Blogging The Wall: “In The Flesh?”

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Al Filreis, In The Flesh?, Kelly Writers House, Pink Floyd, The Wall

Roger Waters- The Wall Live, Raleigh, NC 7/9/12

So you thought you might like to go to the show

To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow

Tell me, is something eluding you, Sunshine?

Is this not what you expected to see?

If you want to find out what’s behind these cold eyes

You’ll just have to claw your way through this disguise

 

I had planned to include Youtube clips from the album versions of each song, but they have been pulled from Youtube because of copyright.  Instead, video footage from the Earl’s Court concert from 8/9/80 is available on Youtube, so I’ll include that instead.  In some ways, that’s fortunate as I tend to prefer the live performance, as this piece was conceived as and always intended to be (it appears to me, anyway) a rock opera performed live.

One quick note on the concert footage- it’s hard to tell with the grainy footage, but careful inspection will reveal that in this video it is not the members of Pink Floyd performing this song!  It is the backing band wearing rubber masks made up to look like the band.  The man singing this song is not Roger Waters- if you look closely you can see he is wearing a mask- but it it Waters’ voice.  The real band was raised on a platform onto the stage after the first song.  The use of the “surrogate band” is foreshadowing, as we’ll see later.

The album begins very quietly with a minor-key accordion melody, and Waters’ voice is heard saying “I came in?”  Later we’ll see the significance of this.  The Earl’s Court concert begins with a fake announcement interrupted by the beginning of the song- an effect that is quite startling on the album as well.

The song is in 12/8 time in the key of A minor, and begins with a doubling of lead guitar and bass introducing the first of several key motifs in the piece, which starts in the tonic, jumps up a fifth, then progresses downward in a scalar pattern, repeating and modulating a few times until it arrives at the dominant chord (E), leading into the beginning of the song itself.

Two bars before the lyrics begin, we are introduced to the “Wall” motif, here presented as a doubling of guitar and bass playing E-F#-G-F in dotted half notes. This motif is woven throughout the album, transpised into a number of keys and with variations of rhythm, serving to tie the work together. It’s a subtle introduction to the motif but it is clearly present.

The lyrics are accompanied by a simple I-IV-I-IV-I-iii-IV-V7 rock progression.  The rhyme scheme is AAXXBB.  Each line takes two measures of music, and the rhythm of each line is mostly simple even eighth notes with occasional syncopation.  The melody is simple and repetitive, except for a leap spotlighting the word “feel” and a quick E-F#-G#-A cadence to end the song (the same cadence used after the Wall motif was introduced, and note that the cadence itself is a small variation of the Wall motif).

As I said in the previous post, the idea for The Wall came from the frustration the band felt during the 1977 “In The Flesh” tour- the title of the song being an obvious reference.  Waters had the fantasy of the band playing behind a wall to separate the band from the audience.  I see this song, beginning the show, as a reenactment of those 1977 concerts.  This time Waters startles the audience and grabs their attention.  “Hey!” he seems to be saying.  “Is this not what you expected to see?  You want to hear our usual psychedelic stuff, pharmaceutically enhanced [a space-cadet glow]?  Not this time.  Wake up!  I want to show you who I am.  If you want to find out what’s behind these cold eyes [they certainly do look cold behind the masks], you’ll just have to claw your way through this disguise.”

The piece ends with a repeat of the “In The Flesh” motif, as Waters begins the show, shouting “Lights! Roll the sound effects!  Camera! Action!!”, thus formally beginning the show, and we hear (and see) a plane diving and possibly crashing.  It’s not explicitly stated, but the plane evokes to me World War II, particularly the Battle of Britain and Waters’s father’s combat, important themes to be explored later.

This song functions as a prelude.  Pink, the fictional character whose story this is, has not yet been introduced.  To me this is Waters playing emcee and inviting us into the story.

Introduction to Improvisation: Assignment 1 (“What Is This Thing Called Love?”)

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bass guitar, Cole Porter, Coursera, improvisation, jazz, music, What Is This Thing Called Love?

“What Is This Thing Called Love?” solo by Gary Burton

Introduction to Improvisation
Lesson 1 Analysis: “What Is This Thing Called Love?”

