found yet an-other reading.  I'd been thinking of just the lead vocals, but in between those two lines, the backing vocals add "For your love."  This addition multiplies the ways in which the lines can be understood.

In the first verse, there's now:

1. I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door / To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright
2. I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door / To thrill you with delight; I'd give you diamonds bright
3. I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door (For your love) / To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright

And for the second verse:

1. I'd give the stars and the sun 'fore I live / To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright
2. I'd give the stars and the sun for I live / To thrill you with delight; I'd give you diamonds bright
3. I'd give the stars and the sun for I live (For your love) / To thrill you with delight, I'd give you diamonds bright

In the third reading of each, the "For your love" is given as a reason for the singer/speaker's bringing and giving certain items.  In the first verse, he says he'll "bring... diamond rings and things" for love, and in the second, he says he'll "give the stars and sun" as gifts because he lives for love.

There are so many ways in which the words can be understood, yet they still mean more or less the same thing.

Will Practice Scales for Employment

As of last month, I've been unemployed for two years (I graduated from university but haven't been able to find a job because I live in a cesspit devoid of occupational opportunity).  I routinely check job listings but haven't been able to find anything that 1) I'm qualified for and 2) wouldn't detest doing (it seems like everything is medical, heavily industrial, or truck driving).  My unemployment has become even more frustrating because a number of my former classmates are either continuing their education with more advanced degrees or already have really good positions.  For the last month or two, whenever I saw something someone posted about their amazing job, my reaction was to go check the job listings again.  And - of course - because I was already checking them almost everyday, nothing new (and certainly nothing good) came up.

Recently, I thought that I should redirect this impulse and make it productive.  I eventually came up with this: every time I see something that reminds me of my shameful unemployment, I'm going to practice a scale.  I already delineated a cycle of the twenty-four scales (I'm following the order in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, even though I've never heard it, much less played it) on five instruments (piano, bass, guitar in open D tuning, mandolin, and guitar in standard tuning).  For the fretted instruments, I'll start one fret higher every time I repeat the cycle of twenty-four scales.

Last week, I reviewed the left-hand finger positions for playing piano scales because - despite a semester of piano class - I didn't remember them (I did remember the right hand).  In doing this preliminary practice, I realized that I should actually give this project some more structure, so I'm going to practice a scale everyday regardless of unemployment woes.

I'm sure that relentlessly practicing my scales won't help me get a job, but music (in one form or an-other) is something I've been intensely interested in for the past few years, so drilling myself in one of its most basic structures surely can't be a waste of time (maybe I'll finally develop some more advanced keyboard skills too).  My chances of actually getting a job in music are astronomically minuscule (although that also seems to describe my chances of getting any sort of job), but I'm sure it'll always be a hobby for me.  In fact, if I do ever get a job, I'll still probably put more effort into my various musical endeavours than my professional work.

I'm not sure for how long, but I'll be documenting what scales I practice on my Twitter feed.

The Kingston Trio's "'Round about the Mountain"

For my Collection Audit project, I recently listened to the two-disc compilation album I have by the Kingston Trio.  When I listened to it last September, a line in "'Round about the Mountain" (written by Louis Gottlieb) sounded familiar to me.  I finally finished my transcription, so now I can write about the song.

One of the verses is:

If you can't pray like Peter
If you can't preach like Paul
Go home and tell your neighbor
That He died to save us all

I'm pretty sure that for this verse Gottlieb took some inspiration from the hymn "Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling" (text by David Marsh, music by Joseph Barnby).  Apparently, there are alternate verses, but in the version I'm familiar with (#318 in the Lutheran Worship hymnal), the second verse is:

If you cannot speak like angels, if you cannot preach like Paul,
You can tell the love of Jesus; you can say He died for all.
If you cannot rouse the wicked with the judgement's dread alarms,
You can lead the little children to the Savior's waiting arms.

The clause "If you can't preach like Paul" in Gottlieb's song is identical to Marsh's "if you cannot preach like Paul" (save for the contraction), which is the initial similarity I noticed.  Additionally, Gottlieb's "tell your neighbor / That He died to save us all" is quite similar to Marsh's "You can tell the love of Jesus; you can say He died for all."

