![]() ![]() ![]() This means that the F she sang in bar four (that chord's minor third) clashes against the altered supertonic chord's F-sharp in bar eight. But it's Adele herself who plays the trump card later, by persevering with an unchanged repetition of her four-bar chorus melody over the altered harmonic progression in bar eight. While all this is going on, a G pedal tone sounds pretty much continuously during the first six bars, a note only consonant to the progression's Cm and G7 harmonies, so that the first supertonic chord gains an additional dissonance. This transforms bar eight's supertonic chord into a semi-modulatory 'dominant minor ninth of the dominant', a powerfully contradictory harmonic concoction that pits the stability of the D-major triad against the ambiguity of a complete F-sharp diminished-seventh shape. That pattern repeats, but with a crucial difference: the F and D chords are both chromatically altered to major versions. Although the orchestral bombast does the talking in the first bar, the sustained C and E-flat pitches in the upper parts slowly ratchet up the harmonic tension during the root progression's falling-thirds sequence, ending up as the seventh and minor ninth of a supertonic diminished D chord, only resolving to B and D in the G dominant seventh that closes bar four. There are so many aspects of the track that are worthy of attention, not least the drums and piano, but the highlight, for me, is the harmony, which perpetrates some of the squishiest dissonance-stacking ever to have graced the mainstream charts - and the chorus is the high point of this towering achievement. Focusing on the backing vocals is also enlightening: it's an education to hear the rich lower voices of the choral arrangement leading into the final chorus, as well as the exact voicing (and robust high-pass filtering!) of the choir at 4:10. Soloing the Sides signal shows how little the consonants feature in the effect returns, indicating some serious low-pass filtering or send de-essing. The lead line obviously relies on heavy reverb and tempo-sync'ed delays, but the isolated vocals suggest that there are no short reverb or stereo widening effects, which helps to explain how the vocal manages to remain so up-front, despite its subjective wetness. The CD single of this Oscar-winning track includes an instrumental mix, which can be phase cancelled against the full mix, almost isolating the vocals! Courtesy of this dodge, it's apparent that the vocals have been chopped around a fair bit (check out the "zat skyfalls” at 1:54, for example) and that much of the second chorus appears to have been copied from the first. ![]()
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