 This piece is a cover and was originally intended as a male and female vocal duet.

 This piece is a Bossa Nova which is influenced by Samba (from Brazil) and North American Jazz.

 The lyrics express loss and longing and are sung in Portuguese.

 Samba is often loud and associated with carnivals but the dynamics in this piece are much quieter.

STRUCTURE

 Although lots of Jazz pieces use a ‘head’ arrangement. This piece uses aspects of the ‘head’

arrangement but can be built roughly into ...

Intro – verse 1 – break – verse 2 – instrumental – verse 3 – coda

 The piece opens with an ad lib bass solo.

 The piece ends with a guitar flourish as the vocals dies away.

 The piece could also be seen to be in Binary form (verse 1&2 and 3&4)

MELODY

 The melody is syllabic.

 Ascending broken chords in the vocals can be heard at the beginning.

 There is a mostly step-wise movement in the melody from Verse 2

 The melody often consists of the highest notes of extended chords (for example the 13th which is

a G in a Bm13th chord) and dissonant notes.

 The guitar solo uses tremolo picking and fast arpeggios

 Even though this is a modern piece you can still see ornamentation – There is a Mordent in bar 1.

 The vocals often use sequences – see bar 4-5.

HARMONY

/

TONALITY

 The piece is in B minor and this piece is all about the harmony!

 The chords often feature extended chords which can provide dissonance – jazz harmony.

INSTRUMENTS

 The guitar style is influenced by Flamenco.

 Like early bossa nova pieces the instrumentation is stripped back – this piece includes only female

vocal, acoustic bass guitar and nylon-string acoustic guitar.

 Both the guitar and bass have a solo which is common in jazz.

 You could arguably say that the parts are virtuoso

RHYTHM/

METRE/

TEMPO

 Although there is no drum kit in this piece it is possible to hear the implied boss nova rhythm.

The bossa nova influence gives it much slower tempo than its samba influences.

 When written down the rhythms for this piece look much harder than they are to play.

 The opening has a fairly free tempo and there is a sense of the pulse moving around.

 By bar 4, the music is clearly in 4/4 but there is still a rubato feel.

 The bossa nova groove is ‘locked in’ by bar 19.

 There is a big emphasis on syncopated rhythms

TEXTURE  Although the open strings ring (this is called a harmonic) between the 1st and 3rd bar the opening

consists of only a bass guitar and is therefore monophonic.

 Vocals add to texture as they enter in bar 4. The bass moves between a counterpoint line and

chords.

 Even though the bass and guitar have an accompaniment role they still include contrapuntal

elements.

 There is a much sparser texture after the instrumental in verse 3 with only bass and vocals and

less notes and chords.

 Overall the texture is polyphonic/contrapuntal.