Saturday, April 4, 2015

"Heroes and Villains"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I was just going to say that one of the things I noticed while listening to SMiLE a few days ago is that there's an ascending melody during the "My children were raised" part, apparently to reflect the raising.   But then I got wondering about the intervals, so I figured out that part.  It's actually based around the C# scale (C#, D#, E#, F#, G#).  Including each note in the scale (at least up to the fifth) helps emphasize the increments and thus the growing that's mentioned in the lyrics.

I'm not sure I have the very end of this right.  There's a D#, but I think there's also an-other note.  I just played an-other D# an octave higher.  As a basis for this, I used track 33 ("Heroes and Villains: Children Were Raised (Remake)") from disc 2 of The SMiLE Sessions [Deluxe Edition].

There also some consonance between "raised" and "rise" in the lines:
My children were raised
You know they suddenly rise