After transcribing "'Round about the Mountain" and comparing it to "Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling" I found some more similarities.  These two verses - aside from the specific examples of Paul's preaching and telling of Christ's redemption - have the same general idea: even if you don't have the eloquence of angels or saints, you can still proclaim the message of Christ.  As Marsh puts it in a later verse: "Let none hear you idly saying, 'There is nothing I can do.'"

The last line of the Marsh verse quoted in full above might have inspired a recurring line in Gottlieb's song.  There are two repeated sections in "'Round about the Mountain":

'Round about the mountain
'Round about the mountain
My God is waiting
You can rise in His arms

and

The Lord loves a sinner
The Lord loves a sinner, man
The Lord loves a sinner
Who will rise in His arms

Both end with "ris[ing] in His arms," which isn't dissimilar to the image in Marsh's phrase "the Savior's waiting arms" (from Matthew 19:13-15).

Gottlieb's use of the phrase "If you can't preach like Paul" is the more irrefutable indication of the influence that "Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling" probably had on him, but there might be something to these others too.

Simon & Garfunkel's "America"

Last December I thought I realized something about Simon & Garfunkel's "America," but I wanted to listen to it again before I wrote about it.  A couple weeks ago, I listened to Bookends for my Collection Audit project and took that opportunity to transcribe most of the song.  What I was thinking in December is valid, although it's only a small point about the line "'Kathy, I'm lost,' I said, though I knew she was sleeping."

What I realized is the importance behind the singer/speaker's admission that he "knew she was sleeping."  He knew Kathy was sleeping, but he told that he's lost anyway, which reveals something about him.  He wants to tell someone that he feels lost, but he also doesn't really want that feeling to be known.  That's why - when he does tell someone that he feels lost - he makes sure that it's at a time when it won't be heard, namely when Kathy's asleep.

"As Time Goes By"

Last week, I started thinking about "As Time Goes By."  I think it's most famous from the movie Casablanca (which I watched for the first time only a few days ago, mostly to hear the song), but the version I'm most familiar with is Cliff Richard's.  In any case, I noticed some things about the first verse:

You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply as time goes by

There's assonance (with "i") in the second line - "A kiss is still a kiss."  There's an insistence and prevalence of that "i" sound, which emphasizes the constancy inherent in the meaning of "still."

Furthermore, that same "i" sound is in the "this" from the previous line.  The whole line "A kiss is still a kiss" is linked to "this" grammatically ("A kiss is still a kiss" is part of what "You must remember"), but they're also linked through that assonance.  There's the "i" in "this," and it's widespread in the line "A kiss is still a kiss."

The third line is interesting in its lack of that insistent assonance.  In "A sigh is just a sigh," that "i" sound is present only in the verb ("is").  In the two nouns ("sigh"), it's changed from a short "i" to a long "i," and there's a complete lack of any "i" (short or long) in the adverb ("just").  Because this line doesn't have the same repeated vowel sounds as the previous line (or any consistently repeated vowel sounds at all), it's slightly disappointing, so - compared to the kiss that "is still a kiss" - this line has the same unimpressive quality as a sigh, which is "just a sigh."

I should note that in the movie Casablanca, it's sung as "A kiss is just a kiss," which decreases the strength of the assonance-linking present in "A kiss is still a kiss."  I lookt up the lyrics for some other versions, and it seems like some have "A kiss is still a kiss" and some have "A kiss is just a kiss."

Punch Brothers' "Another New World"

Last month (the last day of the year, actually), I listened to Punch Brothers' Ahoy! EP.  I'd listened to it only a few times before, so listening to it then was the first time I really caught the name "Annabel Lee" in "Another New World."  The only other "Annabel Lee" I know of is the Edgar Allan Poe poem, so when I listened to Ahoy! a few weeks ago for my Collection Audit project, I transcribed the lyrics and compared them to the Poe poem.  The situations in each poem are different, but there are enough similarities to make me think that the song (written by Josh Ritter) took at least some inspiration from Poe.

