Wednesday, March 25, 2020

THINGS WE SAID TODAY | Doug Koempel

CLICK BELOW TO PLAY SONG:



  • Doug Koempel: vocals; piano (Young Chang Grand); bass (Hohner P-bass clone); acoustic guitar (Fender Starcaster Nat CE-301); electric guitar (Yamaha EG 112C2) + VOX Pathfinder amp; organ (Hammond A100)
  • drums sequenced by Doug on Toontrack EZX Drummer
  • recorded on Sonar 3.1 Producer Edition / mastering done with Ozone 3
  • recorded on November 22-23, 2016 at Bird-On-Fire Recording Studio / West Union, Iowa
  • unreleased demo


DOUG'S NOTES:

THIS IS A REALLY NEAT SONG! "Things We Said Today" comes from an innovative and transitional year in the Beatles' evolution - 1964. This year saw their creative process make a quantum leap with the completion of several, iconic songs for the Hard Day's Night movie (e.g. "A Hard Day's Night", "I Should Have Known Better", "All My Loving", "If I Fell", "Can't Buy Me Love", "And I Love Her," etc.)

"Things We Said Today" was also a song written for this film (but never included) credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. However it was actually Paul's composition, written in 1964 for his then girlfriend Jane Asher.

The song is remarkable on several levels. I'll spare you the music-theory gobbledygook as to how the harmony shifts from a minor key to its relative major and eventually to its parallel major (blah, blah, blah.) Suffice it to say that not only is the compositional method innovative but so is the lyric construction. In the story-line McCartney refers to present-time events and how they will be reflected upon at a future time. He calls this "future nostalgia" - it's a very sophisticated and effective technique.

For more background on the song refer to the Wikipeida article here.  And also for you musicians out there, an in-depth musical analysis of it by Alan W. Pollack can be found here.

I've always liked this song, and I was finally inspired to record it after having heard Rosanne Cash and her husband John Leventhal perform it as an encore at a concert at Luther College on November 12, 2016.


Click below to listen.


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