In silence

In the summer of 1978, prior to emigrating, I wrote a song called 'In silence', that starts with the words

Late at night when the mood has flown
I'm waiting here by the telephone
For a call I know will never come
The bell is cracked and it needs some paint
I've sat ten hours with much restraint
And now I just can't wait another day

[Note the internal rhymes between lines 2 and 3 (telephone/know) and 
lines 5 and 6 (restraint/wait). I don't remember whether this was 
intentional or purely serendipitous.]
 

Over the years, the song has been recorded several times. Once it was even translated into Hebrew and sung at one of the kibbutz song festivals (as usual, it was praised during rehearsals and ignored in the voting). My first version in Reason was recorded in 2005.

When I was ill with pertussis thirteen years ago, I did some more production work on the song and created a slightly different version. At some stage I decided to add some dynamics to the song and had a few lines in the final verse sung to minimal accompaniment.

This morning I went out to do the weekly shop and saw the woman who invited me to a give a talk to the kibbutz pensioners. I then thought about Bob Dylan (who was mentioned in the talk) and how he took folk melodies and used him in his own songs, e.g. "Fathers of war", better known (to me, at least) as "Nottamun Town". My next thought was about how I explained about 'prosody', how on the line "Not a soul would look up", the tune goes high, and "not a soul would look down" is accompanied by a low note. Peter Hammill was next in the train of thought, how he would always accent the words "madness", "scream" or "silence".

Finally I came to consider my own song "In silence", and how the dynamics can be improved along with a little prosody by singing the final words, "in silence", without accompaniment - adding two empty bars. So I found the original midi file, copied it, added the two bars along with a drum fill in the second bar, copied the original Reason file then updated it with the new midi, then created a new mix.... The result is somewhat startling to me, especially because for years the ending has been different. Prosody in spades.

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