Saturday, April 28, 2018

"Add Some Music to Your Day"

Yester-day I learned the chords for "Add Some Music to Your Day" and noticed something interesting about them.  For the first three verses, all of the chords are major chords, but the bridge starts with a C# minor.  After almost two whole minutes of major chords, that one minor chord completely changes the mood and (to some degree) provides a musical sense of the desolation and loneliness mentioned in the bridge ("Music... Is like a companion / For your lonely soul").

I feel it also worth mentioning that when I listened to the album a couple weeks ago, I realized I had part of my transcription wrong.  I'd thought a line in the third verse was "Your preacher adds it to his songs" (although I thought this didn't make much sense).  I realized recently that the line is actually "Your preacher adds it to his psalms" (rhyming with "calm" from the previous line).  Along with making a lot more sense, this is actually true.  In four of my hymnals, there are chant tones to which the Psalms can be sung.