Wednesday, June 22, 2022

"I Went to Sleep"

Last night, I learned the bass part for "I Went to Sleep."  While doing so, I noticed a detail:  during "and the sprinklers went off," there's the sound of a tambourine kind of in the background, apparently meant to represent those sprinklers.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

"Airplane"

When I listened to 15 Big Ones and Love You a couple days ago, I also noticed a small feature in "Airplane."  In the line "The clouds in the sky caress my mind so tenderly," "tenderly" is sung with a melisma (F# E B A G), musically giving a sense of the degree of that "so."

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

"Just Once in My Life"

I listened to the two-albums-on-one-CD re-issue of 15 Big Ones and Love You yester-day, and I noticed an interesting feature in the synth bass part in "Just Once in My Life."  About halfway through the first verse, there's a chromatic phrase (Eb D Db):


This is the only spot where this happens.  In the other phrases in this verse and in the entirety of the second verse, that Eb is a quarter note.  This instance immediately follows the line "I've given up on schemes 'cause ev'ry one fell through," and so in a way, this chromatic descent mirrors that "falling through," even if music takes this falling a bit more literally than the lyrics do.