Paradox Rock

Paradox Rock: Ain't That Peculiar?

I earned last week off, but I did some regrouping and have been listening and working on new sketches. There's a lot of stuff in development, so I expect to keep producing for a while yet. This week, I took another great Motown song to completion.

Composed by Smokey Robinson and fellow Miracles members, Ain't That Peculiar was Marvin Gaye's second million seller in 1965. Gaye recorded it backed by a band called The Funk Brothers along with vocalists known as The Andantes. The lyrics speak eloquently about jealousy inflaming passion - a paradox. Originally recorded on the Tamla label, it's has been covered by Japan, The Jackson 5 and quite a few other artists. Although Michael Jackson is the "King of Pop", Marvin Gaye will ever remain the "Prince of Motown", a land where Smokey Robinson is the undisputed king.

Turning Rock into A Cappella

As an a cappella arrangement, Ain't That Peculiar presents a number of challenges. Your audience won't be dancing - they'll be "all ears." You have to avoid getting stuck in a cozy rock groove that goes nowhere. You have to invent ways to keep the interest high. I decided to use lots of variation and some playful vocalese that allowed me to introduce familiar musical figures such as those laid down by The Funk Brothers who backed Gaye in 1965.

Vocalese To the Rescue

You can see some of these tricks in the final measures. I used The Funk Brothers familiar introductory figure to close a song that normally ends in fade out, employing vocalese and some crunchy harmonics to conclude with a punctuation mark.

Still a Week Ahead!

Completed: "A Groovy Kind of Love"

What is a groovy kind of love? Have you ever had it? Sunday, I began planning my work for the coming weeks, loading up my MP3 player with stuff to listen to. I'm getting over a bout of illness and this was my first day upright since last Thursday, but a new arrangement fell in my lap before the day was through. Sometimes you just see something all at once. So I stay ahead of the curve and I'm still entitled to a week off. I might need it!

A Groovy Kind of Love was written by Toni Wine and Carole Bayer Sager. The delightful melody is based heavily on the Rondo movement of Sonatina in G major, op. 36 no. 5 by classical composer, Muzio Clementi, which means it's got "class". The pop song was composed in all of 20 minutes, although Mr. Clementi probably labored a bit longer on his bit of work. Still, sometimes great stuff emerges all at once. In 1965, this song rocked the US as part of the British Invasion when it reached #2 on the pop charts in a cover by The Mindbenders. A cover by Phil Collins took it to #1 in 1988. It's about the joys of physical love:

"When you're close to me, I can feel your heart beat,

I can hear you breath-ing in my ear."

Bubble-gum Pop and the Joys of Love

On the surface, the song is about young love. The Mindbenders' 1965 cover was true bubble-gum pop from the era of Peace and Love, but the Phil Collins version displays a stunning reverence for this tender and powerful expression, taking the song to another level entirely. If you've known a connection that fulfilled completely, you know it's definitely a lot more than "groovy". Phil Collins' cover definitely achieves success taking the song to a higher level.

What can a song like this do in performance? It has the potential to awaken some very powerful emotions. Allow me to digress for a moment.

Touching the Fire

A couple of years ago, we performed another song about love (and loss) at one of our gigs. A woman came up to me afterward telling me it was terrible and we should never have sung it. The song had no foul language, the performance had gone pretty well so I was pretty curious why she was so upset. She confided that it reminded her of her lost husband and it had awakened her pain. While she thought our singing this song was unforgivable, it's really one of the reasons we perform songs with emotional content. We touch memories so folks reconnect with their memories and with profound love. The process refreshes us all in ways impossible to fathom. This is hot stuff!

We're looking forward to sharing "A Groovy Kind of Love" with our audiences. Here's a snippet where you see I have the background patter echoing a text from an earlier verse. It's a mechanism I've been exploring lately layering several texts to more deeply underscore the emotional content:

Keeping the Pace!

OK, Two Cans a Week. Take Next Week Off!

Well, dang if I didn't complete two new arrangements this week! I've been listening to these songs and letting them soak in for a while now, so by the time I approached them my mental sketches were quite well developed. I knew how I was going to voice or vocally orchestra large stretches of them. Sure, there were some surprises and things to work out, and there were new ideas that just popped out as I handled certain sequences. Both these songs came from an era where part singing was predominant.

Maybe I get a "bye" week, but I'll be using the time to chart out new projects for the future. Here's a peek at some sections of the pieces.

I'll Be Doggone

Marvin Gaye made a big hit with this song in 1965, his first million seller. This Smokey Robinson composition was a great platform for Gaye to wail. While it really rocks - it presents an interesting challenge to an arranger. It sits in the same harmonic place for long stretches. It makes great dance music, but you need a lot of ideas to spice up a song that begins with 8 measures of A, followed by another 8 measures of A. Here is a small section from my arrangement:

I Love You, Gypsy Woman

Earlier in the week, I finished an Impressions song by the great Curtis Mayfield. This was another tune that fairly fell into place after a lot of listening, because it lent itself so easily to a cappella. The song reached #20 on the Hit Parade in 1962 and has been covered by Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix, among others. It has tremendous energy propelling it from start to finish. Mayfield had given it a very vocal treatment in 1962 that helped make it easy to translate to a cappella. You'll see in this snippet, as in the previous one, the use of patter for the ensemble to avoid using too many nonsense sounds, creating more of a vocal texture.

I think both these numbers will be a lot of fun for Blue of a Kind to sing. If you'd be interested in previewing any of these arrangements for your singing group, let me know.