"Pleasure"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands on 2 January, and a few days later, I got thinking about a part of "Pleasure."  At first, I'd thought that it contains a phrase in the piano part that's similar to phrases in "Hung up on a Dream" and "Keeper of the Flame."  I've written about the connection between those two before.  I didn't really want to say anything about it until I could figure it out though, which took awhile.  And actually, I figured out only that phrase, so I'm just writing about it instead of posting an audio example.

I'd thought that it was similar to "Hung up on a Dream" in that it was part of a rising scale followed by a descending half-step (the same sort of thing that "Keeper of the Flame" has), but it's actually just the rising scale part that's similar.  That part of "Hung up on a Dream" is in B major (or at least the bass part is; the guitar part is in G major, except for an E major chord [before writing this post, I hadn't noticed that the bass and guitar were in different keys]).  There's a key change after the solo, but that's not important as far as the similarity between these two.  From what I've figured out so far, "Pleasure" is in E major.  But the rising diatonic phrases in both use (most of) the same notes, which isn't too surprising as B major has only one more sharp than E major.  The phrase in "Hung up on a Dream" is B C# D# E F# G# G.  In "Pleasure," it's B C# D# E F# G# A and then back to E.

I'd thought it sounded similar because of a descending half-step (which isn't even in there), but actually they sound similar because they're mostly the same notes.