I read in the liner notes to Zombie Heaven that the first part of "Imagine the Swan" is just arpeggiated chords like in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. So I just sat down and figured them out. The first two chords are F major and G minor, and I think the rest of the song is in the key of F major.
I just tried out a thing with the bass part of "This Will Be Our Year" where I jump octaves after every other note. I'm pretty sure that Jim Rodford plays it this way on the Live at Metropolis Studios album (I'd have to watch the DVD to be absolutely certain), but I think on the original record, it's just a straight descending chromatic phrase.
Still, I quite like the alternating octave version, and - while I'd have to do a bit of looking to find which ones - I think that sort of octave-jumping descending chromatic figure is in some of the organ works I have by Bach and/or Mendelssohn. (Incidentally, the versions I have were recorded by Peter Hurford, who was the choirmaster at the St Albans Cathedral Choir while Rod Argent was a choirboy there.)
I learned a rough version of the organ part from "Beechwood Park." Very rough, in fact.
I'm not sure whether it's the organ part or the guitar chords, but something's wrong during the "and the breeze would touch your hair / kiss your face and make you care" part. I played a B major on guitar and an E note on the organ, and they don't go to-gether.
I've been focusing on learning songs from Odessey and Oracle lately, so when I listened to it this morning, I was paying more attention than usual. And I noticed some things. (It's a bit weird to me that there are still things I'm only just now discovering about it.)
The piano figure that occurs near the end of "Care of Cell 44" is musically foreshadowed by the a cappella parts earlier in the song. They're the same notes; it's just that one is multi-tracked voices and the other is on piano.
The final G in the first bass riff in "I Want Her She Wants Me" is an octave lower than the rest, which is not the way I'd been playing it.
In "This Will Be Our Year," the chord progression goes from D minor to D major at the same time as the proclamation of love. "And I won't forget the way you said [minor to major modulation] 'Darling, I love you.'" It gives it more emphasis.
I'd been suspicious of this, but I'm now pretty sure that the guitar solo on "Friends of Mine" is double-tracked. In the stereo version, you can hear how one comes in just a little bit later than the other when it's repeated.
"A Rose for Emily" and "Butcher's Tale" contain the same three-note phrase: F E D. Those sorts of musical phrases appearing in multiple songs may provide the album with some coherence. (But I don't want to emphasize that too much - I don't know whether Rod Argent and Chris White consciously thought of that, whether it just illustrates musical sensibilities that they liked and unknowingly used frequently, or whether it's just a coincidence that these songs have similar musical features.) Additionally, "Time of the Season" has a three-note falling phrase, but that's E D C. And an-other similar feature is a bass part centered around two A's an octave apart, which occurs in "Care of Cell 44" (where they're separated by an E) and "Brief Candles" (where it's just an octave jump).
This is just the middle part - what I've been working on for a few days.
I'm really unsure about this one. It doesn't sound wrong, but it also doesn't sound right. Maybe it's just because the original has a tack piano or maybe Rod Argent played the chords with different inversions than I did.
I figured out a bit more of "Butcher's Tale." I can't figure out how to play the whole thing at once, so I just overdubbed the three-note bass part. It feels like the whole legitimacy of the song is ruined when it comes to a part without that three-note figure though. Because I don't know the parts that go there instead.
Musically, the song is made by the staccato chords' and the bass part's complementing each other.
Since I figured out (at least something close to) the mellotron part for the middle of "Care of Cell 44," I'm trying to learn the piano part underneath it.
I have something that sounds close to being right: G Adom7 Cm G / G Adom7 Cm Dsus4 D. Playing around with this, I've noticed that these chords (except for the final D) all contain G, which is the note that the bass plays during this whole part. And because this same sort of thing is done in "This Will Be Out Year," it provides further credence for what I've come up with. (Except for how they were written by two different people.)
I figured out some of the opening piano part for "Hung up on a Dream." I'm still missing about half of the notes, but even playing this much was difficult.
I'll probably end up having to record parts of piano tracks and then combine them to get the full part because I'm just a mediocre keyboard player and Rod Argent is prodigious.
I tried doing some of the vocals for "I Don't Want to Know," and they actually turned out pretty good. (Not as good as the original though, obviously.)
I had a lot of fun overdubbing my voice multiple times. I double-tracked the lead vocals and triple-tracked the backing vocals. The guitar is also double-tracked - I re-recorded it just on six-string, but it didn't sound too good, so I imported the twelve-string version I recorded on the 18th. Since I record most of the VCP demos while listening to the original backing tracks, the tempi match.
Recently, I've been playing twelve-string guitar more, and since the only twelve-string guitar songs I know are songs by the Zombies, I've been playing those a lot more.
This morning, I figured out the solo for "I Don't Want to Know."
I still think the chords are broken up into arpeggios, but I'm not sure what those are yet, so I just played them straight.
Also, I've figured out how to play the main riff in a way that doesn't leave the A string vibrating for too long, which I discovered was an issue last time I posted a version.
