musical thoughts

Here’s an original tune. I owe everyone that, I haven’t posted in a long time.

I wrote this song for my cousin’s wedding in the summer of 1991. Other than at that gig, I don’t think it’s been played in public at all. I am dusting it off because I may have the opportunity to play it at a friend’s wedding. She wanted the Mendelssohn wedding march, but I can’t hang with that (although any progression that starts out a tritone away from tonic has a lot going for it in my book).

The “musical kernel” or organizing idea in my composition is to take the four-note “here comes the bride” motif (ascending perfect fourth) and harmonize it in unconventional ways, to break anticipation of what happens. I don’t snarf the whole melody from HCtB, just the opening lick. My tune has its own melody, but the quote appears five times, each time harmonized in a different (and hopefully non-obvious) way.

Then there’s a B section that contrasts with the A by having a whole note melody, which builds tension by moving upward as various triads change over a Db pedal point. The tension that builds is released by the fifth occurrence of the HCtB quote.

Ok, here’s a chart: Wedding song by Rob

The form is AAB. The five occurrences of the quote are at the pickup to the first bar, fourth bar, ninth bar, the last bar of A, and the last bar of B. The five different harmonizations are:
F -> Dbmaj7
Dbmaj7/F -> Gbmaj7
F/A -> Bbmi7
Ab13b9 -> Dbmaj7 (F/Ab7 -> Dbmaj7)
D7#9 -> Dbmaj7
The last two are identical except for the change of root. One I deliberately avoided was F/Db (Dbmaj7#5). I use it later in the B section, but it didn’t really work for me in the sound I was getting in A section. Maj7#5 is not a “pretty” harmony to many ears.

What else is interesting? The A is 11 bars long. I have a propensity to elide phrases in my compositions. In this case, I liked the forward motion that was gained by not having the twelfth bar where you land on I and bounce to V before returning to I back at the top of the form.

If you look hard at the B section changes, you can probably guess that I had been studying Pee Wee. I really fell in love with the [B/Db->F/Db] sound. I love that those triads are a tritone apart, and share no common tones. I needed to build up some tension though, so I put an upward moving melody over the pedal point, and brought in a couple other triads (including a diminished one) to contribute more motion to what could have been a very static pedal point.

Pedal points themselves are typically used for dominant prolongation, and here I use one for tonic (not at all unheard of–try On Green Dolphin Street for a precedent).