The middle eight, a component of songwriting I really love, is sometimes referred to as being a "meanwhile, back at the ranch" moment for a piece of music. The song has established a structure by this point, and we've followed that for a pleasant few minutes. We know the verses and we know the chorus. We know what to expect in general - or we think we do. And then, suddenly we're somewhere else. Choirs. Angels. Elvis is drying the tears from our eyes. A familiar theme, but now it's strange and inverted. Slowed, sped up, twisted in on itself. Meanwhile? Oh yes, this is what's happening back at the ranch.
I love this description of middle eights almost as much as I love a good middle eight by itself. I love it because it suggests that a song is a journey, that as we listen to it unfold we are covering ground alongside it, within it. And when the middle eight arrives, the ground we're covering shifts and we get a bit of a surprise.
Not every song has a middle eight, and not every song needs one. But I thought of them often when playing Rytmos, a game in which each piece of music is a path that you draw across the landscape. These paths are mazes, really. Often, these mazes take the form of figure eights, which is a nice bit of accidental harmony, I reckon. The "eight" itself isn't important though. What is important - or what feels important when I'm in the grips of this magical, transporting, mind-expanding game - is the loops in the figure eight. It's the fact that the song starts somewhere and ends up back where it started - but it arrives back at the start from an unexpected direction.