A song of changes

The genesis of this new song was a video from David Bennett Piano from 18 August 2021 in which he discusses 6/4 time. As he notes, this is a time signature that was used frequently in classical music, but rarely in modern music. These days no one initially publishes sheet music but rather recordings, and it is the job of a copyist to create the sheet music by listening to the music.

I admit that I have rarely encountered 6/4 time; Dave Stewart notes that the organ solo in National Health's "Dreams wide awake" is in this time signature. A very interesting case is the song "Love that conquers" by the Swell Season, where instrumental bars in 5/4 alternate with sung bars in 6/4. Towards the end, there are even a few bars sung in 7/4. Needless to say, I was not familiar with any of the examples that David played in his video, save 'Electric Feel' by MGMT, whose beat is very hard to pin down. To me it sounds like 4/4 + 2/4 but everyone has their own opinion (where is the 'one'?).

Anyway: I was charmed enough to attempt writing a song in 6/4. I confess that I cheated, in that the original tune that I recorded on my mobile phone whilst playing the piano was in 4/4. When I came to sequencing the tune, I added another two beats per bar. This worked out very well, except in one place where an instrumental bar of 6/4 in the middle didn't sound correct; in the end, I sequenced this as two bars in 4/4, thus adding an extra two beats to the verse. This mucked up the bar markings in Reason, although by the end of the song, it got sorted out as there are three verses with these extra two beats, thus an extra complete bar had been created.

Over the past month, I've been working on the arrangement. It was almost finished until a few days ago, but since then I made quite a few changes to the music, including the chord sequence of the coda, one instrumental link and even the sound of one of the instruments. Excessive polishing of the arrangement always means that I am having problems writing the words; in fact, I didn't have any ideas what the song was to be about which is why I couldn't write any lyrics. At one stage, the lyrics seemed to be pure prosody, describing the tune, but I cleverly deleted them this morning (I found a piece of paper where I had scribbled down 'A semitone raise, the tonal centre/Has lost its balance and then it rests', but I don't remember what came before that, something about smooth glissandi).

Yesterday after much effort I managed to write a coherent verse about a romance, similar in scope to my song 'This is how it all begins'; the first verse initially started with the phrase 'A summer romance', whereas the second verse would begin with 'An autumn cooling', and the third verse would have 'A winter break-up' somewhere. But this didn't work out exactly how I thought it might, probably for the best. In terms of rhythms, each phrase (one bar) had five syllables, as can be seen in those examples. This was slightly limiting, but meant that there are very few verbs in the lyrics.

This morning I worked hard and completed the lyrics, rewriting several lines in the first verse and then continuing with the rest of the song. Once I had lyrics, I could sing and record them; during the recording, I was still changing a word here or there. Now the song is complete and mastered; I need to listen to other music for a while in order to get this song out of my head. Tomorrow I'll listen with fresh ears and probably remix it.

An introduction: a slow beginning
Hearts full of flowers and hidden meanings
We take our walks here along the pathways
We talk sweet nothings, we speak of fair days
That bring on changes in our relations
We’re going somewhere, we’re growing closer
A summer romance, a slow enchantment
That promises so much

And so the weeks pass with mutual feelings
Nights full of loving, the mornings seeking
Some kind of balance, some type of order
A rearrangement, the days grow shorter
And bring on changes in our relations
We’re going nowhere, we have stopped growing
An autumn cooling, a slow detachment
That could have brought so much

I don’t know if I could see what I’d lost
All I’ll ever know is the pain that it cost

Now I remember the songs she sang me
I caught a whisper of some lost memory
Of conversation that yielded nothing
Of situations that called for bluffing
A song of changes, lost in the cosmos
A song of yearning for something better
A winter breakup, a spring revival
We live and hope for more

I still managed to get those seasonal phrases into the song!

A slightly hallucinogenic video of this song can be found here.