CW118
The second song on my new album, Pablo Held Plays My Music, is called “Little Stairway.”
Here’s the sheet I sent Pablo:
Here’s Pablo’s arrangement:
(All of our sheets for this project are available through Pablo. Follow the link on his Chris Weisman Plays My Music Bandcamp page.)
The evolution from one version to the next is rich in interesting details. But my subject today is a simple melodic cadence (in the key of B) that both of them share.
How it’s harmonized in either version is not my focus. I want to pluck it out and think about its use more generally.
It was getting stuck in my head. It sounded like three little gears turning to achieve a resolution. But then when I thought about what the notes were, it interested me that the second and third gears were actually the same gear. But with a difference: how they fall rhythmically.
(My analytical side is engaged, to varying degrees, while writing, and then I forget that stuff. What I’m left with is recordings I feel like I deeply understand as a listener, but I couldn’t tell you the details or play any of it. (If I need to relearn my own music and there’s no paper* at hand, I have to transcribe it as if it was written by someone else.) In this case—especially in the case of melodies—I was never deeply engaged analytically at all. I sang things out, and then just wrote down what I did. All this to say, this melodic analysis I’m doing now is the first time I’ve looked at this music this way.)
*Generally I notate instrumental music, but only write down the lyrics of songs with singing. (For the latter, quick audio recordings while writing help me remember.) I think it’s because my melodies with lyrics tend to be more rhythmically nuanced, would be a pain to notate, while my instrumental melodies usually have more of a wooden character. Parts that I write over the top of both kinds of song, while tracking, are almost never notated. The recording itself—and I don’t keep stems either—is the document.
Once I noticed that the second and third gears were the same gear turned differently against the time, I noticed this:
The strong beats told a story of chromatic descent. And this same story is told in miniature right here:
I feel like a detective piecing together clues—I’ve gotten way more interested in looking carefully at melodies recently—but what’s practically important to me, especially as an improviser, is just playing the cadence in different keys on different instruments. It could return without that step, but if it wants to show up somewhere again, whether intact or melting into something else, that’s much more likely (I think?) if I give it some attention. The outcome part doesn’t really matter though. I like it, so it’s worth spending time with. 💕 It reminds me of Pablo’s incredible version of my song!
I don’t want to get caught up looking at chords it works over—the possibilities are endless—but I do think it’s worth noting these:
TTFN 💕