Reception – Locrian Mode; Canons; and Polytonality?

The opening track on Wings’ 1979 album, Back to the Egg, is a curious number entitled Reception.

It might be superfically regarded as a throwaway introduction to Wings’ most rock-based album. However, as I will explore here, there is perhaps a little more to the track than meets the eye/ear.

The track begins an oscillating whistle-effect that leads into a spoken-word recording from a radio of “what did you do when you were made the deputy sheriff”. The answer to this question then segues into another recording of an operatic mezzo-soprano. The impression is one of moving randomly between channels on a radio.

The idea is to communicate the double-meaning of the word “reception” – of the opening of an event (in this case the opening track on an album) or process of receiving radio waves from a broadcast. Indeed, a later track on the album picks up on this theme and is actually called The Broadcast.

Revolution 9, Carnival of Light and Musique Concrète

The technique of randomly inserting extracts of recorded speech and sounds immediately suggests the 1968 White Album track Revolution 9. Revolution 9 was almost solely the brainchild of John Lennon and was recorded by over-laying tracks of recorded sound from various radio broadcasts. Although dismissed by many fans both at the time and since, Revolution 9 draws upon the musique concrète and sound collage techniques of the French composer Edgar Varèse (1883-1965).

McCartney himself had dabbled with the such approaches to recording during The Beatles. He had helped to develop the idea of using tape loops on the Revolver track Tomorrow Never Knows and was the instigtor of the unreleased track Carnival of Light (1968). Carnival of Light actually pre-dates Revolution 9, as it was recorded during the sessions for Penny Lane in January 1967. In fact, McCartney’s efforts to have Carnival of Light included on The Beatles Anthology 2 were vetoed by the surviving Beatles and Yoko Ono on the basis that it was more of a McCartney than a Beatles track.

So, on Reception we can hear some of the sound collage techniques that had featured in The Beatles’ work in the 1966-68 period.

Musical Detail

Reception is based on an ostinato (repeating) bass guitar riff in a scale that is a cross between E-Mixolydian and blues scale (it has a minor third, unlike the Mixolydian). The bass guitar rises from E1 to E2 and then alternates between E2 and D2, bringing attention to the minor seventh of the Mixolydian mode, before quickly descending and then repeating again. There is an element of syncopation, as the bass guitar falls to E1 on the last beat of the bar and then climbs again from F#1 on the subsequent bar.

Canonical Synth Entry

The fun begins at 0:25, where a very bright-timbred synth plays a rising scale in thirds. It begins ascending on the second/descending half of the two-bar bass guitar riff. As such, it can be described as a “canon at the bar”. It is formed by means of transposing the bass riff up by three octaves (E1 to E4) and adding an interval of a third below the starting note of E4. The first note below the E is that of C#, so the interval between the bass guitar and synth is that of a compound major sixth; so this is also a “canon at the sixth”.

Mixolydian, Lydian or Locrian?

The synth riff rises from C# to E (with an added third above) by means of the Mixolydian mode, passing through the pitches C# D E F# G# B C# E, before falling on to an accented C# at 0:28 that is suffused with vibrato.

Although this ascent is part of the E-Mixolydian mode with a flattened third, jazz musicians tend to think about the starting point of each run of notes, rather than simply the underlying mode. As such, the scale from C# to E can be viewed as a “mode within a mode”. The pitches from C# to C# in E-Mixolydian actually match the intervals of the Locrian mode:

C# D E F# G A B

1, ♭2, ♭3, 4, ♭5, ♭6, ♭7

However, the notes of the scale also mirror those of G-Lydian (G A B C# D E F# G) and the fact that the scale begins and ends on the note of C# gives emphasis to the “sharp fourth” characteristic of the Lydian mode.

Whatever terms we use to describe this short synth run in thirds beginning at 0:25, can we all agree that it has a peculiarly astringent quality?

Polytonality

At 0:33 and then at 0:40, an excerpt from the track The Broadcast (the fifth track on side two) is placed in the background of the mix. This leads to a peculiar layering of tonalities. The Broadcast is in the unusual key of F# major (six sharps) against the two sharps (F# and C#) in the E-Mixolydian/Blues scale of Reception. You can here this contrast of two different tonal cenres here:

When two contrasting key signatures are played simulaneously, the effect is known as bitonality or polytonality. This effect was particularly favoured by the Amercian composer Charles Ives (1874 –1954), and an example of such an effect can be heard in his orchestral work The Unanswered Question:

Anticipating the Secondary Dominant of Getting Closer?

The Broadcast is in F# major. The next track on the album, Getting Closer, features a very prominent secondary dominant chord of F# major at 1:11 on the words “my salamander”. Could it be argued that the polytonal aspect of Reception prepares us for that secondary dominant? The words “my salamander” are famously incongruous in Getting Closer. Is it possible that McCartney is referring back to the incongruity of the contrasting tonal centres in the polytonal Reception?

A Norwegian Message

Reception ends with an old norwegian radio narrator saying:

la oss prøve et øyeblikk å se dette i lys av det nye testamentet

meaning:

let us try for a second to see this in the light of the new testament

Does this closing statement carry any particular significance?

Pretentious Nonsense???

You might be releived to know that some of the above observations were made with a hint of irony.

When all is said and done, isn’t McCartney just riffing on the bass and throwing in a few random radio excerpts for a bit of added fun?

Or is there more to this track than simple filler before the album really gets underway?

I would love to know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Or perhaps we should take heed of McCartney’s own advice:

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