The presented improvisation on “What Is This Thing Called Love?” is a 32-bar improvisation in jazz style performed on a piano. The piece is in the key of C major, in 4/4 time at a rapid tempo, approximately 190 beats/minute. As a jazz piece, all eighth notes are swing eighths (played similar to a dotted eighth and sixteenth rather than two straight eighth notes).

The first eight bars are the exposition of the theme of this solo. The chord progression underlying the theme is v(mi7b5)- I7b9- IVmi- ii7b5-V7-I. The last three chords in the progression (ii-V-I) is a common progression used to resolve to the tonic chord at the end of a phrase. Melodically, the melody consists primarily of chromatic scales- downward in the first bar from the flat five of the v chord, then turning upward in the second bar (with accidental sharp 4 of the scale- which could also be expressed enharmonically as flat 5- flat 6, and flat 7), then down again in the third bar (with an accidental flat 5 and flat 4). In bar 5 we begin the turn toward resolving the phrase with another mostly-chromatic scale going upward(with accidental flat 5, flat 6, and sharp 7- C#, from the harmonic minor scale). Bar 6 begins with a quarter note 5 of the V7 chord, followed by a triplet figure that clearly sets us up for the final chromatic run downward to resolution with the tonic chord in bar 7.

The second eight bars are a variation on the theme presented in the first eight bars. We see two distinct variations in the first four bars of this improvisation. First, the dominant rhythm has changed from swung eighth notes to triplets alternating with eighth notes, with the second eighth tied to the first triplet eighth in the next measure, adding syncopation to the rhythm. The melody still remains primarily chromatic, but the eighth note features downward intervals of a diminished fifth or tritone (Bb to E, G to Db) in the first bar. The eighth notes in the second bar jump upward a perfect fifth (D natural to G), then down a whole step (Bb to Ab). In the third bar we drop a perfect fifth (C to G), then down a whole step- the same figure as the previous measure (Bb to Ab). The four bar phrase ends with a quarter note F, the tonic of the chord in that measure but the subdominant of the key of the piece (thus leading us into the next four bars). The final four bars of this section return us to scalar patterns rhythmically similar to the last four bars in the exposition, though the scales use more whole-steps than half-steps and are thus less chromatic, aside from the prominent Ab and Eb accidentals and the accidental D# and F# (sharp 2 and sharp 4) in Bar 7. Bar 8 ends the phrase with a quarter note tonic and three beats of rest.

The third eight bars (the bridge) changes the local tonality to C minor (the relative minor of the key of the piece). No key change is indicated, but the chord selections and the consistent accidentals of Eb and Ab are consistent with this change. The progression here is i(mi7), IV7b9, VII, VI, V7, the final chord being the relative major of the chord that begins the final four bars, facilitating the transition. Rhythmically we now have syncopation via eighth notes paired with quarter notes (bars 1 and 3) with intervals of a tritone (Eb to G) in bar 1 and a perfect sixth (D to F, C to Eb, Bb to D) in bar 3. The phrase ends with a whole note (tied to an eighth). The second four measures begin with the same syncopated eighth-quarter rhythm with intervals of a major sixth (Ab to F, Gb to Eb) in bar 5, then a chromatic eighth pattern in bar 6 reminiscent of the rhythm of the main theme. In bar 7 we recapitulate the end of the phrase in bars 3-4 of the bridge, then end with a syncopated eighth-dotted quarter figure that jumps a perfect fifth to the G (the root of the chord), thus resolving the bridge.

The final eight bars are a recapitulation of the the main theme, with chromatic scales similar to the exposition, with the subtle addition of a syncopated eighth-quarter figure in bar 2 that reminds the listener of the bridge. The piece resolves in bars 7-8 with a simple C major scale to end on the tonic.

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Here is my improvisation on the same piece on bass guitar.

Introduction to Improvisation: Assignment #2 (A Lydian b7)

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A Lydian b7, bass guitar, Coursera, improvisation, music

Improvisation in A Lydian b7 on bass guitar by Mark Snyder.

 

Completed for the Introduction to Improvisation course on Coursera.org.