Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2020

"Friends"

I recently learned the bass register of the clavinet part in "Friends," and in doing so, I discovered an interesting feature in the song.

The melody to which "We've been friends now for so many years" is sung contains only the pitches D, E, and F#; the melody to which "We've been together through the good times and the tears" is sung contains only the pitches Eb, F, and G.  I'm not sure whether this is technically a key change (the song is [mostly] in D major) or just a slew of accidentals, but in any case, the foreign tonalities musically indicate the breadth of experiences that have occurred in this friendship.

Friday, April 19, 2019

"Friends"

Yester-day I listened to Friends, 20/20, and Sunflower, and I found a number of mostly small points to write about.

In "Friends," the first line is "We've been friends now for so many years."  The "many" is sung with a melisma (F# E F# E), musically giving a sense of number.  When this line is repeated later, however, I don't think it has this feature.