Hi everybody; thank you so much for tuning in!

For those watching for the first time, my name is Dan

Pardo. I am a NY-based music director, arranger, and pianist, and this is Pardo's Turn, my new web
series where I do a bit of song analysis from a music director's point of view, and perhaps shed a little
light on what makes the gems of our musical theater canon so great.

I was so excited to have the incredible Chuck Cooper on last week to discuss Ol' Man River – if you
haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend checking it out – and I am equally thrilled to have my friend
and colleague, three-time Drama Desk Nominee, Nancy Anderson on today to discuss the Irving Berlin
standard, What'll I Do? Nancy was last seen on Broadway in Sunset Boulevard, in addition to having
roles in A Class Act and Wonderful Town. She has starred Off-Broadway and in the West End, and in
regional productions from coast to coast. Nancy is also a master of the early American Songbook,
having won the prestigious Noel Coward competition, which is why I am so happy she chose this
classic, first performed by Grace Moore and John Steel in Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue of 1924.

Set in ¾ time, What'll I Do is a bittersweet waltz with a melody so enchanting that it probably even felt
nostalgic when it first premiered. Let's first take a look at the verse, which I think is really smartly
written. The first A section rises and falls, with a few playful skips back and forth before landing in an
augmented half-cadence [snippet]. Now any other composer would've probably just repeated those
same 8 bars, with maybe a slight change at the end [snippet]. But not Irving Berlin; that's not how the
song goes. He starts off the same way, but then suddenly modulates into the mediant key of E major
before elegantly slipping back to C right before the chorus. [snippet] That's certainly cool, but why
does he do that? Let's look at the lyrics, also written – as always – by Berlin. “You must go your way
and I must go mine” – or in other words, “That is your key, this is my key; from now on, we have to
live in separate worlds.” It's just brilliant.

The chorus, which bookends each line with the title phrase, alternates back and forth from the major
tonic to this particularly juicy chord [Play Dm7(b5)], borrowed from the minor mode. That's the
parallel minor, not the relative minor. Ok... quick theory side bar! Relative keys have the same key
signature, or the same set of notes, but opposite modes, based on what the tonic, or tonal home base is.
So the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G can either be A minor or C major, depending on where you start.
[scale snippet, with graphic 1] Conversely, parallel keys have different key signatures, or different sets
of notes, but with the same tonal center, like C major and C minor [scale snippet, with graphic 2].
Think of it as the musical equivalent of “The Upside Down” from Stranger Things [graphic 3]. It's kind
of the same, but a little darker. The technique of mode mixture, which Irving Berlin uses here heavily,
is when the chords a composer chooses are not only inherent to the key of the major song [play diatonic
chords, in C], but from the parallel minor as well [play diatonic chords, in Cm]. So in the context of
What'll I Do, instead of just using a plain ol' D minor chord and an F major chord [play 4-bar snippet],
you have the Dm7(b5) or Fm6, reinforced by the chromatic Ab in the melody. In the B section of the
chorus, the melody is taken up a fourth, and really engages in the mode mixture, harmonizing the first
syllable of 'photograph' with a D minor chord, then flats that A before going back to the last phrase.

That's all a long way of saying that there's something special about that chord. It perfectly captures the
feeling of the song, that feeling of when you have to give something up, or let someone go, and you
only have a lingering memory of what made it all so remarkable. Pair that harmonic language with the
indulgent combination of half notes and triplets [demo] and you have a recipe for a song that will still
make a lasting impact, over 90 years later. Now enough of me, let's get to Nancy!

Hi Nancy! Thank you so much for coming on Pardo's Turn! (Hi! Bullshit, bullshit) I've always liked
What'll I Do, but never did a deep dive into it. It's not a terribly dense or heavy song, but it's really
intelligently written, and accomplishes exactly what it set out to do. What made you pick it?

(talk, talk, laugh, talk, bullshit, bullshit). Great. Let's sing it! (Nancy fucking kills the song)

Thank you so much, Nancy; you're the best. Are you working on anything now that you'd like to plug?
Or anything that you or Ethan have down the pipeline? That's her talented husband Ethan McSweeney,
who just won a Helen Hayes award in DC.

Terrific. Well, I'd like to give a quick shout out to my wife, Chrissy, who shoots and edits the web series
with me. So thank you, Honey, and thank you all for watching! Please like, comment, subscribe, and
share! And again, Nancy, it's been an absolute pleasure.