“The Good Wife”

The printed music for “The Good Wife” is sold as an individual transcription. According to Billy McLaughlin, “The Good Wife” was an experiment in unison melody notes and the effect that arises when you push one of these notes out of tune. There is a doubling of the melody throughout most of this piece. Usually we achieve tension in music through harmony-dominant seventh chords, anything that’s got a sort of pull toward a sense of resolution. In this song I was trying to get some of that to happen just in the melody by itself. It’s all in the left hand. There is just a single push and release for each note. It’s sort of a natural chorusing effect-you get that shifting while it’s out of tune and when it arrives back in tune it’s like a settling of tension. None of the harmony notes are pushed out of tune so you get this nice effect where the melody gains a more fluid quality-almost as if there is another instrument doing that.” This transcription was developed from the audio recording Fingerdance (Narada, 1996, ND 61058). McLaughlin has also recorded “The Good Wife” on his independent release, The Archery of Guitar (Proton Discs, 1993, WCM-102).