"Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairy Tale): Radio King Dom"

This is an-other small point, but I found two merisms in the "Radio King Dom" section of "Mount Vernon and Fairway (A Fairy Tale)."

The children looked everywhere, high and low, checking to see if they could find that transistor radio.  They couldn't find it.  They couldn't find it.  They looked upstairs and downstairs, all through the castle.

Mentioning the opposite extremes ("high and low" and "upstairs and downstairs") gives a sense of the breadth of the search.

"Leaving This Town"

A little over a month ago, I listened to Holland and noticed a small feature in "Leaving This Town."  In the line "Should I stay or go," "go" is sung with a melisma (B C B B A, I think), musically giving a sense of movement.

"Surfin'"

I was thinking about "Surfin'" this morning and realized that the line "Surfin' is the only life, the only way for me" is sung to only two pitches.  "Surfin' is the only life, the" is sung entirely to Eb notes, and "only way for me" is sung entirely to Db notes.  For each half of this line, then, the singularity of pitch musically represents the exclusivity of "only."

"Wendy"

Yester-day, I figured out the organ solo in "Wendy."  I got a few chords here and there, and while I didn't get a complete section of the chord progression, I figured out enough to notice a small feature.  Under the third line in each verse, the chords move from D minor to G major.  The song is in F major, so the B note in that G major is an accidental.  Musically, this provides a feeling of foreignness that matches the sentiment in the lines "I never thought a guy could cry," "I can't picture you with him," and "The farthest thing from my mind."

"Be with Me"

Some of the "free"s in "Be with Me" (in the sections starting at ~0:59 and ~1:57 and in the coda) are sung with various melismas.  Musically, this gives a sense of the word's meaning since it's not constrained to a single pitch.

"I Can Hear Music"

I listened to Friends/20/20 yester-day and noticed a couple things.  In the line "Maybe that's why when we're all alone" in "I Can Hear Music," "alone" is sung with a melisma (F# A B A), musically giving a sense of degree (for "all").  I referenced the version by the Ronettes, and while the rhythm is a bit different, this melisma is present there too.

"Amusement Parks U.S.A."

Last night, I learned the bass part for "Amusement Parks U.S.A." and noticed a small feature in the song.  Underneath "day" in the last "Let's take your car and mess around at the park all day" (at ~2:13), the bass (and I think also the guitar) has a chromatic phrase from F down to B.  Musically, this gives a sense of entirety for that "all day."

"California Girls"

Yester-day, the Beach Boys tweeted about "California Girls," which either reminded me of something I'd neglected to write about or made me fully realize something I had been dimly aware of:  the first verse is an example of a rhetorical catalogue:  "east coast girls... southern girls... midwest farmers' daughters... And the northern girls."  Its function here is to illustrate the wide variety.

"She Knows Me Too Well"

Two days ago, I learned the bass part for "She Knows Me Too Well," and yester-day I refined a few notes in the chorus that I had wrong initially.  I'm pretty sure the song is in B major, but there are some A naturals (accidentals in B major) that musically highlight various sentiments in the lyrics that are sung above them.

The A naturals occur in the second half of every other line in the verses.  In the first verse, in the line "Sometimes I have a weird way of showin' my love," they're under "showin' my love," musically illustrating that oddness.  In the line "I treat her so mean, I don't deserve what I have," they're under "deserve what I have," illustrating that incongruity.

In the second verse, in the line "I get so jealous of the other guy," the A naturals are under "other guy," musically illustrating the foreignness of "other."  In the line "When I look at other girls, it must kill her inside," they're under "kill her inside," musically illustrating that pain.

"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.

"Anna Lee, the Healer"

Yester-day, I bought Wake the World: The Friends Sessions, one of the digital-only albums of session outtakes and alternate versions.  I listened to it a second time this morning and noticed a small feature in "Anna Lee, the Healer."  The lines "From the Himalayan mountainside up in Rishikesh / To a California beach house facin' towards the sea" contain a merism - a rhetorical device that gives a sense of breadth by naming two specific points along a range.

"Time to Get Alone"

I listened to Friends/20/20 this evening because I saw that to-day is the anniversary of 20/20's release (in 1969), and I noticed a couple things in the bridge of "Time to Get Alone."

There's some sort of effect applied to the vocals singing "deep and wide" at the end of the line "Lookin' down through the valleys so deep and wide," giving a sense of voices echoing through a "deep and wide" valley.

In the last "Aren't you glad we finally got away," the "away" is sung with a melisma (G A Eb D), musically giving a sense either of movement or distance.  I think the Eb is even an accidental, which heightens the sense of distance.