The Mastering of vocal Harmony on a Soft Day.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author and speaker, has some pretty accurate musings on the trials and tribulations of grasping on to inspiration when it arrives unannounced, as neither its form nor timing us humans are in control of. I don’t have that problem, I have tons of ideas just waiting to be put down in concrete format in my colour blog. As long as there is colour in the picture, I am good to go and have enough inspiration going for my lifetime.

What is my problem however, is a rather static office job which involves hours on end in front of a screen. After 8 Teams-meetings on a Friday, the last thing I want to do in my spare time, is sit down in front of even more screens and write a blog post. So if my ideas could somehow just transpose themselves from my head and into a post without me sitting in front of a computer – it would be utter bliss.

This “had it with screens” also includes TV’s which I rarely watch. As a form for unwinding, I can watch some Youtube. So completely out of blog-plan order, one evening, for no reason of mine, my Youtube feed shows me a recording from the 1999 Late Show with David Letterman featuring EmmyLou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt performing Neil Young’s “After the gold rush”. (PS: I’m paranoid and overcautious where copyright is concerned, so search for the video yourself – pretty easy to find.)

Not a particular fan of Neil Young myself, and when you listen to him sing the exact same song, its a pass for me. Even the lyrics are a bit strange to grasp, something about us humans screwing up our planet and that we will be taken away in spaceships or something like that. When the lovely ladies sing After the gold rush in a trio, it’s a completely different thing and song. You actually want to sit down and listen. Unpretentious vocal harmony to perfection. Even though Dolly is the lead in this song, there is such a warm gentle admiration for each others talent, that their faces all light up and shine equally bright.

And that’s the thing, their voices and faces are sublime, EmmyLou with her stunning silver mane, Dolly in her tried and true persona outfits and Linda in a subdued black outfit. The rest is just terrible, ie the Late Show stage set up, colours? – what’s this murky dark purple/black backdrop that they are using to stage the talent? It’s a 1999 take, so sure, the video quality could be poor, but then again everything is relative.

Just as a side note here. Us humans decoded music quite some time ago. We know what harmony sounds like, why and can even put music to sheet paper. The same can not be said for colour. Come computer era, we are still re-inventing the actual colour wheel. Both forms, the auditory and visual perceptions, have similarities as-well as differences. They say it all comes down to wave-lengths and I wonder if these two types of wavelengths have any commonality or interaction at all – what would that feel like!

What about the colour in this story?

I have already commented upon the appalling Late Show stage design and does no justice to the trio performing. But then again they could perform under any circumstance and it would be brilliant. EmmyLou’s and Linda’s outfits are black/dark and blend right into the backdrop. So not much to say here.

True to herself, Dolly wears a tailored canary-yellow cowgirl jacket/skirt outfit and glows up the entire stage from a colour perspective. Huge disclaimer… I could be very wrong about the whole thing, as the video is hazy, but from what I can pick up, Dolly’s yellow shade seems to be a bit “dirty” ie I can detect som grey in there? The skirt has a white fringe, the piping on the jacket is also white and that’s why in relations to each other, I think there is some grey to the yellow. Not necessarily a very pretty yellow on its own, it’s not a clean/clear lemon yellow or a warm buttercup, but it has a slight subdued/off quality to it.

The yellow outfit immediately brought me associations to the above lithography that hangs in my bedroom. It’s a picture I “won” in an art lottery and was no love at first sight. For many years it hung on a south facing wall and the motive was just washed out by the sunlight. But hung on a north facing wall, it shows. Similar to Dolly’s outfit, an interesting yellow, not necessarily pretty, and the grey acts as a contrast, point of interest, had some paint left over from something else? – I really don’t know. The name of the painting is called “soft day”. The notion of a day being soft intrigues me. What is a soft day and what does it look like – is it yellow? And whilst being on the subject of music, what does a soft day sound like?

So two things stopped me dead in my tracks and interrupted my whole blog post order; the incredible emotional vocal harmony of the trio performing and Dolly’s yellow outfit. On top of that, the utter irony of the stage design being sub par compared the vocal talent performing that night.

Have a soft day.