Mutated 12-bar blues

David Bennett has uploaded a few YouTube videos discussing common chord sequences, eg  i bIII bVII IV (Em G D A in the key of E minor, although this is really E Dorian because of the C# in the sub-dominant A chord) or the 'doo wop changes': I vi IV V (E C#m A B). He makes the interesting point that modern songs seemed to be composed entirely of 4 bar loops that don't really resolve, where 'resolving' means a complete cadence, V -> I, as in the doo wop changes. The first sequence (that DB terms the 'Wonderwall' sequence) can also be referred to as a triple plagal cadence in which the four chord resolves to the one: G is the fourth/sub-dominant of D, D is the sub-dominant of A and A is the sub-dominant of E(m). The plagal cadence is a weaker form of cadence and doesn't really resolve in the same way that the dominant to the tonic does.

For years, I've been trying to avoid full cadences (trying frequently to use imperfect or deceptive cadences, if I'm writing a functional sequence) and also songs that contain endlessly repeating four bar sequences. As it happens, the song that I wrote last year, "My father's eyes" is basically an endlessly repeating four bar sequence, but not one that DB mentioned (i v bVI IV - Dm Am Bb G): this is displaying modal mixture, as no key can have as diatonic chords Bb and G (because of the Bb/B dichotomy).

The YT video that I linked to ends with a discussion of the twelve bar blues, a form that is very well known, at least in the 20th century, and doesn't match those endless four bar sequences. It normally consists of four bars of the tonic, two bars of the subdominant, two bars of the tonic then two bars of the dominant and two bars of the tonic, although the last four bars can be different. One could write this as I x 4, IV x 2, I x 2, V x 2, I x 2, or for variation, I x 4, IV x 2, I x 2, V, IV, I, V. 

A few years ago, I realised that the song "Riders on the storm" by The Doors is actually a 12-bar blues, albeit in a mutated form. First of all, it's in a minor key and due to that, there are chord substitutions. I want to compare this to a standard major 12 bar: if "Riders" is in Em, then a 12-bar in E (major) would be E x 4, A x 4, E x 2, B A E B (using the turnaround form for the final four bars). "Riders" could be written as Em x 4, Am x 2, Em x 2, D C Em x 2 (or Em D). The first eight bars have the same structure, with minor chords replacing the major chords. D replaces B and can be seen as a flattened form of the same chord: B Major contains the notes B D# F#, and if it were B7, the notes would be B D# F# A. If we flatten the third, we get B D F# A (Bm7) than can also be seen as D6. And if we drop the B altogether, the notes are now D F# A - D Major! The same correspondence exists between C and A, where C can be seen as a flattened version of a rootless A chord.

So "Riders" is a 12-bar blues, not that anyone would ever consider it so. 

Bonus points: in the middle of "21st century schizoid man" by King Crimson, there is also a 12-bar blues hiding in full sight, starting at 4:40 in the original version (until about 5:20). One listens to the song and is so amazed by the unison playing and the extremeness of this section, that the fact that this is a 12-bar completely escapes one!

Yesterday's sky

Whilst walking the dog at about 5:45 am yesterday, I glanced at the sky. Apart from some clouds that were some distance away and on the horizon, the sky was clear blue - except for this white line/cloud. The picture doesn't really do justice to what I saw: imagine a completely clear sky with a white line halving it. Very strange.

Today's weather

This is the display of our barometer. The first line 3:13 is supposed to be the time; I can't remember how to correct this. The second line, 26.5, is the temperature inside; the air conditioner is working. 29 is the percentage humidity - the air is very dry.

38.5 is the temperature outside - yes, 38.5°C! 101°F for those who work in the old system. It was already 29°C in the morning when I went for my daily walk (although this was at 7:30 am as opposed to 5:30 am for week days). Unsurprisingly, I have no intention of going outside until the evening. 

1500 blogs

It's that time again to sum up the last 100 blogs; the first was written on 22/06/21 and the last on 07/05/22 which means that the rate of blogging is 310/100 or one every 3.1 days - not too bad. That said, there were a few periods of daily blogs.

It's been a roller-coaster year: from the depths of my father dying to the joy of my son getting married. Health-wise, the underlying cause of my high blood pressure - primary aldosteronism - was found and treated, but the year ended with a COVID-19 infection and unexplained microhaematuria. I wrote and recorded eight new songs in this period. As can be seen below, there hasn't been that much work on my doctoral thesis, but in fact it has been progressing well.

Below is the tag table (only those with count >= 3 are shown; there are 30 tags with one or two blogs only in this period). Compared to the previous 100 blogs, COVID-19 has dropped from first place (17 blogs) to eleventh place (6); DBA has dropped from second place (15) to twelfth (5); health has climbed from third place (14) to first place (16); personal has climbed from seventh place (7) to second place (11) and song writing has climbed from sixth place (8) to third place (11). Basically, these 100 blogs had a different focus from the previous hundred.

