"Surf's Up"

I never got around to writing about it, but years ago (10 April 2015, according to my records), I noticed that the end of "domino" in "columnated ruins domino" in "Surf's Up" descends, musically illustrating that falling.  After I listened to The SMiLE Sessions box set recently, I started thinking about this again and realized that there's more to it than that.  "Domino" is sung to the notes A F E D, and I think "Surf's Up" is in D minor, so these last three notes are a diatonic descent (they fall downward in the scale without skipping any notes).  One note falls into the next in the same way that one domino falls into an-other, so it's not just the descent that's musically significant here; it's also the intervals.

I also noticed that there's painting imagery in the line "Canvas the town and brush the backdrop."  This might connect with the short quotation of "The Old Master Painter."

"Heroes and Villains"

When I listened to The SMiLE Sessions box set last month, I noticed a couple things about the way some vocals are articulated.  I wanted to wait to write about these until I'd listened to the whole box set, but then I never got around to doing it.

I noticed two small things about "Heroes and Villains."  The line "Once at night, cotillion squared the fight, and she was right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down" is sung to a descending melody, starting at F# and descending diatonically (in C# major) for more than an octave to D#.  This descent seems to represent that bringing "down" in a musical way.

In the cantina section, "margaritas keep the spirit high" is sung to an ascending phrase (B# C# C# D# D# E# E# G# G#), so there's something of a musical representation of that "high."

"God Only Knows"

I recently found some notation I wrote out a couple years ago of the first half of the bass part for "God Only Knows."  This reminded me that I'd learned the chords and French horn for the introduction back in October.  I don't know why I didn't record it then; maybe I intended to look for the bass part but then forgot about it.

"I'm Waiting for the Day"

I just figured out some flute parts in "I'm Waiting for the Day," and I discovered that a couple sections in the flute part have the same rhythm as some sections of the timpani.  Here's the flute part at the beginning (~0:05), which is also repeated over and over again in the coda:

Here's the flute part at ~1:09:

I might be missing some sections, but the timpani follow this same rhythm at the very beginning, throughout the second verse, and in the coda.

"The Girl from New York City"

Yester-day I listened to Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and noticed a small thing about "The Girl from New York City."  The "every-" part of "everyday" in the line "They took a small apartment down on the beach where you find them everyday" is sung with three syllables rather than the usual two.  This pronunciation gives a sense of the frequency of how often the titular girl and her friend are on the beach.