And there's quite a bit of fret buzz at the very end because I'm still not very good at twelve-string guitar.
After "I Want Her She Wants Me," I thought I would be done with this for a while, but I was practising some of the other songs I know in a playlist with the shuffle feature on, and "She Loves The Way They Love Her" came on.
Way back in summer 2011, I learned most of this, but then I found two different spots where I wasn't exactly accurate (I should note that the version on Into the Afterlife has a slightly different bass part.) Figuring it out has sort of been on hiatus for the past year or so. But I knew so much of it that I had to figure out the rest. So I did.
I'm posting this under "miscellaneous" in the catalogue because - while it was released on Colin Blunstone's One Year album (which is the version I used for this) - there are also versions from the nebulous post-Zombies phase.
I think I learned the piano part for the introduction and first verse of "Remember You." I'm not sure if it's just the way I play it or if I figured it out wrong, it sounds a bit weird during the "and if I should change my mind" part. I think the bass moves to F#, so maybe that B chord is inverted.
Also, I've figured out the opening guitar part.
(Possibly) fun fact: this is one of only two songs released during the Zombies' time at Decca where Rod Argent uses piano (the other is "She's Coming Home"). All of the other songs were either not released until later ("If It Don't Work Out," "Don't Cry for Me," "I'll Call You Mine"), feature electric piano or organ, or had piano playing by Ken Jones ("Work 'N' Play").
Along with learning some of the piano part for "Care of Cell 44" came learning some of the guitar chords. This is just the first minute or so.
I'm pretty sure that the part after this (the "feels so good you're coming home soon" part) uses the same chords, but I'm not sure enough to actually do it.
And past the "we'll walk in the way we used to walk" part, the only thing I know is still just the bass.
I learned a bit of the piano part from "Friends of Mine." After recording this though, the piano chords sound wrong. I just played the same chords that are in the guitar part.
I was mainly focusing on the descending part anyway.
Despite what I said earlier about this blog's being dormant for a few months, I think I've actually been putting more work into this.
Just to-night, I learned the bass part for "I Want Her She Wants Me," which means I know at least one (rough [sometimes very rough]) instrument part for every song on Odessey and Oracle.
I would post that to-morrow, but I've been learning other stuff too, and I feel I should post them in the order I learned them. So it'll be a few days before I get to "I Want Her She Wants Me."
I figured out about half of this on Saturday (the verses), and I kept playing it, and, by Sunday, I was determined to just learn the rest of it. So I did.
Mostly, this is just the chords. There's a fair bit of other stuff going on in the original that I haven't figured out yet - some of which is in addition to the chords and some of which I've temporarily disregarded in favor of the (much simpler) chords.
Also, this makes "I Want Her She Wants Me" the only song from Odessey and Oracle that I don't know at least a part of.
This is just the bass part of the piano (along with the final Asus4 to A major ending) and the 'cello part. I don't have a 'cello and would have no idea how to even play one, so I used the fake 'cello setting on my keyboard. I would not be averse to learning the actual instrument though (I'd actually prefer that to using the fake one).
I feel I should also mention that this is one of the songs in the book I have that contains sheet music to some of the Zombies' songs. They have the chords listed, and three or four years ago, I learned it on guitar, but I'd like to learn it on the appropriate instrument this time. So I may just use those instead of figuring it out for myself. I did this much on my own though.
In order to drown out the noise of trick or treaters last night, I started playing piano with my headphones plugged in. (I need all the practise I can get as far as piano goes.)
In any case, I learned (albeit roughly) the first part of "Care of Cell 44." The longer it goes on, the less confident I am in its accuracy. I'm pretty sure the opening figure is correct, and I'm fairly certain that the chords are right for the antecedent, but I don't have much confidence at all in the consequent, particularly the part during "hoping you're OK," which is somehow fitting.
I had no way to do this on tack piano (or even a fake tack piano), so regular fake piano was the best I could do.
I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows on Monday, and since then I've been trying to figure out the bass part for "Sanctuary."
I think I have the part during the verses, but the chorus - while only slightly different - is still elusive.
The bass part is more accurate, but I still don't know the little riff.
I also did the guitar and mellotron parts and a bit of the piano at the very end. I'm pretty sure that the mellotron part isn't completely accurate; I was just having fun with it. Still, I did learn that it copies the bass part during the verses.
I also realized that the chords on this are really interesting. For the verses, the first three chords are G, Em, C (though there's an Esus4 thrown in between the G and Em). Each chord has two notes in common with the next chord.
G, B, D > E, G, B
E, G, B > C, E, G
It was only through playing the guitar chords on the keyboard (my fake mellotron) that I realized this. On guitar, constituent notes of a chord are all over the place; on keyboards, they're more organized, so it's easier to see those kinds of chordal relationships.
While listening to the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, I thought the bass part for "Hung up on a Dream" sounded pretty simple, so I sat down, played it a few times, and learned most of it.
