Showing posts with label Are You Serious. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Are You Serious. Show all posts

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Andrew Bird's "Are You Serious"

This morning I listened to Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire's Oh! The Grandeur, and I think I found an-other instance of Bird's borrowing from his past work (when I listened to Oh! The Grandeur last Collection Audit, I discovered that he reworkt "The Confession" into "The Privateers" on Noble Beast).  The pizzicato part that starts "Feetlips" sounds a lot like the pizzicato part that starts the title track of Are You Serious.  I spent a bit of time trying to figure out the parts, and while I'm not super confident in what I came up with, I think they're something like this:

"Feetlips":


"Are You Serious":



In the same rhythm, there's a two-octave jump, then down a sixth, up a third, and down a fifth.  Aside from the initial note, that phrase is repeated in "Feetlips," but the "Are You Serious" part continues descending in a skipping manner.

I should mention that I don't actually have Are You Serious yet.  I listened to it when it was on NPR's First Listen, but I've become familiar with the songs via Bird's radio appearances.  I figured out (or tried to figure out) the part in "Are You Serious" based on this performance on KFUV.