culture / music

Open Mic Adventures XL: “Parada”

The Portly Politico20 Comments

I’ve just got a couple of more open mic nights before I get into my school year schedule and become a slave to the grind, but I’m going to do my best to keep pumping out the goods.  This time in two weeks, I hope to have a new song uploaded for your delectation; stay tuned.

In the meantime, I’m continuing my deep dive into my obscure deep cuts, songs that I’ve never managed to get recorded in a studio.  Some of these songs are very good; some need some polish.  Whatever the case, I’m realizing that I have enough material for another EP, and I might need to get back into the studio.

This week’s feature is “Parada.”  I wrote “Parada” in 2015 during a particularly fertile period of open mic attendance. The Spanish word “parada” roughly translates to “stop” or “bus stop/station” in English. I wanted to capture the notion of lingering in a moment—stopping a poignant moment in time, trying to freeze it in place as long as possible.

The inspiration came, as many of my songs from that era did, from a coffee shop floozy who enthusiastically liked my music.  Her last name was “Parada,” and she told me the meaning of the word (imagine if your last name was “Bus Station”—¡ay caramba!).  Her cute energy and unusual last name served as ample inspiration for this unusual song (as a humorous aside, she worked at Chuck E. Cheese, as I recall, and was vehemently opposed to the minimum wage).

“Parada” has a somewhat unusual format—there is no chorus.  Instead, it consists of three long verses, with a bridge between the second and third verses.  The “hook,” as it were, comes from the lines, “Then I’d’ve gotta/My Little Parada,” which appears at the end of each verse.

I also had a great deal of fun with the music theory in this tune.  It stays in D major the entire time—no strange modulations!—but it starts with a chromatic motion in the left hand of D -> Dmaj.7/C# -> D7/C, which then moves to a G (which I sometimes, but not always, play as G/B), then Gm (again, sometimes Gm/Bb).  In essence, the bass line is moving from D -> C# -> C -> B-> Bb, a nice little chromatic descent.  Chromaticism was a hallmark of my songwriting from this period, and “Parada” is no different.

After that descent, the harmony returns to D major, then moves to a playful B7, which points to E major.  That E major, in turns, becomes an Em7, which walks up to an A.  That A major quickly becomes an A+ (A augmented) chord, which gives that slightly expectant sound at the end of the first half of each verse.  Sometimes I skip the A major entirely and go straight to the A+, as I do in this recording; listen for that augmented A on the word “pop!”

For a song about stopping, there’s a definite rhythmic motif here, too—the bass line moving from D to C and back to D while the right hand maintains a D major chord.  It gives it a languid forward motion, so when I stop that motion on the A+ chord (and on the first line:  “When I first set eyes on you my heart stopped“), it draws attention to the sudden lack of motion.

But enough self-indulgent music theory flexing.  Let’s listen to the song!

For those that prefer, here is the same video on YouTube:

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Editions of Open Mic Adventures: