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/
(For those that don't know me, here is where I am coming from: I am a product creator. I helped develop some arguably successful products, including the trailblazing spreadsheet #VisiCalc in 1979, the popular software prototyping tool Dan Bricklin's Demo Program in 1985, and the early iPad ink app NoteTakerHD in 2010. Also, of course, many less successful ones.) 3/
Here is what I hear as one who loves to create things:
The verse starts with a song writer telling a story about when King David (who tradition says wrote the Biblical Psalms, many of which were explicitly listed as songs to be song and have been popular for thousands of years) wrote something that was especially successful (pleased the Lord). He did not expect it to be the big hit it was (with reference to the baffled king). 4/
(People often ask me if I knew if VisiCalc was going to be such an important product. I answer that of course I felt that way, but I have felt that way about so many other products that were nowhere near as influential. As a creator, one usually feels what you are doing is special. That is one of the things that drives you to work so hard and long on it. 5/
However, the product usually is not successful and you know that likelihood while building it. When something succeeds it is a wonderful surprise. You try, often in vain, to somehow understand why it succeeded to help you and others in the future. Engineers love to explain to others how to do things, even to a fault.) 6/
The song writer then acknowledges that the listener probably does not care for the details. But, like so many engrossed in their craft, the writer then goes on to explain the details in the language of the craft even if you do not want to hear it nor understand what it means. (How many times have you watched other people's eyes glaze over as you explained something you cared about?) 7/
I found this dive into the mechanics jarring because to me, as one who likes music but has no clue how to compose it, it was like a magician revealing the mundane, esoteric details of a trick in the middle of the trick itself. 8/
But then, the music itself is merged with the words, illustrating the meaning viscerally, and it works. The teaching of the view from a craftsperson is also merged with history (David), faith (the Lord), spirituality (Hallelujah), memories of special times with family (hearing Psalms), and more. That rich combination is a unique hook to this song for me. 9/
So, maybe the line about not caring is to introduce that maybe you should care. The next line shows that there is beauty in the details of how things are developed. 10/10
Oops! Secret "chord", not "cord". I guess having a degree in electrical engineering goes deep.
@danb I always thought the narrator was speaking to another character. “You don’t really care for music do ya” sounds accusatory to me. Maybe an ex lover? But I like your interpretation too!
@paulmather007 @danb Looking at the rest of the stanzas, Cohen is expressing two distinct perspectives. The first is the songwriter is addressing King David. The second is less clear: is it Cohen addressing a lover? Is it the lord (or holy spirit) moving in King David? But the "holy dove" is referenced separately, as is the lord of song. Unlike engineering, poetry can embrace the ambiguity.
qoto has a character limit of 65535 characters so don't have to split up a long toot like that. FYI.
@Pat I saw that. I'm new to Mastodon and I know that other places may have 500 char limits and I didn't know how they would handle it, nor how I should add a CW at the right place. I'm learning... :) How is the best way to do long posts?
I usually just type long toots into one toot. On other instances with a shorter limit, it will display the first x words and then show a link, "read more" or something like that. When the reader clicks on the link then it shows the whole toot (from qoto.com).
One use case where you might want to split up a toot is if there are portions that you want everybody to see, but there are other portions that you want to CW, like a movie review with spoilers.
Re content warnings, I wrote a guide on that (https://qoto.org/web/statuses/109321533928955163), but I'm not a mod here, I'm just a user and that guide is just my opinion.
Welcome to qoto!
@Pat Thanks!
@Pat I took your advice and just pasted the whole thing in for my most recent toot. I hope that works. Maybe I should have started with something like a once sentence summary and then the CW.
@danb I always read these lines as subtly/sarcastically directed at both the listener but also at "the Lord" which is to say: the God of this cosmological vision of the universe doesn't actually understand/can't fully appreciate the human passion in music: & if even that sort of being doesn't understand, then literally nobody can understand except the songwriter, feeling the things the mechanics of creation are speaking to
It's a cry of passion into the darkness
@danb I’m loving to see a non-musician’s reaction to this. It is indeed a poetic description of the exact harmonies (chords) being played at that moment, something I’d always thought was brilliant.
@linkingdot Thanks for your comments. I appreciate it.
@danb Apologies if someone has already responded. I realize this post is months old.
It is not a secret “cord,” it’s a secret “chord.” In 1 Samuel: Whenever the evil spirit from God bothered Saul, David would play his harp. Saul would relax and feel better, and the evil spirit would go away.
That is why the reference to music is there.
@suckeffect No apologies needed. It was a spelling typo that was caught soon thereafter.
@danb classic song, regardless.
@danb Worth noting the self-referential nature of singing 'it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth'" while signing the fourth and fifth.
@geniodiabolico Yes! That's what I meant by "the music itself is merged with the words" but, if you don't remember the song well, that probably wasn't clear enough in part 9 of my thread. Thanks!
@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 He knows what’s he’s doing. He’s Babe Ruth telling you where it’ll go and he does it. So good at the craft that he can lay it out before you and still capture with the beauty of it.
@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/
@danb He's calling out the chord changes poetically as only he could do.
@danb Those first few lines are the most narrative-dense lyrics in history. Two people who are about as far apart temperamentally and personality-wise as they can be.
@danb I always wondered if Cohen was alluding to the time David’s wife saw him “leaping and dancing before the Lord” and “despised him.” According to the story, “When David went home to pronounce a blessing on his own house, Michal scolded him for his undignified conduct, dancing “before his servants’ slave girls the way a vulgar fool might do!” —to which David replied, “It was before the Lord!…I am willing to shame and humiliate myself even more than this!” (2 Samuel 6:16-22, NET)
Why is the line "…you don't really care for music…" there? And why does it go on to break a third wall and reveal some mechanics of writing a beloved song? 2/