Note: this recording is uploaded in the spirit of educational advancement, as found in Title 17, Section 107, United States Code. Please email if it is still found to be in violation of copywright.
Music can be bought on the Asthmatic Kitty site, here.
First, some preliminary definitions for non-music majors:
- Higher Tertian: "Tertian" means built in thirds; the basic building blocks used in a vast majority of music are triads, which are tertian. If you place another third on a triad, you get a seventh chord (four notes). Five notes becomes a ninth chord, and so on. These are higher tertian.
- Neotonality: An approach to music that mimicks tonality of the common practice period (read: normal music) without using some of the same relationships and functionalities of that style. Many times, it uses a reference pitch that is repeated or droned to simulate a tonic, or 'do' (solfege).
- Modal Mixture: (see below for a more in depth look) A Mode is a scale, a collection of pitches arranged together with a certain pitch being considered the tonic, or root note. We'll be dealing with Major and Minor modes, and the church modes. Modal Mixture means combining or splicing features of various modes together.
- Harmony: Neotonal (based on pedal points), Extreme Modal Mixture, Higher tertian chords
- Melody: Characterized by leaps, repeated notes on higher tertian tones, irregular phrasing
- Rhythm: Fluctuating between out of time and 4/4
- Texture: Thick, at times contrapuntal
Form: Intro A B A' B Outro
(This could be seen as a large rounded binary form; however, I have to disagree, just because the Outro sounds too much like a return to A. I didn't call it A" because of its short length and it's quick transition into an ending cadence.)
Text
As text is the driving force in most popular music, we will go to it first.
Oh to lose by fire by flame this old feeling
Insignificance
Then I can hear you brighter than the stars
Your voice is a razor blade
I can see you shining through the sun
You’re so mysterious
Lose the hold as I throw this with a goodbye forever
Fear of exposure
Then I can hear you brighter than the stars
Your touch is light’ning
I can feel you prickling like a thousand shark teeth
Prickling like a thousand shark teeth closer to me
Come closer to me
Come closer to me
Come closer to me
Come closer to me still
On several readings, I still have trouble divining meaning from the thick poetry of words. If it's a love song, it uses some odd and painful metaphors (voice is a razor blade, prickling like shark's teeth). It's filled with celestial, and possibly divine imagery, which would lead me to think of it as a song towards God. But despite how much sense it would make with references to baptism and prayer, this isn't what the song is about.
Her site gives some leads, talking about "things lost in a fire, literally and figuratively, exploring both beauty and danger in a shark’s kiss." In an interview with Chris Walker, she described it as being about "the things that prevent us from giving and receiving love and if, say, one could be free of the blockages, then one could hear the singing of the stars more vividly, feel the light of the sun, like the warmth of love, prickling all over your skin, like a thousand tiny shark teeth." It's about shedding our doubts and imperfections to find something more beautiful than what we've been able to experience thus far.
Modal Mixture
(note: to those not handy with the church modes, a supplementary site can be found here. The guy's a little kooky, but he's got resources to use for both brush-ups and beginners)
One of My Brightest Diamond's most interesting style features is her use of modal mixture. Many references to modal mixture come in reference to major and minor keys, perhaps trading one chord quality for another that may be found in a different mode (one of the earliest examples is the Piccardy Third, a major I chord used at the end of a minor piece.)
Quick History lesson: Church modes originate from Medieval Chant, used in Christian Worship. From the original modes we get our diatonic major and minor modes. At the turn of the 20th Century, the French Impressionists (Debussy and Ravel) revived the modes, adjusting them to be used as we have come to use scales over the centuries.
However, in this case, she shifts from church mode to church mode within a single pitch collection. Most of the song is in the Diatonic collection of no sharps or flats-- if starting on C, it would be C major.
The song begins with piano (and perhaps kalimba?) lightly touching on E and B. Out of time arpeggios slowly start to shape into what will be the theme for the verse, adding rhythmic interest, and an F to hint at the motive of the song. However, as soon as the piano and guitar come in full, it's hard to pick out where the tonic is. The piano is playing a pedal on D, the vocal line tends to hang out on an E, and the guitar is repeating the riff B - E - A - F. All of these elements combined can give the impression of D Dorian, A Aeolian, E Phrygian, or B Locrean (if you're feeling really funky). I believe that Shara Worden simply enjoys the ambiguity of mixed modes, and the uncomfortable nature of it.
For simplicity's sake, I will say the A section (verse) is in D Dorian, partly because the pedal tone is more reliable in other of her compositions, and partly because the outro very clearly ends on a D (much as the final would function as a defining factor in medieval chant).
Now the B section (at about 1:13) finally lays out what we've been longing for all along-- a clear harmonic progression. Although it's densely packed, and the melody may be centered on a B, it's a i chord alright. But it's based on... an A? What the heck? The five chord after it cements our suspicion-- It's an E7, with the melody looping around a G#-- a note that shouldn't be in the no accidentals collection. We've switched, rather strongly, into A minor for the chorus. So not only does the song combine various modes within a pitch collection, but it also modulates to different pitch collections, introducing new notes. Trippy.
The other interesting thing I'll mention for this song (although many other worthy topics abound) is her use of scale degree 2. In the verses, she tends to hang around an E when the mode is D Dorian. In the chorus, she hits the top at a B, the second scale degree of A minor. If we considered the main riff of the verse in E Phrygian, we've got the F there to add that extra amount of tension and wonder. It's this that gives her ninth chords such resonance, and that gives her voice such a yearning as she sings "Then I can hear you brighter than the stars..."
That's all for My Brightest Diamond's "Goodbye Forever" (Track 9 of A Thousand Shark's Teeth). Again, buy it HERE if you haven't! This album is amazing, both on an aural level and an analytical one. I may update this post as I see fit. Please comment with questions, answers, corrections, suggestions and comments!
Jharms
