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Blog: Liz Carmichael's Portal (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By Justin Hargett, Associate Publicist
Musicologists often reserve their scholarly studies for the likes of Bach and Stravinsky, but in his latest book, Lloyd Whitesell has comprehensively tackled the most avant-garde of pop songwriters, Joni Mitchell. Excerpted below, from his book The Music of Joni Mitchell, is an analysis of the harmonic palette of one her most famous songs, “Both Sides Now,” along with a live performance of the song from 1970.
“Both Sides Now” (Clouds) is one of Mitchell’s most celebrated songs, though her own dejected performance bears little resemblance to the Judy Collins cover version from 1967 which first made it a hit. The harmonies are almost pure major and tend toward the monochrome (I, IV, V). By now we can appreciate how incredibly limited such a palette is in the context of Mitchell’s style. She exploits redundancy for expressive purpose: the repetitive treading of the same harmonic paths captures an appropriately world-weary tone. Yet, with this monochromatic spectrum, Mitchell is careful to create textural variety and sculpt a precise lyrical shape with its own highs and lows.
The tonic pedal (F#) is rarely relinquished…Only twice does E# lead directly up to the tonic, in the vocal line at the end of phrases 1 and 3 (eg., “ice cream castles in the air”). These parallel moments stand out for several reasons. The voice, within a verse of generally drooping contours, rises a full octave span. At the same time, the guitar bursts past the F# which has capped its range until now. Not least, the vocal cadence with its leading tone and clear unconstrained dominant momentarily revokes the tyranny of the pedal. This elated gesture first corresponds with the high spirits at the outset of each verse of the poem. But then the something goes awry: the second half of each verse repeats the gesture of elation, but the words are no longer joyous. The poet now views her former joy with a jaded eye. The same music is used for both takes, the buoyant and the disillusioned…
Mitchell is treating tonality perversely in this song, using cadential movement as a downer and using a surfeit of tonal center as a symbol of tedium and disenchantment. To get the full effect of this virtuosic achievement, one need only compare Mitchell’s version to the Judy Collins cover, in which the astringent, landlocked tonal nuances are swept away in a sugary barrage of primary colors.
I like “tonal” but I’m concerned that it would get too monotone.
Please avoid black and white themes for now. We already many such in the Dashboard.
Tonal has so many different combinations depending on the background, hopefully you won’t get that feeling. If you do happen to get the custom colors upgrade you can create even more combinations:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/custom-colors/
They all look good but none of them look like that on my computer. setup was hard for a non computer guy and help was iffy at best.
Gridiculous Pro seems really really beautiful and easy to use, Well done!!!!
I’m sorry you’re having issues with themes – that’s no fun.
We do take on board any difficulties people have and try and improve things with each theme. Our goal is to make themes that work from the start for all.
If you are having issues, we do have help available on the forums for themes: http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/. Each premium theme has its own forum so you can get the right help for what you are using.
Thanks for your suggestion, we do try and create a range so we’ll take it on board and look into getting some more colored themes released.
A lot of our themes allow backgrounds and background color changes, so you can change from the black and white default. Tonal actually changes the entire site depending on what you set for the background color – it can be any color you want.
Reblogged this on carolyncolemangrady.
I tried Tonal a couple of days ago and liked the color palette choices.It’s a very nice clean and minimalist theme but I dislike the Title font and the fact that Titles are all capitalized lettering. Otherwise I quite liked it and would be using it now.
I’m glad you liked the palettes and the style of Tonal. If you did happen to have the custom CSS upgrade you could modify the titles. That said, we’re keen to offer a wide range of themes and I’m sure we’ll have some without capitalised headers coming soon.
Hi again Tammie,
Thanks so much for your response but I don’t want to purchase another upgrade at this time. I set a $50 limit on blogging expenses for each blog per year and both of my blogs each have No-Ads upgrades and domain mapping upgrades. I’ll be keeping watch for more themes though.