Position	Tag	Count
1	Health	16
2	Personal	15
3	Song writing	11
4	Programming	10
5	CPAP	9
6	Delphi	9
7	Cooking	8
8	Father	7
9	Home recording	7
10	1974	6
11	Covid-19	6
12	DBA	5
13	1975	4
14	Aldosterone	4
15	Blood pressure	4
16	Ninja grill	4
17	Obituary	4
18	Binaural beats	3
19	Computer	3
20	Janis Ian	3
21	Office automation	3
22	Weather	3
23	song videos	3

Fall of Man in Wilmslow

Following is the blurb of the eponymous book:

From the author of the #1 best seller The Girl in the Spider's Web--an electrifying thriller that begins with Alan Turing's suicide, and then opens out to take in a young detective's awakening to painful secrets about his own life and the life of his country.

It's 1954. Several English nationals have defected to the USSR, while a witch-hunt for homosexuals rages across Britain. In these circumstances, no one is surprised when a mathematician by the name of Alan Turing is found dead in his home: it is widely assumed that he committed suicide, unable to cope with the humiliation of a criminal conviction for homosexuality. But young detective sergeant Leonard Corell, who had always dreamed of a career in higher mathematics, suspects greater forces are involved. In the face of opposition from his superiors, he begins to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that lead him to one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war: the Bletchley Park operation to crack the [Enigma codes of the Germans].

On the basis of the above blurb, this would appear to be a perfect book for me. Unfortunately I found it very disappointing - maybe because I have read Turing's biography several times, along with several books about the Enigma, and this story had very little new information to impart. As a devastating critique put it (from "Timescape"), there is much in this work which is original and much which is correct. Unfortunately, what is correct is not original, and what is original is not correct. A book with a similar starting point - "Enigma" by Robert Harris - is much better, although the film of the book wasn't that good (as always). 

Several reviews have mentioned that the pace of "Fall of man" is glacial. I think that the pace was not the problem, but rather the character of the protagonist, Leonard Corell, who one minute seems to be very bright and the next very dull. Maybe this was the pace of life in provincial Britain in 1954, still worn out from the war; it is mentioned in the book that food rationing is about to end. There are several mentions of Burgess and Maclean, along with a hint that Turing might have been blackmailed by the Russians because of his homosexuality. I suppose that this supposition is valid, although anyone who had known Turing would have realised how unlikely this would be. In real life, I've never come across such a suggestion. There is also mention of Philby and Venona, which seems an extremely unlikely event for 1954.

The standard of this book is far lower than the three Girl in the ... books that Lagercrantz has written, but then not every book can be a winner.

Carole Bayer Sager autobiography

I've known for some time that CBS wrote an autobiography, but presumably due to lethargy and procrastination (problems that seem to be growing as I grow older), I hadn't bothered ordering it until this past Friday morning.  As I ordered the Kindle version, I could begin reading it immediately, and finished reading by Saturday afternoon. The title of the book, "They're playing our song" comes from a musical written by Neil Simon based on the musical lives of CBS (who wrote the lyrics to the musical) and Marvin Hamlisch (who wrote the music).

The book can roughly be divided into two parts: pre-Burt Bacharach and post-Bacharach, where the cut off is roughly 1980. The first part is what most interested me and contained a certain amount of information about CBS's formative years, when she was over-weight and very anxious. For some reason, her birthdate isn't noted in the book - 8 March 1947. She went to the famous New York High School of Music and Art (which is where the film and tv series from the early 80s, "Fame", was located) then continued to New York University. She even spent some time as a teacher before the royalties from her first hit song, "A groovy kind of love", came in; these dwarfed her income as a teacher. One amusing early incident has her on a blind date with Paul Simon, set up by their respective mothers. With no chemistry in their meeting, they discussed who was the first to use the word 'groovy' in their lyrics.

The period leading up to the making of her first record is the period that most interests me and I intend to read this portion again. Some of the songs had been written before this period and recorded by others, whereas others were written especially for the record. There's a section detailing a meeting with Bette Midler, who was just becoming famous; “Why do you always use the same words when you write your songs?” she [BM] asked me [CBS] as we began. “I mean, why don’t you ever bother to find new words? You’re lazy.... Look at these words,” she said, randomly opening a book. “ ‘Curious’! You’ve never used the word ‘curious’ in a song. That’s a good word.” She opened another book. “ ‘Iconic.’ ‘Misfit.’ ‘Drunk.’ Where are these words in your songs? Everything’s ‘home,’ and ‘rain,’ and ‘light.’ ” She was impassioned now, glasses on the tip of her nose, shouting random words at me while throwing down one book and picking up another. “ ‘Dangling’! ‘Branches’! ‘Forbidden’! Those are good words! Have you ever used any of them?” “Let’s write a song about someone who’s breaking up with her boyfriend,” I said. “No-o-o-o!” Bette said, making sure the Os resonated in the room. “You didn’t hear anything I said. We’re not here to write some sad breakup song like you always write. Let’s throw the moron out of the house.”

