The Music of Christmas – Day 3: “Silver Bells”

“Overture: Silver Bells”
By Gloria Estefan

As I alluded to in day 1, many years ago, I realized a few things about my musical tastes, or, more precisely, what songs that I like usually contain. I don’t necessarily love full songs, sometimes. I know that there are songs that I don’t really care for, except there will be this one little bit that I’ll absolutely love. Or there may be a song that the reason I love it is because the musician does a certain chord progression in the live version but not the studio version.

“Overture: Silver Bells” has several of these qualities. First, it has orchestral instruments. Over the past two decades, as I’ve grown to love band and orchestra music more and more, I’ve found that pop/rock songs with orchestral instruments seem to appeal to me more. Gloria Estefan, who I first discovered through Miami Sound Machine, provides that in “Overture: Silver Bells” with — as the title suggests — an overture. Lovely trumpet runs give the opening of the song a classical feel.

And then the song morphs into something completely different, namely, a tempo/key signature twist, which is also on the list of things I love. “Silver Bells” is normally written with three beats to the measure. In this version, however, she takes the three beats and spreads them over four beats in the measure, leading to some dualing pulses and dragged tempos that just fascinate me. By playing with the key signature, she’s able to make this standard song her own unique creation.

Finally, we have a third thing in my list of likes — awesome chording. There are some harmonies in the chorus that almost make my heart melt they’re so beautiful. We have voices in harmony with the backing accompaniment that then change into chords that are just aching for resolution, found in the next set of chord progressions. Absolutely great stuff.

Tomorrow — one of the true classic holiday specials is represented.