Saturday, April 18, 2020

The Storybook - "Beads of Innocence" (1968)

I couldn't figure out where the intro to this song ends and where the first verse begins, but I think I'm going to say that it's an eight bar intro. The problem seems to lie in the fact that you have two measures to close the intro out on a D minor chord and it (perhaps presumptuously on my part) ends in the middle, after only one of those bars. Plus, the vocal melody line has a pickup...

Intro:

D minor (2 bars) / D major (2 bars) / G minor to D minor (1 bar) / A major (2 bars) / D minor (1 bar)

That's an eight bar construction, but obviously divided up irregularly into five parts. Nevertheless, you get the cadence from the dominant to the tonic of D minor at the end. The mode mixture in the alternation between tonic D minor and tonic D major doesn't affect how the other chords function.

Here's how the verse looks:

D minor (1 bar) / G minor (2 bars) / D minor (3 bars) / G minor (2 bars) / D minor (2 bars)

OK, I'm changing my tune here! I'm saying that the end of the verse includes BOTH measures of the D minor chord, unlike the intro. There's no pickup to the vocal melody throwing a spanner into the works. The metric construction at the beginning of one bar tonic, two bars iv chord, and three bars tonic is excellent.

Chorus:

A major (1 bar) / G major (1 bar) / A major (1 bar) / G major (1 bar) / G# major (2 bars) / G major (2 bars) / D minor (1 bar)

Alternation there between dominant and subdominant and then a chromatic embellishment before a plagal cadence. Also excellent!

One last note on this song: After the second verse and chorus, the intro repeats, but the form changes. There's a diminished seventh chord with what seems to be F as the root. Then, the guitar goes to an A minor chord and the song breaks off into some glockenspiel flourishes.

How does the F diminished seventh chord function? We're going to have to go by an enharmonic spelling of it as an E# diminished - E# - G# - B - D. That's because I believe A minor is temporarily the tonic chord here and it resolves to that tonic: E# down to E, G# up to A.