revisiting 3 - march 2011

Our March 2011 tune, "hours are seconds", used Paul McCartney's 1971 song "Ram On" as a model. I had been listening to McCartney's album, Ram, and loved how simple that song was. Not surprisingly, the tune has this great singability, with a lovely giant melodic leap in the middle of the phrase on the word "soon", which ends up kind of high in his tessitura, and he holds it a long time to give more emphasis to the word. Then the line dies out with a repeat of the last words "right away." After a little instrumental turnabout, the whole phrase repeats a few more times.

Using "Ram On" as a reference point, I set about trying to create a monks tune. I don't think our song really sounds much like McCartney's, but if you listen to the melodic approach to the verse it's in there, with some similar chords and melodic contour, and even a little tag at the end of the verse that's reminiscent of "right away". At our behest, Heidi wrote the lyrics for "hours are seconds", replacing the lyrics in my demo. I like Heidi's lyrics, as she thinks about things very differently (and more poetically) than I do. But it was also eye-opening to experience the effect it had on the song, as some of the lyrical patterning that I had based on the emotional impact of the McCartney tune was changed to fit these new words that didn't bear any relation.



Not that Paul McCartney needs the additional business, but you can pick up Ram here if you'd like to check out the whole album: http://www.amazon.com/Ram-Paul-Mccartney/dp/B000002UC7

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