beyond the rim of the starlight
Last night I did something I've been wanting to do since I was about 9.
Every time I hear a song, part of how I hear it is that it lands on a grid in my mind: I can hear where the melody sits, and hear what the harmony is doing. Even when I was a kid, I could hear that "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" was more interesting than "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," because I couldn't quite figure out the changes. I sat down at the piano and worked it out, finally, at about age 13, to my immense delight. (Then, at 14, I completely reharmonized it, with chord changes on every note. I was idly playing it in the choir room at school one lunch, and found out later that the choir director snuck up behind me with a tape recorder. What are the odds he still has that tape? I'd love to hear it.)
Alexander Courage's lush Post-Romantic theme music for "Star Trek" is beguiling whether or not you can hear the changes in your head. It's just a great melody, and so interestingly scored. It was always a gamble which recording you'd hear in watching reruns, because they changed it from season to season, and, in my memory, from show to show sometimes: the female vocal would be front-and-center, or sometimes she was pretty far back in the mix, with a couple of horns and maybe an electronic organ. I always liked the rummy, showy, big-bandy blast of trumpets in the final notes, just to remind you that this wasn't a cinematic epic but a TV show recorded in mono.
But, though I've messed with the theme over the years, working into jazz solos (and worship services) as countermelody, I've never sat down and really figured out what Courage's original harmonies were. I always just played the first two phrases as C - Db13(#11) - C - D13(#11), but I knew that wasn't quite right. That's more what a jazzer would do. So, last night, gosh durn it, I plunked on the headphones and listened to it several times.
It's hard to hear the bass in the original recordings because it's so ill-defined, and, like most beguines, the bass switches around from a I-V-I-V oompah to a V-I-V-I, depending on where the chord lands, to keep the bounce intact.
(By the way, I think the theme from "Star Trek" is the last beguine, bastardized though it is, to get really popular. And the biggest one before that was the theme from "I Love Lucy." Technically, a beguine has a gently oompahing bass line, with a quick percolating percussion, often bongo, and a slow, snaky melody line that characteristically swells into little staccato pauses: "bah-dah-dah-DUP! -dah-dahhhhhh." Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" is a fine example, and was the first beguine many in the northern climes heard, though once Artie Shaw got to it we've rarely heard it performed as an actual beguine.)
The first two phrases of the melody are parallel, and have the iconic rollercoaster journey, not like the popular metaphor of up-and-down-and-up-and-down, but like an actual rollercoaster, which leaps up and then coasts down. The second two phrases start low and soar preposterously high, more like a rocket-ship sailing into the dark blue. Each of these two phrases begins with, surprisingly, a simple major-six chord, a D6 and an Eb6, respectively. Brilliant, because in the key of C they contain very foreign notes — D-sharp and E-flat and B-flat — but they don't sound too crazy because they're relatively consonant chords. That's important thematically for these two phrases, because they go from major-six chords to the much more complex 13(#11) chords that sizzle underneath those stratospheric melodies. Courage gets it: bold upward-and-outward exploration plus comfy-cozy familiarity plus space wackiness is what the series was all about.
So. I finally did it. Now, of course, I need to examine those gorgeous counterintuitive lines that swim through the main melody.
Every time I hear a song, part of how I hear it is that it lands on a grid in my mind: I can hear where the melody sits, and hear what the harmony is doing. Even when I was a kid, I could hear that "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" was more interesting than "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," because I couldn't quite figure out the changes. I sat down at the piano and worked it out, finally, at about age 13, to my immense delight. (Then, at 14, I completely reharmonized it, with chord changes on every note. I was idly playing it in the choir room at school one lunch, and found out later that the choir director snuck up behind me with a tape recorder. What are the odds he still has that tape? I'd love to hear it.)
Alexander Courage's lush Post-Romantic theme music for "Star Trek" is beguiling whether or not you can hear the changes in your head. It's just a great melody, and so interestingly scored. It was always a gamble which recording you'd hear in watching reruns, because they changed it from season to season, and, in my memory, from show to show sometimes: the female vocal would be front-and-center, or sometimes she was pretty far back in the mix, with a couple of horns and maybe an electronic organ. I always liked the rummy, showy, big-bandy blast of trumpets in the final notes, just to remind you that this wasn't a cinematic epic but a TV show recorded in mono.
But, though I've messed with the theme over the years, working into jazz solos (and worship services) as countermelody, I've never sat down and really figured out what Courage's original harmonies were. I always just played the first two phrases as C - Db13(#11) - C - D13(#11), but I knew that wasn't quite right. That's more what a jazzer would do. So, last night, gosh durn it, I plunked on the headphones and listened to it several times.
It's hard to hear the bass in the original recordings because it's so ill-defined, and, like most beguines, the bass switches around from a I-V-I-V oompah to a V-I-V-I, depending on where the chord lands, to keep the bounce intact.
(By the way, I think the theme from "Star Trek" is the last beguine, bastardized though it is, to get really popular. And the biggest one before that was the theme from "I Love Lucy." Technically, a beguine has a gently oompahing bass line, with a quick percolating percussion, often bongo, and a slow, snaky melody line that characteristically swells into little staccato pauses: "bah-dah-dah-DUP! -dah-dahhhhhh." Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" is a fine example, and was the first beguine many in the northern climes heard, though once Artie Shaw got to it we've rarely heard it performed as an actual beguine.)
The first two phrases of the melody are parallel, and have the iconic rollercoaster journey, not like the popular metaphor of up-and-down-and-up-and-down, but like an actual rollercoaster, which leaps up and then coasts down. The second two phrases start low and soar preposterously high, more like a rocket-ship sailing into the dark blue. Each of these two phrases begins with, surprisingly, a simple major-six chord, a D6 and an Eb6, respectively. Brilliant, because in the key of C they contain very foreign notes — D-sharp and E-flat and B-flat — but they don't sound too crazy because they're relatively consonant chords. That's important thematically for these two phrases, because they go from major-six chords to the much more complex 13(#11) chords that sizzle underneath those stratospheric melodies. Courage gets it: bold upward-and-outward exploration plus comfy-cozy familiarity plus space wackiness is what the series was all about.
So. I finally did it. Now, of course, I need to examine those gorgeous counterintuitive lines that swim through the main melody.
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