One four-note climb does most of the work on the title track of the 2014 album. The singer walks Eb, F, G, Ab, the flat three up to the flat six, and the whole song is that climb worn five ways: sung low over a bare floor, doubled at the octave, lifted an octave into the chorus, run upside down at the peak, and handed to the guitars when the voice leaves. Eight sections are transcribed below, bar for bar, from the four-track multitrack capture (lead, rhythm, bass, vocals; this capture carries no drum track, so the sheet makes no drum-groove claims). The lyric is printed under the vocal staff and the interval each syllable makes against the chord is printed over the notehead, so you can watch the same climb collect new numbers as the floor moves under it.
Why it sounds like Hooray For Earth
Five habits stack up to make the sound.
One, a single cell recolored. The verse states Eb, F, G, Ab low and alone, the build doubles it at the octave, the chorus sings it an octave up, the peak runs it upside down. The numbers over the staves change from 1-9-3-4 to b3-4-5-b6 to 1-7-13-5 as the chords move, and the sung notes barely change at all. The band recolors one idea for four minutes instead of writing a second one.
Two, the flat six is the destination. In the chorus the singer holds Ab over Cm7, a flat six leaning on the tonic seventh, and the band then moves to the Ab chord under the held note, renaming it from b6 to 1 with no motion in the voice. The bass plays the same trick in miniature: nearly every time it reaches C it flicks up to Ab and back inside the bar (bars 3, 19, 27, 43, 53, 61, 74, 82 of the capture).
Three, dyads and stacks with no third. The verse guitar rings one bare dyad per phrase, G with Eb, C with Ab, C with D, Bb with D, and the full triads exist only as assemblies: bar 25 spells G minor as bass G under guitar Bb and D, one note per instrument, and the first full C minor stack held by a single instrument arrives deep in the bridge, at bar 56. The color of every chord lives in whichever voice supplies the missing note.
Four, the thorn: Ab with a D inside it. Three times the rhythm guitar holds C, Eb, Ab, D as one chord (bars 45, 84-85, 92-93), the flat-six chord with a sharp four rubbing in the middle of it. The singer's last note in the song is that same D over Ab at bar 91, left hanging, and the lead guitar's decline line starts on the D (bar 92) and resolves it up into Eb.
Five, the cadence machinery is rationed to one appearance each. The only dominant seventh in the track, Bb7 at bars 86-87, resolves to Eb over Bb, the relative major, never to C minor. The only leading tone, a single B natural in four tracks of MIDI, is a passing bass note at bar 93 on the way down to G. The file ends on Eb and G in two guitars with no bass and no C anywhere, so the song never actually lands.
Reading the numbers over each vocal note: 1 root, 3 major third, 4 the fourth, 5 fifth, 7 major seventh, 9 ninth, 13 thirteenth (the sixth), b7 / b3 / b6 the lowered seventh, third, and sixth, #4 the raised fourth. Every label is the interval that sung note makes against the chord tagged on that staff. Octave-doubled noteheads carry one label, both voices sing the same degree.
Racy · Hooray For Earth
C minor · intro, bars 1-4 · two first-inversion stacks and an empty downbeat
The capture opens with rhythm guitar and bass alone, strumming a two-note stack, Bb and Eb doubled across four strings, over a G floor.
No third sounds anywhere in the strum, so the sonority reads as Eb over G (bIII in first inversion), a color leaning forward, never a settled chord.
Two bars in, the same strum shape moves to C, Eb, Ab, the flat-six chord (bVI) in first inversion over a C floor, and the b6 that will run the whole song is on the table by bar 3.
The strum leans on two long hits and a push on the last eighth, and the next downbeat is empty, so the vamp keeps falling over the barline.
The bass flicks up to Ab and back the moment it reaches C, the flat six stitched into the tonic's own bar.
The lead guitar speaks twice in sixteen bars, Eb at bar 11 and D at bar 13, the home color and the thorn, the two notes the rest of the song argues about.
favorite momentThe empty downbeats: every even bar starts on a rest and the strum pushes across the gap, so the vamp limps on purpose.
Intro staves transcribed from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 1-4); the strum pattern is the captured grid at eighth resolution. The capture rings open A and low E strings at strum edges under several barre chords; those hits are tab noise and stay off the staves. The vocal staff rests, the voice waits until bar 18.
