Musical Structure
Pedler quotes McCartney as describing this as a "beautiful melody," and claims this may be because of the unusual tritone intervals, the background static harmony of the harmonium drone, South-Indian drum rhythm and Eastern-sounding flute, which are far removed from usual 'pop tunes'. The song opens with a E♭ drone (setting up the E♭ tonic (I) key) played by Rijram Desad on the harmonium, Aashish Khan then enters at 4/4 time on the sarod, Mahapurush Misra drumming on the pakhawaj, and Hanuman Jadev on the shehnai. Khan plays the sarod like an acoustic guitar: staccato-style in the upper register and without bending of notes. Misra drums loudly on the pakhawaj in the style of a tavil barrel drum and Jadev plays the shehnai like a double-reed nagaswaram. These unusual playing styles and the absence from this song of the sitar, tabla and tamboura (that gave a North-Indian feel to Harrison's earlier Indian music forays in "Love You To" and "Within You Without You"), place this music more in the South Indian Karnatak temple music tradition.
After the opening instrumental by sarod, shehnai, pakhawaj, the harmonium drones E♭ while Harrison sings the opening lines ("Without going out of my door") accompanied by Hariprasad Chaurasia on flute and Aasish Khan on sarod. Harrison's opening phrase "Without going out" sung against the tonic (I) E♭ chord utilises a "hauntingly modal" G-B♭-D♭ tritone progression as the 3rd heads towards the ♭7th. Everett considers that this Mixolydian ascending arpeggiation of the diminished triad (ga-pa-ni, the Indian equivalent of mi-sol-te) resembles that used in "Within You, Without You" ("We were talking"). The harmonium then shifts between E♭ and F (for example Fm7/E♭ 'slash' chord on "door") with a passing A♭ on "the farther one travels the less one knows." The song is thus an example of creating ambiguity about the tonic (I) key that became such a subtly meaningful technique in Harrison's spiritually-oriented songwriting.
Read more about this topic: The Inner Light (song)
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