RIVER MAN - THE BASIC FORMAT

RIVER MAN was certainly one of the songs which made a big impression on the musicians that Nick met in Cambridge. It is in 5:4 time and the melody is very confidently placed within the underlying syncopated rhythm that underpins it. Moreover the harmonic changes, though not all that numerous, are unusual. Each line of the verse takes a different harmony. "Betty came by on her way" is over a C minor chord; "Said she had a word to say" is over an unusual Eb (major) chord. "(About) things today" goes with an Ab major seventh while "(But) she believes" is over a C major harmony. From the first to the fourth line the song switches from minor to major. The song goes round the same set of changes a number of times as the story unfolds before introducing further musical ideas. If you were to ask someone who knew the song and understood the terminology whether this song is in a major or minor key they might well say minor - perhaps because the overall atmosphere of the song (and indeed the orchestration) is brooding and dark - the characteristics we associate with minor modality. The long notes in the first four lines of the tune describe a descending minor arpeggio - C, G, Eb, C. Nonetheless not only is the last long note of each verse supported by a C major harmony, much of the last section of the song is also in C major so there is a sense in which the destination of the song is C major. (The destination is often taken to define the key of a song. For example ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE is in Ab although the first chord is F minor).

-Iain Cameron, October, 1998.