C minor · verse 1, bars 17-24 · the floor drops to one dyad per phrase and the climb enters low
At bar 17 the strumming stops and the guitar shrinks to one ringing dyad every two bars, G with Eb, then C with Ab, then C with D, then Bb with D.
The bass keeps the full syncopated pattern, so the floor is the busiest instrument on the page and the harmony above it is two notes at a time.
The voice enters on the climb, Eb, F, G, Ab, reading 1, 9, 3, 4 against the Eb-over-G ring, and settles on C as the ring changes to Ab over C (bVI), the 3 of the new chord.
Read against the G in the floor instead, that Ab is a flat nine leaning on the fifth of the key, which is why the line tips forward into the C.
The answering phrase stays on the tonic, 1, 9, b3, 5 over the bare C-and-D ring, and the word get falls to a low Bb as the Bb dyad arrives, root meeting root.
None of these chords is complete: the triads are assembled between voice, guitar, and bass, one note each, and bar 25 spells G minor exactly that way, bass G under guitar Bb and D.
favorite momentThe guitar reduced to two notes a phrase, so the first sung climb has nothing to hide behind.
Verse staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 17-24). Lyric follows the cleaned lyric map; whisper hears the 0:30 line as I know that you're sad, I start to forget it, and the trailing it fits the captured note count, so it stays. The vocal staff carries the engraved lyric under the notes and the interval label over each note; guitar and bass carry rendered tab staves (bass tab is 4-string EADG).
C minor · build, bars 26-29 · the voice doubles itself at the octave and the lead plants the flat six
Third phrase in, the voice doubles itself at the octave, both voices on the same degrees, and the band moves to bare power chords, G5 (v), C5 (i), Bb5 (bVII).
The lyric runs I know the desire and the rest and every syllable's number is printed over a two-headed notehead: b6, b6, then b3, 4, 5, b6, then 1, 9.
The lead guitar enters here with a counter-line whose first job is planting Ab: it strikes the b6 over G5, then the b6 over C5, the same flat six the voice keeps peaking on, seeded over two different roots.
The power chords have no thirds, so the sung b3 over C5 is the only minor third in the room, the voice supplying the color the guitars withhold.
The bass pushes a passing Bb into every chord change, the same push that runs the intro.
favorite momentThe lead's first full phrase seeds the flat six over G and then over C, the song's destination planted twice in two bars.
Build staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 26-29): vocal (octave dyads carry one label, both heads sing the same degree), lead guitar with rendered tab, rhythm guitar with rendered tab, bass with rendered 4-string tab.
C minor · chorus, bars 34-38 · the held Ab is renamed from flat six to root under a still voice
The chorus is the verse climb lifted an octave and pointed at a moving floor.
Over Cm7 (i7) the line walks b3, 4, 5 up to Ab, the flat six leaning on the tonic seventh.
The band then changes to Ab over C (bVI) underneath the held note, and the same pitch is renamed from b6 to 1 with the voice standing still.
That is the engine of the song: the melody parks on the flat six and the harmony walks over to make it home.
The tail of the phrase spends the thorn: across the Ab bars the guitar hoists a D, the sharp four, into the chord itself, and the voice answers on D for I, could, and the tail of watching you.
The 9 and the #4, Bb and D over Ab, keep the hook leaning through every repeat.
favorite momentThe held Ab across the barline at bars 35-36, a flat six that becomes the root while the voice stands still.
Chorus staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 34-38). Same-pitch re-strikes at the barline are tied where the audio holds the vowel, per the capture's chord-boundary splits; rhythms are the captured eighth grid. Lyric from the lyric map with whisper stamps near 0:56; each syllable gets its own note and ing you shares the final D.
C minor · verse 2, bars 52-57 · the guitar answers the vocal line with its own notes
The second verse strips further, and the guitar starts answering the singer.
At bar 52 the voice climbs Eb, F, G, Ab and the guitar picks Eb, G, D, C in the same bar, a single-note shadow of the line, contour traded between them.
The Ab trick from the chorus happens inside the accompaniment now: the voice reaches C at bar 53 and the guitar slides an Ab under it, the same two-note relationship turned over.
