A few quick things

Something specific in music I was thinking about

So a bit ago I got to sing Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna and that was pretty good. I sang tenor for it and we get this one really swag part in the fifth movement. I don't have my score handy so I can't tell you exactly when it is except that you'll probably hear it after I describe it if you listen for it. We were practicing it one day and our director, who was like a guest director lady, stopped us and made us do it again because she liked it so much. She specifically called out this one tenor note as just being fantastic to hear. And we all agreed, yeah, this part is a mighty fine sequence of notes.

I thought about why for awhile and I think I figured out what I like about it. The sequence is like, we sing three notes for a few beats each, going up by a tone each time. All three notes are in the key we're in too, I'm pretty sure. Too lazy to find the score to check. And then we go up another tone, but this tone is out of the key. It's also pretty friggin' high, like the second highest tone we sing in the whole song. But we're only there for like a eighth I think and then we go down a semitone to a tone in the key of the song, which we stay on for a quarter note or so. Again, this is just going from my memory. I could go downstairs and check but then I run the risk of being wrong and invalidating my own point.

This sort of pattern, of building up in the key, usually on really traditional ascending notes, and then hitting a high note that's out of the key or even wholly atonal for a brief time before returning to the key, it seems like a sort of "old trick" to me. I mean, it sounds very traditional, it seems like it almost follows logically if one was to come up with natural variations to ascending notes. Even on paper you can get across some sort of barrier-breaking, final push, almost like Icarus-angle, I dunno. It's cool. But I actually can't think of many examples of this being used, which is weird.

Actually I could only come up with one as I was first thinking about this and now that I've actually gone and listened to it it doesn't really even fit this pattern! So dang? It does have the same sort of sense, though? It's "February Lifesaver", by Matryoshka. The remix brings out the theme I'm talking about even more.

So I guess I'm still hunting for these. I find this sort of thinking about music fascinating but I don't really know much about it and I rarely think to look for such things unless I have the score or whatever right in front of me. I don't know where you'd learn these sort of things, maybe composition or something.

Things I looked forward to are here

I got The Pale King in the mail today. I was all excited to get it early or whatever and then someone told me that some people had had it since the first. So bun. Probably will read that now that I've finished Lolita.

Also Tomboy leaked a bit ago. I was at home and have not heard it yet. I considered waiting until it actually came out (ON MY BIRTHDAY WOO) to give it some weight, but uh, bun.

Going to listen to it NOW.