Composition
"Ceremony" is a mid-tempo uplifting rock song in the key of C major. The song contains two implied chords, C major and F major, shown through the driving bassline. The song does not contain any keyboards, which became a common staple in Joy Division's later sound, and New Order's eventual sound. The song, in its original recording, featured a faster tempo than that of the September re-record, as well as clearer production and a more processed guitar tone. "Ceremony" utilises quiet-loud dynamics and artificial reverb to give the song its trademark flowing atmosphere. Interestingly, the song reverts to its quieter stage for the guitar solo, a practise carried over to New Order by Bernard Sumner.
The song was composed when the band were still Joy Division, with Ian Curtis providing the vocal melody and the second chorus. Sumner and Peter Hook rewrote the lyrics for the first verse and chorus when Curtis's original lyrics could not be found.​Bernard tried unsuccessfully to boost Curtis's vocals in a badly recorded home demo. The attempt to uncover the lyrics at this point was used to record the original demo of "Ceremony", featuring Stephen Morris on vocals, as part of the band's Western Works Demo, 7 September 1980.
Read more about this topic: Ceremony (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (18741946)
“If I dont write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing ... I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)
“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)