In the verse, we start out with a generic Pachelbel's Canon sequence (in C major). The bassline goes
do ("the broken glass re-") sol ("-flects the haze it") la ("shines like endless") mi ("holy days") fa ("struggling to remember")
-- and then we get derailed a bit. Traditionally, we expect another do after the fa -- but instead the bass noodles around fa for awhile (drops to mi and then goes back up).
Then, when the chorus hits, we get the do we expected (although it's... not serving the same purpose as the do we expected, but that's a conversation for another time). Since we all know this progression forwards and backwards, the delay of the bass note we expected builds tension (as does the fact that she sits on fa so much longer than on any of the notes in the progression). Also, at the beginning of the chorus we get a mini-reboot of the sequence we started with (bass: do-sol-la) although it gets rerouted towards the every-other-pop-song-ever I-V-vi-IV at the end.
Non-harmonically, at the beginning of the word "celebrating" you can hear a guitar start a slide up towards do (reached at the beginning of the chorus), which helps. And, of course, when the chorus hits we get tambourines, plus and more vocal lines and a keyboard filling in the textural spaces between the voice/bass/drums in the verse.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-10-18 02:23 am (UTC)do ("the broken glass re-")
sol ("-flects the haze it")
la ("shines like endless")
mi ("holy days")
fa ("struggling to remember")
-- and then we get derailed a bit. Traditionally, we expect another do after the fa -- but instead the bass noodles around fa for awhile (drops to mi and then goes back up).
Then, when the chorus hits, we get the do we expected (although it's... not serving the same purpose as the do we expected, but that's a conversation for another time). Since we all know this progression forwards and backwards, the delay of the bass note we expected builds tension (as does the fact that she sits on fa so much longer than on any of the notes in the progression). Also, at the beginning of the chorus we get a mini-reboot of the sequence we started with (bass: do-sol-la) although it gets rerouted towards the every-other-pop-song-ever I-V-vi-IV at the end.
Non-harmonically, at the beginning of the word "celebrating" you can hear a guitar start a slide up towards do (reached at the beginning of the chorus), which helps. And, of course, when the chorus hits we get tambourines, plus and more vocal lines and a keyboard filling in the textural spaces between the voice/bass/drums in the verse.