The Hanover Collaboration

Growing up, my parents made sure I had an appreciation for music. I have a pretty good ear and some training so I presume I am one of the people who have large overlap between speech and music processing as opposed to someone who just uses the old bits of the brain. In those old bits somewhere, some dick forgot to check the length of a buffer and some people like John Williams have designed exploits that take over this portion of your brain and make you feel whatever they want.

As a result of my childhood, I am largely immune. I decide what emotions (if any) I am going to have at a movie, not JW.

But in the car yesterday this song came on. It was called “In My Daughter’s Eyes.” The lyrics were banal and the melody was unoriginal and it made my eyes water. I was like, “What the fuck is going on here? This is a country song.” By the second verse, I’ve narrowed it down. The instrumentation as far as I can tell is Singer, cello, piano, 2 violins but the 2nd sits most of the song out (if he exists at all). The only one of these that has any intrisic traction for me is the cello but that wasn’t it. The cello part climaxed in the intro and was just playing support.

The singer was very good. Maybe she sounded a bit like Anne Murray whose 8-track I wore out listening to when I was four. Was that it? During the second verse, I figured it out.

The exploit is a couple of notes that define sad chords like “she was sent to rescue me/ I see who I want to be.”
The primer to the exploit is that it was a 5 bar phrase. On the 5th bar you’re ready for some resolution as a reward for surviving the sad sent note. But you forgot that the last phrase was only 3 bars and instead you get hit with another sad note. The crux of the trick is the who note. The singer and violin are both a little bit dragy. After setting up these notes they making you wait the extra little while for it. At the same time, she “greases” onto the note from a little below. The affect is a palpable reluctance. It sounds like it is so physically painful to sing it that she is having trouble bringing herself to do it.

By the third verse, I was on to it; I was ready. They’re just playing me. Oh, but they played me so beautifuly.

Now that they’ve got me figured out, I guess they’re going to make me cry in movies now too. How embarrassing. I might pay the 99 cents and do intervals on the thing.