Composition
"Oceans" was performed in open D tuning. The song is musically and texturally different from the rest of the album. Ament said, "When we were picking songs for Ten we thought it was important to pick the weirder moments, like "Oceans", because we wanted to be able to explore those areas down the line."
Gossard on the song:
I love "Oceans". That probably sums up why I get excited about song writing. It's like open D tuning where the first chord's just straight across and it's just two fingers that come on and off to create the whole thing and then it moves down one position and it moves back up. It has a tiny little change in it but it's also got three big movements. What I love about music is aesthetic chords; the simpler the better and then another set that does something to those original chords. It's a really simple arrangement.
Read more about this topic: Oceans (Pearl Jam Song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)