In Poe's poem, there's the recurring line "In this kingdom by the sea," and "Another New World" is about maritime exploration.  There are lines about "set[ting] the course north" and "study[ing] the charts" to find "another new world at the top of the world."  In the song, Annabel Lee is a ship, and in the poem, she's "a maiden," but the connection between an Annabel Lee and the sea is a significant one in both works.

The speaker in the poem mentions the "love that was more than love" that he had with Annabel Lee, and the same sort of thing seems to be in the song.  The singer/speaker calls the Annabel Lee "the most beautiful ship in the sea."  Together, they're "happy to think back on all we had done," and he stays in "the loving embrace of her hold."

Both speakers are eventually separated from their respective Annabel Lees by means that are somewhat similar.  In the poem, "the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee," and in the song, the Annabel Lee is trapped in the ice and snow of the arctic.  The singer/speaker has to use "her mainsail for timber" and says he "burned her to keep me alive."  The cold is what does both of them in, either directly or because it leads to something worse.

Nevertheless, both speakers dream about Annabel Lee after her demise.  The speaker of the poem says that "the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee," and the singer/speaker of the song explains that "sometimes at night in my dreams comes the singing of some unknown tropical bird / And I smile in my sleep thinking Annabel Lee's finally made it to another new world."

Aside from the narrative, there are also some similarities in the poetic elements (although that doesn't really demonstrate Poe's influence in particular).  Both have some lines (or parts of lines) that have repetitive sounds.  There's alliteration with Gs in "So I said, 'All I got, all my guts, and my God'" in "Another New World," and in "Annabel Lee," there's some alliteration with Ls in "And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me" and "we loved with a love that was more than love."  There's some internal rhyme in "the waves that once lifted her sifted instead into drifts against Annabel's side" in "Another New World," and in "Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee" in "Annabel Lee."  I should note that I'm quoting from my own (possibly incorrect) transcription.  I did look up some other transcriptions, but I thought their accuracy questionable.

Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode"

A couple months ago, I happened to think of the line "Strummin' with the rhythm that the drivers made" in Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."  A few lines before that, it's mentioned that Johnny used to "sit beneath the tree by the railroad track," so I'm assuming that the "drivers" there are steel drivers, hammering in the railroad spikes like John Henry did.

Then it occurred to me that what Johnny B. Goode is doing here is sort of the opposite of a sea shanty.  Sailors sang sea shanties to coordinate work; the rhythm of the song synchronized the workers.  Here, Johnny's taking the rhythm of the workers and - through extracting its rhythm - practicing his strumming.

Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life"

A couple months ago, I discovered some ambiguities in the lyrics of Herman's Hermits' "The Most Beautiful Thing in My Life," specifically the second half of the second verse:

She glows to me, arose to me
A shining star she is by far
The most beautiful thing in my life

Almost each one of these lines could be parsed a different way.  First, I found just "arose"/"a rose."  So either "she... arose to me" or "[She's] a rose to me," almost the same as the "A shining star she is by far" in the next line - listing metaphors for the girl.

But once I transcribed that part of the lyrics, I found something else.  The last two lines could have a break in two different places.  It could follow the line break: "A shining star she is by far / The most beautiful thing in my life," or it could be "A shining star" (either a metaphor like "a rose" or "A shining star arose to me" inverted as "Arose to me a shining star") and "She is by far the most beautiful thing in my life."

2016 Musical Projects

Most of my musical focus this year is going to be spent on doing Collection Audit again.  Every other year since 2008, I've attempted (and so far been successful) in listening to all of the music in my collection.  Since 2014, I've also been writing about things I notice while listening to everything.

The only new project I started is Lyres, Harps, and Cymbals.  Last year, I got a box set of Bach's complete sacred cantatas, and I started LHC mostly as a way just to write about them.  I'm also writing about other church music, and I revived the Hymnal Habitation project that I did from late 2012 to early 2015 (although it's not called Hymnal Habitation anymore).