This is how "You're moving out" came to be written. BM recorded the song before CBS and apparently there was bad blood between them for some years as BM's version did not sell whereas CBS's version was a minor hit in Britain (this was the song that introduced me to CBS in 1977). I went looking for this on YouTube and found a clip of her performing the song on 'Top of the Pops'; normally I would enclose the word 'performing' in quotation marks as most people appearing on this song mime to their records. But this clip has an alternative version; whilst the backing music is similar (the trombone seems to be missing), the vocals (not only CBS's, but all of the vocals) are completely different - and not as good! The album version, along with a different (and somewhat amateurish and embarrassing) video can also be found on YouTube.

The first album was recorded after CBS had split from her first husband, Andrew Sager; she then spent two years with Marvin Hamlisch, living and liking, but not loving, him. In about 1981, she met the very talented composer Burt Bacharach, and from here onwards, the story becomes less interesting. BB comes across as incredibly narcisstic: a good example of where it is better to divorce the artist from the art. BB also persuaded CBS to have cosmetic surgery which is why pictures pre-BB show her as flat chested, whereas later pictures have her with a fuller bosom.

In fact, pictures from 1981 onwards have her looking somewhat like Elisabeth Taylor, which is somewhat ironic as later on ET became her neighbour and friend. Even more ironic is that following CBS being installed as a judge on 'American Idol', the following tweets (included in her book) appeared on Twitter:

01-25-2007, 10:01 AM MaryMorph 
I missed the beginning of AI last night—who was that Joan Collins lookalike guest judge? We came up with all of the carols we knew, but couldn’t identify her!
01-25-2007, 11:11 AM Miss_Liss
The consensus in my office is Elizabeth Taylor, but I guess that’s another dark-haired woman who obviously has a really close relationship with her plastic surgeon :D.

In a sense, this book reminded me of Graham Nash's autobiography, 'Wild tales': the first half of the book, up to the recording and release of 'Crosby, Stills and Nash', is very interesting, but becomes somewhat boring afterwards. These people know everyone and write songs with them all the time. There's an amusing incident where Bob Dylan invites CBS to write a song with him, but the other anecdotes are less absorbing.

Going back to Bette Midler and her criticisms of CBS's word choices, I took a look at some of my recent lyrics, that include words like pathways, enchantment, rearrangement, bluffing, yearning (all of those in one song), communications transmogrified, democracy, tyranny, ambiguous (another song); I could go on, but I think that I've passed the 'BM litmus test'. I admit that I consciously try to use expressive language, however difficult it is to fit multisyllabic words into tunes. But then, I'm not writing pop songs and don't have to find lyrical hooks.

ShoesOnLine (another pointless day-in-the-life-blog)

My wife gave me a pair of 'classic' crocs shoes maybe ten years ago, and I've been wearing them in the house ever since. Now they look very shabby and the heels are worn down, which is why I've been thinking about replacing them for several months. Once shops selling these shoes used to be ubiquitous but now it's very difficult to find such a shop. 

In another thread, there have been advertisements on television* for several months advertising shoes being sold on-line (these adverts also feature a delectable presenter, whose name I have yet to establish). It occurred to me one day that maybe this company, www.shoesonline.co.il, might sell the classic croc shoe, so I accessed the site and discovered that indeed they do. They were priced at some ridiculous amount, but the site offered discounts, so the final price was 144 NIS (about $43) which is cheap; there is also free home delivery.

I ordered about three weeks ago; several times I received emails to say that my order has been entered into the system, someone is preparing the shoes, they have been sent, and eventually the most important of all, the shoes have arrived! But they didn't arrive at my house, but rather at a collection point in Bet Shemesh. As I had to be in that area that day (last Thursday), picking up the shoes wasn't a problem.

When I got home and tried on the shoes, I discovered that they were too big (as always with my shoe purchases via the Internet). But unlike other suppliers, they offer free replacements if the size is wrong, also delivered to my home. So on Saturday or Sunday, I accessed the web-site again, found my order and did what was necessary to change the size. After the length of time that it took to fulfill my original order, I didn't have many expectations, so I was very surprised to receive an SMS this morning to say that my new shoes would be delivered (or as I call it, prisoner exchange) today! 

This time, the delivery person came to my house, took the original pair of shoes (that I had worn once for five minutes, in order to establish that they were the wrong size) and gave me a new pair ... that fit perfectly.

To conclude: the initial delivery was slow (I assumed that the distributor was in Israel, not in Europe), but the replacement policy and delivery was excellent!

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* Following the success (?) of this company's advertising campaign, another company has started showing tv adverts, but I haven't been following these. It's like when one company starts a tv ad campaign for air conditioners: another company will also start. Many many years ago I learnt that one of the reasons for adverts is to tell or remind the public that a product exists; I often think that the real reason why one of these AC companies advertise so much is that their sales are very low, but by continually advertising, their name will enter people's consciousness and they might bolster their sales. Other examples of copycat advertising are banks, insurance companies and investment houses: I doubt that there's much different between any of these company's offerings (in the same field of course), and they're simply trying to show that they are big players in their specific market segment (don't forget that I have an MBA, where one of the compulsory courses is 'marketing').