Vale Avis Tenebrica (part 1)

I am in the process of writing a series of articles about the songs on my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. This is about the second track, Vale Avis Tenebrica.

There’s a secret to this song. I’m not telling. Maybe one translation is “Bye bye, blackbird”; maybe a better one is “Farewell, Bird of Shadows.” Maybe it has to do with depression, and covers a theme Poe would appreciate; or maybe it’s the end of the world. Maybe it’s beautiful, but lonely.

At any rate, it has pretty chords.

They are unusual. I divide them into three sections, which I’ll call “A”, “B”, and “C”.

Section A

This song is in 6/8. The “A” section has the bulk of the melody. There are two similar, yet contrasting chords (see my page of chord abbreviations for a guide):

BΔ	BΔ, B/C	BΔ	BΔ, B/C
BΔ	BΔ, B/C	BΔ	BΔ, B/C

B/C is a strange chord — pretty when you want it to be, tense and eerie when you want it to be, jittery sometimes, alien most of the time. Here it’s like the crest of a hill on a roller coaster ride — or, more accurately, the high point of a bird in flight.

Section B

The chorus has to be one of my favorite chord progressions. I have played variation after variation of these changes, mostly during the Christmas break of 2007.

GbΔ/Db

GbΔ

Gb/F

Eº

EbΔ+

It all leads up to that floating EbΔ+ in the final bar. It’s a magic gateway — you can go almost anywhere from that chord. At the end of the first chorus, I return to the beginning. The second time through, however, the entire song changes — not only the chords, but the rhythm as well, from 6/8 straight to 6/8 swing 8ths.

Section C

Realize that long ago, I gave up on the concept of sticking to a key. When we leapt out of B major in Section “A”, we landed in Gb major, then marched through two others. Now, the cool thing about that is: notation-wise, I went from five sharps, to six flats, to . . . well, now, 2 or 3 sharps. For the next 16 bars, I modulate between some big quartal chords, Em7 and Dm7 (quartal = voiced with stacked 4ths, not stacked 3rds).

Em7	Dm7	Em7	Dm7	x 4
DΔ13	A13	B7/G#	%

Over the Christmas break, I worked on my left hand / right hand coordination. One of the products of that was the ability to play huge 13th chords. However, they have to be used in the right place — they are far too powerful to be dropped in just any tune. They occupy a lot of sonic territory. The final 3 chords, above, are a modulation back to our starting key, through a phrygian chord (B7 / G#, which could also be called Absus-b9).

The Return

From the phrygian chord, the song returns to straight 8ths and the top of the tune, ending on the EbΔ+ chord.