'Foiled' - techniques

Background

As a challenge to myself, I tried to write a song about a man and woman in a relationship - without hopefully going into cliche or cheese, which as we all know is extremely easy to do with songs of this nature. The focus in this song, Foiled, is really about the extent to which the man depends on the woman for more or less everything in his life. Without her, there is no sense of order or of logic.

Time Signature

For an added bit of interest, I chose to write the piece in 6/8 time, lending the lyrics a lilting quality and simultaneously underlining the desperation that this fictional man feels about his situation. I felt that these two effects would be lost if a 'normal' 4/4 time signature was used.

Harmonic Schemes

The piece begins in C major with a straightforward cycle around chords IV and V. The chorus ("look at me...") starts with a semitone rise on the dominant to Ab major. The harmonic patterns orbit around chords III, IV, VI and V11 before the chorus ends on this new tonic of Ab. The further the song progresses, the more eccentric the harmony becomes. This is intentional - it was my aim to reflect the man's psychological state and delusionary tendencies. Hence, verse 2 opens with a Cb6 chord, with rapid progression passing through Db7 into Ebm. The harmony eventually stabilises on "ticking over", where a previously used chord of Fdim7 is found. Verse 2 ends on a downbeat with the original dominant G7, neatly leading back into the final verse in the original tonic of C major.

Other Techniques

I picture this fictional man as having several thoughts rapidly enter his head while he's contemplating his relationship. For this reason I have deliberately set quite a lot of syllables of the lyrics per bar of the song, in order to reflect his thoughts constantly jarring his 'reality'. I have also paid attention to the rate of harmonic change within the song and structure; that is, in the beginning there is hardly any harmonic shift while he begins his introspection, but by the time we learn of his full thoughts, there is rapid harmonic acceleration. It was my aim to have the harmony 'not know where it is', reflecting the man's viewpoint.