source file: m1422.txt
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 13:01:05 -0500 (CDT)

Subject: Re: The Lion King!!

From: Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@library.wustl.edu>

On Wed, 20 May 1998, Andrew L. Kaye wrote:
[snip]
> "The Circle of Life."  At the climactic cadence of the song, when the
> singer reaches into his higher register to sing "IN THE circle......the
> circle of lai----ifffee", the singer's tuning on the notes sung to "IN
> THE" always seem problematic to me.  We are in a major key, and the
> notes are: In (6) the (6) cir-(5) cle (3-2-1-_6-_5), the (_5) cir (4)
> cle (3) of (2) lai (2)-aiffe (1).  The "6" note in the scale appears at
> this point as the third in a subdominant chord.  It seems to me to be
> somewhere between 6 and flat-6.  Has this caught the attention of any
> parents-tuning specialist out there?  What note is actually being sung,
> and what relationship does it have to the underlying notes?

Okay, here's what's in the published songbook from Hal Leonard: your
analysis of the melody is correct, but the underlying chord is (from the
bass up) B double-flat, D flat, E flat, G flat.  (Confusingly, the chord
symbol given is Gbm6/A.)  The voice/melody, however, is singing a high B
(single) flat.  I imagine the tuning problem you're hearing is either
(a) the conflict between the vocal Bb and the instrumental Bbb in other
octaves (sort of a "Gershwin chord", though I've never seen one where
one of the notes involved in the cross-relation was the bass), or (b)
sheer vocal fatigue on the part of the singer, who has been belting full
tilt for most of a longish song, and who now has to hit a !@#$*&^% HIGH
B-FLAT four bars from the end.

--pH <manynote@lib-rary.wustl.edu> http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote
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