An article I wrote about '39

"A diminished chord whose root is a tritone apart from the tonic"

I like turtles.

I am not even being pretentious.

I really do.

I hope my words make me liked amongst the turtle/turtles/dimished turtle world.

I rule!

Turtles are nice indeed. Way nicer than you, and way cleverer.

Sebastian wrote:

Turtles are nice indeed. Way nicer than you, and way cleverer.

... but not as nice or as clever as me? Right???

Making my way through this now - real nice. Never knew that Brian considered calling it 'Wreck of the '39' - seems possible or even likely that he got the idea from 'Wreck of the John B', which was also part of the skiffle movement as recorded by Lonnie Donegan in 1960.

mooghead wrote:

"A diminished chord whose root is a tritone apart from the tonic"

I like turtles.

I am not even being pretentious.

I really do.

I hope my words make me liked amongst the turtle/turtles/dimished turtle world.

I rule!

Really odd. By the same token, was Brian May pretentious to use that harmonic device?

In-depth musical analysis isn't for everyone, but I don't really see what's pretentious about it. I'd much rather see more content like this rather than all the tired old speculative stuff about Freddie's personal life.

Moreover, this is not in-depth at all... and using a term like 'tritone' is as 'pretentious' as knowing the difference between 'turtle' and 'tortoise'... again, you don't need a 50+ IQ or a PhD to get any of that... or to write it!

Thanks for this article Sebastian. I greatly enjoyed reading it. '39 happens to be one of the songs I listened to a lot in high school.

For those who don't want to look at the chord chart, you can just skip over it and get to the chart that details who sung what. That stuff is accessible to anyone.

Fascinating and really insightful!