Leave it up, leave it down runs 1, 1, 9, b3, 5 over the C floor, and the pushed D on up is the ninth leaning against a bare tonic.
Bar 56 is the first time any single instrument holds the full tonic triad, G, C, Eb, G in the guitar, deep in the second half of the song.
One bar later the guitar plays a full five-note Bb major as down arrives on the root, the fattest chord on the page under the plainest note in the line.
favorite momentBar 52: the guitar echoing the vocal climb in single notes inside the same bar.
Verse 2 staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 52-57). Lyric follows the lyric map's verse lines; whisper stamps the phrase at 1:36. The lead guitar interjects a lone D5 at bar 56 and a low Eb at 57 in the capture; both stay off the staff and are noted here.
C minor · peak, bars 66-70 · the climb inverted, the maj7 rub, and the held Bb top
The loudest passage is the climb turned upside down.
The voice, octave-doubled again, starts on Ab and walks down, 1, 7, 13, 5 against the Ab chord (bVI), singing the fear will have to run.
The rhythm guitar chews the same rub in eighths, rocking between Ab and G inside an Eb frame, the root and its major seventh trading places every beat.
Bar 66 assembles the only full Ab major seventh in the song, bass Ab under a C minor stack in the guitar, one chord spelled by two instruments.
Then the phrase turns: cause strikes Ab over C minor, the flat six leaning on the tonic one last time, and strong takes Bb and holds it for a bar and a half.
That held Bb is the highest note sung in the song and the longest, the root of the flat seven (bVII), and the bass walks C, D, Bb up into it to meet the chord.
favorite momentThe held Bb4 at bars 69-70, highest and longest sung note in the track, arriving as the root of Bb while the bass climbs into it.
Peak staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 66-70). The bass plays an octave higher here than in the intro, Ab2 against the opening G1 floor. Lyric from the whisper transcript at 2:03; the lyric map leaves this line incomplete, so the whisper line stands.
C minor · final chorus, bars 85-88 · the one dominant, Bb7, resolves to the relative major
The doubling is gone, one voice again, and the one dominant in the song arrives under it.
I could be watching you runs #4, #4, 3, 9, #4 over the Ab-with-D stack, the thorn chord now fully voiced in the guitar.
Then you arrives on D as the chord turns Bb7 (bVII7), so the same pitch is renamed from sharp four to major third, and he holds it six eighths, the longest note in either chorus.
Bb7 is the only chord in the track with both a major third and a seventh, and at bar 88 it resolves to Eb over Bb (bIII), the relative major, never to C minor (i).
It's keeping me away reads 1, 4, 4, 5, 13, 4 against the dominant, the words hanging on suspended colors as the resolution arrives with no voice on it.
The last thing he sings, three bars on, is G, C, D over the Ab stack, a major seven, a three, and the thorn, and the closing D never resolves.
favorite momentThe held D at bar 86: sharp four over Ab on one side of the barline, major third of Bb7 on the other, one pitch relabeled twice in two bars.
Final-chorus staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 85-88). Lyric follows the map's second-occurrence lines with whisper stamps at 2:13 and 2:40. The closing G, C, D phrase is at bar 91 in the capture and is described in the text; the staves stop at the Eb-over-Bb resolution.
C minor · decline, bars 92-96 · the thorn rings, one B natural passes in the bass, no C at the end
The voice is gone and the guitars keep the thorn chord ringing, C, Eb, Ab, D as one stack over a C floor.
The lead guitar walks the resolution the singer refused: a whole-note D, the sharp four, then up to Eb, the root of the closing color, then the same Eb an octave higher.
Under the second bar the bass slips C, B natural, G, and that B is the only leading tone in the entire capture, one passing eighth-note pair on the way down to G.
The last sonority in the file is Eb and G in two guitars, no bass, no C, the relative major's shell with the tonic missing.
The song spends its whole length refusing to close, and it ends inside the one chord it kept borrowing from.
favorite momentOne B natural in four tracks of MIDI, buried in a passing bass move at bar 93, the song's entire supply of leading tone.
Decline staves from the multitrack capture (multitrack.mid, bars 92-96). The vocal staff rests, marked tacet, the voice leaves at bar 91. The B natural in the bass is printed with its natural sign.