For today’s listening description, I listened to “Poor Boy Blues” by the Lazy Bill Lucas Trio.

The melody of this song is comprised by the two different guitar layers and the vocals of Bill Lucas. The melodic contour of the song is very interesting. The contour starts in kind of a “yo-yo” pattern, with the electric guitar playing two separate notes, a higher and a lower one repeatedly one after another, using elision to slide between the two notes. The song maintains a characteristic throughout the song in which it changes from generally low notes to generally high notes every several phrases, doing a few phrases in a low pitch, and then the succeeding phrases in a higher pitch. The band uses bent notes, a slide down and back up again before moving on to the next note, and and escalation up and down notes to transition between the low sections and the high sections throughout the song from beginning to end. The melodic character of the song for the most part is conjunct. Bill Lucas’ vocals and lyrics have many words compressed into tiny intervals of the song. For example, when Bill Lucas sings, “When I think how dumb I am, you know it makes me want to scream” he fits those fifteen words into a five second interval of the song. However, occasionally he will include melodic character that is more disjunct in other parts as well. For example, when Bill Lucas sings, “When I was a child Santa Claus never left one toy”, he draws out the note of “was” for a larger amount of time than the other notes, making an eleven word phrase take up nine seconds of the song, compared to a more disjunct interval like the one I referenced before, where he takes fifteen words and fits them into an interval of the song that takes up almost half the time. The overall range of the melody of the song is pretty large. The highest note of the song comes near the end when Bill Lucas pleads with the audience, “Please have mercy on poor old boy” with the highest pitch coming on the note for the word “please”. The lowest note of the song is during the phrase, “I’m just a poor boy” with the lowest note on the word “boy”. The note that is tied with the word “boy” is not a deep, low note, however in relation to the high pitched screech that accompanies the “please”, the range in between the two is pretty big.  The phrasing of the song, unlike the intervals, is equivalent across the board in regards to time, but the phrases do vary when it comes to the amount of notes that comprise each phrase. Some phrases condense a lot of words and different notes into the same amount of time that another phrase uses less words and notes in. In terms of melodic motives, a few motives are apparent in the song. The acoustic guitar layer plays a very simple “da-dum-da-da” pattern, one that is common amongst blues songs, throughout the entire song. Some would think the electric guitar patterns played at the ends of the lyrical phrases would be melodic motives, but they have different note progressions each time and never repeat.

The texture of the song is relatively simple as the song is not comprised of a multitude of layers. There are five layers that comprise the song: the drums, the ride cymbal, the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar, and Bill Lucas’ vocals. The two percussive layers, the drums and the cymbals, both carry the same function. They both act as the time keepers of the song. Both help set the tempo, pulse, and time of the song. They keep the same beat throughout all the phrases of the song and never switch it up, keeping the focus on the guitar playing and Bill Lucas’ vocals, and serving only to keep the beat of the song. The guitar layers serve two different functions. The rhythm of the guitar layers help keep the time, but when they go off into their melodic runs near the ends of the phrases and during the instrumental sections, they are used for a creative flair to put some excitement into the song and help play off and parallel the emotions and intensity of the lyrical content of the song. The speed of the layers is mostly uniform except for the electric guitar layer. The electrical guitar plays notes at a faster pace during its runs at the ends of the phrases and during the instrumentals when the guitar does a solo piece. The timbres of the layers of very different. The drum layer carries with it a membranophonic timbre, a hollow sound, but because it seems to be a snare drum, it is a shorter drum with a cleaner, shorter, sound. The timbre of the drum does not ring or reverberate throughout the song. The cymbal layer has an ideophonic timbre, that reverberates throughout the song. It has a smooth quality to it, making me believe it is more of a ride cymbal rather than a crash. The guitar layers share a chordophonic timbre, but they differ in that the acoustic guitar has more of a reverberation to it and seems to be strum more, while the electric guitar has a tighter, pluckier sound, like the strings are being picked individually instead of being strum altogether at once. Bill Lucas’s voice carries a timbre that is very raspy and strained. His timbre helps display the anguish and depressed nature of the song and the lyrics.

The time of the song is played in triple meter. The rhythm in each layer is pretty similar in each apart from the vocals where Bill Lucas stretches out the notes and shortens them as he sees fit. But the guitar layers and percussive layers have the same kind of short, chopped up quality and duration of the notes. The tempo of the song is pretty slow. The song has some swing to it, which is common amongst blues songs, but the slow nature of the song allows the swing to really come out in the instrumental and beat of the song. Also, the slow tempo of the song parallels the nature of the song which is “bluesy” and very sad. Syncopation occurs during the electric guitar’s riffs during the instrumental and the ends of the phrases, showing off its presence apart from the typical accents of the beat. Rhythmic motives are also present in this song, where the “ba-dum-da-dum” swing rhythm that permeates the percussive layers and some of the guitar layers sets the rhythm of the song.

The harmonic character of the song is extremely consonant. When the two guitar layers play in conjunction, there is very little tension between the notes. It is a much sweeter sounding, consonant harmonic character as the notes being played together are very close in tonal quality.