In “Over the Rainbow,” the melody begins with one of the largest leaps we’ve ever experienced in a lifetime of music listening: an octave. This is a strong schematic violation, and so the composer rewards and soothes us by bringing the melody back toward home again, but not by too much—he does come down, but only by one scale degree—because he wants to continue to build tension. The third note of this melody fills the gap. Sting does the same thing in “Roxanne”: He leaps up an interval of roughly a half octave (a perfect fourth) to hit the first syllable of the word Roxanne, and then comes
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