I Wish - Stevie Wonder, arranged for four cellos
I Wish, from Stevie Wonder’s seminal Songs in the Key of Life album, seems a pretty simple ii-V vamp on the surface, but after watching a breakdown on @devinebass it seemed like there was a bit more going on, and I hadn’t done a jazzy cello ensemble number so I dug a little deeper.
The bridge progression – in the original key of Eb this is Bb9, C sus4, Fm, Abm6 – does a couple of really cool things. Firstly, it lifts the song by effectively modulating up a tone, through a pivot chord (Bb major) rather than landing directly on the tonic of the new key of F minor. The actual clever bit, though, is the Abm6, which turns a fairly simple VI-V-i progression into a slinky little circle with some great chromatic voice-leading – Fm7 to Abm6 is actually only one note different, firstly (the C goes to a Cb), and secondly, the Abm6 resolves incredibly neatly but somewhat unconventionally down to the Bb9 chord (the Eb and Cb go down a semitone and the bass rises by a tone to Ab, while the F stays put). That circle could go around forever, but the second time Stevie goes straight to the Bb (with some sweet extensions) from the F minor, creating a perfect cadence that lifts the song again, even while modulating back down again. Escher would be impressed.
Eb dorian would be a mad key for cello, so I’ve moved it to A dorian (putting the bridge in B minor). I’ve kept lots of my favourite bits from the original recording – lots of Stevie’s layer keyboard licks, the absolutely brilliant horn counterpoint over the bridge, the descending semiquaver “sigh” that appears both in the vocal and in the keyboard, and even some of the bass pumps. But I’ve also added in some fun chromatic harmonies, using rudiments of mechanical voicing, and some jazzy licks. Stick around for the final chord – over an A pedal split across two parts I move from an Ab7 to an F# major.