The other projects I'm doing are just continuations of what I've already been doing:

• Cover projects - last year, I started a bunch of projects where I try to learn every part to every song by a particular band.  I'm well aware that I'll probably never finish (especially because this year I'll be more focused on Collection Audit than these projects), but even in just attempting to learn all of the parts, I've discovered some interesting things I probably would have been oblivious to otherwise.
• Verulam Cover Project - The Zombies and related bands (Argent, Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent)
• APP Stereotomy - The Alan Parsons Project and Keats
• Pendleton Sounds - The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and SMiLE (and maybe others eventually)
• 10538 Orchestra - Electric Light Orchestra
• Beatle Audit - The Beatles
• February Album Writing Month (FAWM) - the challenge to write a fourteen-song album in February, which I've participated in since 2010 (and completed in various degree every year, although I think I deserve credit only for the last four years, when I actually recorded fourteen songs).  Because it's Leap Year, the requirement might be fourteen and a half songs this time; that's what they did in 2012.
• 50/90 - the challenge to write fifty songs in ninety days (from 4 July to 1 October), which I've also participated in since 2010.  I've never actually finished, but I've still written some pretty good stuff for this project.  For the last two years, I've suddenly run out of momentum once July is over (I think I must get stuck in the FAWM mindset).

Because I'm doing Collection Audit, I've put the Classical Music Queue and the Cover Project Listening Schedule on hold.  Once I finish Collection Audit (or once the year is over, whichever comes first), I'll restart both of those.

I'm going to try to continue to have weekly posts here, but because I'm doing Collection Audit, that's where I'll be writing the most.  I do have some things that I noticed last year that I never got around to investigating, and if the schedule works out, I'll be able to listen to them for Collection Audit and write about them here.

Carpenters' Christmas Portrait

I didn't listen to the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait until later this year, so this post about a couple songs on it is going up after Christmas.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

I heard this on the radio (which reminded me that I hadn't listened to the album yet this year), and I noticed three things that I wanted to write about, but after looking into them, only one turned out to be viable:  the "star" in "Hang your shining star above the highest bough" is just a half-step above the "bough," so pitch-wise, the "star" is "above the highest bough."  The "star" is sung to an A, and the "bough" to a G#.

"I'll Be Home for Christmas"

The Carpenters' version starts with a couplet that I haven't heard in any other version.  It's:

I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back, I promise you

and then it goes into "I'll be home for Christmas / You can count on me...."

There's a grammatical ambiguity with "even more than I usually do," specifically what it's referring to.  It could be either "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [dream about it]" or "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [love it]."  Either parsing is valid, and it could be understood either way.

"White Christmas"

Last year, I figured out how to play "White Christmas," and I discovered that there's a five-note chromatic phrase corresponding to "of a white Christmas."  I was thinking about that again this year when I realized the whole first phrase is made up of half-steps:

(click the image to enlarge it)

After I realized that, I started thinking about the lyrics for that phrase:  "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."  Because the music there is made up entirely of half-steps, there's a sort of tension.  It sort of portrays either the desperation or the earnestness of the singer/speaker's wish for a white Christmas.

"It Came upon the Midnight Clear"

Since July, I've been slowly working my way through the book I used in my beginner's piano class in college (James Bastien's The Older Beginner Piano Course).  At the end of October, I re-learned how to turn the thumb under or cross the hand over in order to play a scale with one hand.  To demonstrate this, the book provides a few phrases from some Christmas songs that are built on scales.  One of these is the third line in "It Came upon the Midnight Clear":

After practicing this for a few days, I started thinking about that octave drop that accompanies "Peace on the earth."  I realized that it retains a distinction from the Luke 2 text that the lyrics are based on: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!'" (Luke 2:13-14).  There's the highness of God and the lowness of those on the earth.  While the lyrics here don't include "Glory to God in the highest," they still have that same idea of the difference of levels by setting the "peace" and "the earth" on the same note an octave apart.

For what it's worth, both Handel (in the Messiah: No. 17 - Glory to God in the Highest) and Saint-Saëns (in his Christmas Oratorio: II. Recit et chœur) do similar things with the same text.  They set the "highest" with higher voices and the "on earth" with lower ones.  I hadn't noticed until writing this, but Handel has an octave drop for "peace on earth" too, between A notes in the bass voice:

(notation found here)