This is an engineer's reaction to the first verse of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Last night, while watching the documentary "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song" on Netflix, I kept being struck by the first verse: "Now I've heard there was a secret cord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord / But you don't really care for music, do ya? / It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth / The minor fall, the major lift / The baffled king composing Hallelujah". 1/
@danb One of the (many) things I love about this verse is how it goes from saying what the chords are — “the fourth, the fifth” — to describing their emotional function — “The minor fall, the major lift.”
If he had stuck with just naming the chords, it would have been something like “the minor sixth, return to fourth” — losing all the magic of that line.
Not everybody is able to describe the details of their craft with such poetry. A thing to strive for.
@brentsimmons @danb All these responses put me in a mind to listen to the SNL cold open version on election week, 2016.
@glowrocks @brentsimmons I notices that that version was listed in the movie's credits, but Gary Graff in Billboard says it was cut. https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/hallelujah-documentary-leonard-cohen-1235109464/
