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Topic: New HSGA Tune - Imagine - Kay Das |
Gerald Ross
From:
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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Posted 7 Dec 2009 6:26 am |
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Kay sent us a nice holiday greeting.
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Not a tune to be heard too often amongst the christmas tunes in the shopping malls , but written by John Lennon in the spirit of us all being one country, one world, one people...
Duet with Derek Kerner, Steelocaster A6, key of C.
Seasons Greetings to you and yours. |
Imagine - Kay Das
_________________
Gerald Ross
'Northwest Ann Arbor, Michigan's King Of The Hawaiian Steel Guitar'
A UkeTone Recording Artist
CEO, CIO, CFO - UkeTone Records
Gerald's Hawaiian Steel Guitar/Ukulele Website |
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Kay Das
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Kay Das
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 8 Dec 2009 2:52 pm John Lennon's Anniversary
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| Just realized that it was this day 29 years ago that John Lennon was gunned down. ...would wish this to be a small tribute to him, the best way I know how... |
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Kay Das
From:
Los Angeles CA
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Posted 8 Dec 2009 3:23 pm "Imagine": the structure
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More on the structure of the tune, from the John Lennon Appreciation Society:
This song, as conceived and as first recorded, is deceptively simple. It consists of a short intro on piano, two verses, a chorus, a third verse, and a repeat of the chorus, followed by a brief 'playout' which is more or less a recap of the intro, turned to close on the tonic chord.
But the song has inner strength. The simplicity is indeed deceptive. There are subtleties in the structure and execution. Also, the lyric, though superficially platitudinous, never oversteps itself, and is in fact genuinely challenging to the open mind.
Imagine is in the key of C Major, the simplest key in western music.
The four bar intro is alternate bars of C (the tonic) and F (the subdominant). Guitar transcriptions usually put Cmaj7 on beat four of bars 1 & 3, but that is only to recognise the passing note B in the piano right hand melody.
The verse harmony is simple in that it changes only on beat one of each bar:
C / / / :F / / / :C / / / :F / / / :
C / / / :F / / / :C / / / :F / / / :
Am / / /: Dm / / /:G / / /:G7 / / /:
But the first surprise is that the verse is 12 bars long and ends on the dominant seventh. Verse two immediately follows verse one, with exactly the same harmonic structure.
The chorus follows - You may say I'm a dreamer...
F / G / :C / E7* / : F / G / :C / E7 / :
F / G / :C / E7* / : F / G / :C / C / :
(*Derek and I play an E transcending to E7)
And the chorus, though moving at the same tempo, changes harmony twice as fast, on beats one and three. Also, the E7 chord, with its G#, which invariably falls on a vocal silence, gives an optimistic brightness to the progression, which, till now has been firmly rooted in the C-major scale. This is a standard 'Dixieland' progression, but not commonplace in rock-derivative music.
One last observation. The song has this structure:
12-bar verse
12-bar verse
8-bar chorus
12-bar verse
8-bar chorus
Kay |
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Kay Das
From:
Los Angeles CA
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