My first post to the blogosphere! Since this blog was inspired by my good friend Christian Patterson, who runs his own fancy blog about photography, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss a special song called “The Christian Life.”

“The Christian Life” was writted by Ira and Charlie Louvin and first appeared on their album Satan is Real in 1959. The song is a fairly traditional tune about one’s love for Jesus and staying on the righteous path. A few years later, the Byrds did a version of the song on their 1968 album “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.”

What is particularly remarkable about the Byrds’s cover version is that many of the phrases in the song become slightly lengthened when compared to the Louvin Brother’s original version:

		The Byrds: “The Christian Life”
		The Louvin Brothers: “The Christian Life”

This phrase expansion naturally results in larger groupings of measures, i.e. a larger hypermeter. Typically, hypermeter is in some duple grouping, such as 4 bars. In the Byrds’s cover, though, you see a lot of 5-bar hypermeter. Since 5-bar hypermeter is a fairly rare thing for a piece of music to have (especially a popular tune), it’s worth looking into why and how the Byrds create this non-duple hypermeter. As well, it’s worth seeing what kind of effect the 5-bar hypermeter has on the composition as a whole.

You might want to download the little graph I made that breaks down the structure of the song as recorded by both the Louvin brothers and the Byrds. The first thing to notice about the song is that the Louvin brothers actually have one phrase of 5-bar hypermeter in their original recording. They basically just tack on an extra bar after the Refrain. It seems like a particularly effective device to slow down harmonic/melodic motion after the big cadence and give a little breath before the verse or B part starts up.

The Byrds use this process of tacking on an extra bar at the end of a 4-bar segment to expand other parts of the song besides just the Refrain. Probably the most effective example (at least to me) is the extension of the subdominant at the end of the pre-chorus. This lengthened IV chord really makes that Refrain sound like you’re coming home when it kicks back in. The other spot of 5-bar hypermeter (or arguably 9-bar) comes at the end of the Bridge-type B-section. Just like the expanded Refrain, the point here is to give a little break before the new section comes in I think.

When the Byrds’s cover goes from “B” to “PCH” to “REF”, you’ve got three 5-bar hypermeters back to back. You might think that this is really obvious or somehow stops the flow of the music, but it really sounds very natural to me. I don’t think I even realized that there were these odd-numbered phrase lengths until I sat down and counted everything. In fact, I think the Byrds cover is a much better version than the Louvin Brothers because these instances of 5-bar hypermeter really create a lot of tension and release in the song that is not there when you just have predictable blocks of 4-bar hypermeter. Notice also how the Byrds end up expanding the tonic, the subdominant, and the dominant. Each expansion thus highlights a different harmonic area. I think that also helps keep the expansions fresh.

One concept from music theory is that all non-duple hypermeters arise from some duple prototype. Often, this argument is used to show how a “lesser” composer might write something as a simple prototype while a “greater” composer might write a more complex version. I think the Byrds’s cover of “The Christian Life” provides a pretty strong example of where you can clearly see what the duple prototype was and how the non-duple hypermeter was created. Perhaps it’s obvious to say so, but (at least in this case), I would have to agree than the prototype version seems weaker. Do all phrase expansions necessarily create better compositions? Of course not. But one is certainly inspired to look for cases where phrase expansions can be effectively used, because when all songs are in 4-bar hypermeter, things can get a little dull.