About the Composer

I’ve always liked the song “Mr. Tambourine Man”, but I admit that until recently I was mainly familiar with the version by The Byrds. Having finally taken the time to get to know the Bob Dylan version (as heard on Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits) in the past year or so, I find it a lot more beautiful and interesting to listen to.

This is surprising to me, because on the face of it there seems to be a lot more going on in the Byrds’ version, what with that unforgettable hook and all. But I’ve figured out the reason:

Inversions.

The Byrds play the song as straight first-inversion major chords IV V I over and over again. (That’s why they need that hook!) It’s pretty boring if you start paying attention. Now Bob Dylan does something really interesting. His IV chord is in the first inversion, so that when it toggles back and forth between I and IV, there’s a very pleasing major sixth leap in the bass.

I did a cursory web survey of the various sites that offer chord changes for popular songs, to see what the standard is for this song. I found out two things: 1) There is no standard. Every site I checked had a different version, and they’re all in different keys, and 2) and not a single one of them matches the way Bob Dylan played it, which is:

(in the key of F)

IV6      V               I               IV6
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

        I                IV6                V
I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to

IV6      V               I               IV6
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.

       I             IV6               V         I
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you

There was a cute article in last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle about an apparent new ukelele fad that’s sweeping the nation. It was interesting to me, because I’d been just starting to take notice of the instrument. It just seems to keep cropping up. I noticed only recently, for example, that it’s buried in the texture of a couple of Burt Bacharach songs, (albeit mostly bad ones).

The main reason the ukelele is on my mind at the moment is the now overexposed Israel Kamakawiwo’ole recording of his “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”/”What a Wonderful World” medley, which I listen to a lot with my son. His playing of the instrument is one of many beautiful things about that recording.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you’ll recognize it when you hear the clip, as it’s been quite overexposed in recent years. It’s a reworking of these songs accompanied only by ukelele, where the melody is drastically altered and the harmony is completely original. It’s wildly popular, and with good reason. Here’s a bit of it for reference:

Now I’ll let you in on my theory as to why this song is so mysteriously beautiful:

Inversions.

I’m guessing that a typical chord chart for this song would read: C - Em - F - G, etc. But, owing to the particular tuning of the tenor ukelele, with the low open G, almost every chord is an inversion, and the bass never sings anything other than G, G# and A.

So the result is: C/G - Em/G - F/A - G - F/A - G - Em/G - Am - F/A. It’s more beautiful this way because the voice leading is better. Everything your counterpoint teacher taught you is true. (I’m willing to overlook the first chord being in 2nd inversion in Bruddah Iz’s case.)

(By the way, here’s an interesting bit of background on this recording that I just found while researching this.)

From Cornelius

Oh, and also…

I have nothing more to say