I See You
Bad Pollyanna

Using Bad Pollyanna’s creative work seems a natural starting point for this learning exercise for me. It was after all Olivia that introduced me to singing and kick started my musical adventures.

This beautiful song, from the Broken Toys Album,  is something of an anthem for Bad Pollyanna fans. I feel that is builds naturally upon the conveyed humanity of their prior work, ‘Invincible Girl’.

A big thank you to Liv for permission to use and share this interpretation of Bad Pollyanna’s creative work.

The starting point for my learning project was to repeatedly listen to the song, study the lyrics and their emotive interpretation. 

I watched the official video and the raw live performance videos repetitively. From this point I determined the songs key, the tempo and my guess at the chord progression. This of course being my opinion, rather than concrete knowledge.

Song Lyrics and Structure

Intro (instrumental)

Verse

Are you there?

Can you hear me?

I am thinking of you

Are you hurt?

Are you lonely?

Hope my words get through

Pre-Chorus

Did you know nobody’s perfect?

We all fall down

See into the heart of you now

Chorus

When you are lost, I will find you

Through the dark, I can see you

And you are loved, you are worthy

Cannot hide all the beauty

I can see you

Verse

Show me weak

Show me helpless

Show me something that’s real

Don’t be strong

Be defenceless

Know you can lean on me

Pre-Chorus-2

When you go to places that scare you

And it all falls down

Look into the heart of me now

{ Chorus }

Bridge

Let me put my cards on the table

I’ve been where you are

I’ll never see the stain of a label

Or a scar

You need to know that i wont reject you

Let’s unbreak your heart

You are not the voices that shame you

{ Chorus }

Transcribing

My first step in the transcription, in 2018, was to try to capture the chord progression.

This enabled strumming along on the acoustic guitar and even joining in with the singing albeit at least one octave lower!  In practice I played the C Major  chords with my Capo at the guitar’s fourth fret. 

Later I realised that whilst my strumming pattern was significantly different from the original that it adds honesty to my cover using the skills that I possess.

Transposing for Sax

My next step in transcription was targeting playing the melody on Alto Sax.  As this is a transposing instrument, with a home key of Eb, transcribing from Bad Pollyanna’s original key of E would result in the key of C# – seven sharps! That’s way beyond my novice saxophonist skills!

Another musical friend, Laura Morrell, suggested raising the key a semitone to F. Using concert key of F for the accompaniment parts would transcribe to the key of D on the Sax and the seven sharps will become two. That’s the deal!

The plan then is to listen and transcribe in E, then to transpose to concert key F including the Alto Sax part in D.  The transcriptions will then be captured in Musescore 4.

Then the song will be rearranged to include drums, Bass Guitar, Guitar and Sax.  I may add a Yamaha DX7 synth emulation for the Intro and Outro sections. This version will then be recorded in Cockos Reaper using direct recording for Bass and Rhythm guitar (and synth) parts. Drums will be provided by EZDrummer 3. The Meanwhile the Sax audio will be captured via the condenser microphone.

Given competing activities I aim to complete this by 2026.