I haven't figured out the correct rhythms, so this is just an approximation of them. There's a little riff that comes right before the final verses that I haven't figured out yet, and I may have played the middle part in the wrong octave.
This is my 100th post, and, for the first time, I just listened to the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle, which includes the album in both stereo and mono and bonus tracks. So, monumental post.
Things:
Aside from "This Will Be Our Year" and "Time of the Season," I'd heard Odessey and Oracle only in stereo, and I found that listening to it in mono was the same sort of experience that I had when listening to the Decca Stereo Anthology. Because things were mixed differently, I heard stuff I had never known was there before, which was awesome.
I can understand why Rod Argent didn't include the 'cello part in "A Rose for Emily," but the mellotron part is beautiful! Why wasn't that in the released version?
Related: I love alternate versions. I'd heard that 'cello part via Zombie Heaven, but the mellotron part was new, as was the not-muted backing track on the alternate version of "Time of the Season." I was familiar with parts of those songs, but discovering that there were other parts that I hadn't heard (because they weren't there, not just because I hadn't noticed them)… I don't even know how to describe that. It's sort of like seeing in color after being used to black and white.
I had always thought that there was no guitar in "Care of Cell 44," but there is. This is why I love vocal-less backing tracks - you can hear stuff you missed the other hundreds of times you heard the song.
In general, I noticed that the mono versions seemed to make the vocal parts more pronounced (no pun intended). They were just more noticeable.
As was the harpsichord in "I Want Her She Wants Me." If the mono version had been the version of the album I heard first, it wouldn't have taken me four years to notice the harpsichord.
I don't know whether it was the guitar or the piano, but something in the mono version of "Maybe after He's Gone" made it sound a lot like the stuff the Zombies recorded at Decca.
Anyway, I'm super happy I got this. It's sort of like hearing the album for the first time, but better because I knew what sort of things to listen for.
I felt bad that I knew only part of the bass part for "This Will Be Our Year," so I wanted to figure out the rest of it.
I did make some progress, but I'm having trouble figuring out the bass part right at the key change. After that, it's exactly the same as the first half (except a key higher). This is just the first half.
I think I'm updated with what I know so far (excepting a lot of little bits that I don't think are worth posting versions of), so this blog will probably lie dormant for a few months.
Unless I try to figure out more parts in an effort to procrastinate on my senior seminar project.
I'll re-iterate what I said with the rough version of "Call of the Night," this is a re-working of "Call of the Night," but I consider it different enough to separate the two.
I do mess up once, but this was already the second take, and - unlike the version in A minor - there is no other way to play this but barre chords, which are tiring.
Although, listening to the original, the first Gm chord is much higher than I play it, so maybe there is a way to play it while avoiding barre chords. Something to look into….
I just checked my tag for "Call of the Night," and in that post where I hypothesize (wrongly!) that all suspended chords in Zombies songs are based around A major, I say that the riff in "Call of the Night" is between Asus2 and A major.
It's not. It's A minor and Asus4.
In the rough version I just posted, I played it with barre chords, but it may have been easier to do it with the "normal" version of Am. I just have a tendency to play barre chords because - despite their being harder sometimes - I feel they give a more even sound. I could go into a whole explanation of how barre chords help to fix the uneven distribution of chords' constituent notes (both in position and number) that occurs in standard tuning (which is one reason why I love open D tuning - it doesn't have that problem), but I'll just leave it that.
This was later re-worked into "Girl Help Me," but I think the two are distinct enough to separate them.
"Call of the Night" was recorded by the original Zombies (albeit only as a demo), but "Girl Help Me" was recorded after they broke up and - according to the liner notes in Zombie Heaven - may have featured Argent personnel.
I learned the chords for this last fall. The other parts I've included are just what I was able to figure out in a few minutes after listening to it. I'm pretty sure the riff during the verses is right, but the other one (which is actually the bass part) may be wrong in a few places.
Figuring out this one has an interesting story to it.
I had already learned (what I thought was) the guitar riff and the bass part. The guitar riff I may have known since last year, but I think I learned the bass part sometime this spring.
I went back to listen to it a few days ago, and I realized that the guitar riff isn't what I thought it was. I thought it was just a continuous repetition, but there are two distinct phrases that are juggled. I started wondering what would happen if you played those two alternative riffs at the same time, so I tried doing it, but it didn't sound that interesting.
But then I listened to it again, and I realized that the electric piano plays the alternate riff. So you have the D D F# D G F D C riff and the D D A B C B A F# riff playing simultaneously, but every time, they alternate instruments. (I think it's the instrumentational alternating that makes it interesting.)
And after I recorded this, I panned the electric piano part a bit to the left and the guitar part a bit to the right. Doing that made me realize that Rod Argent employs this same technique at the very end of "Lothlorien" from the band Argent's Ring of Hands album (except that's with guitar and organ).
This hadn't been one of my favorite songs, but now that I see how he used those alternative riffs between two instruments, I like it a great deal more.
Also, I think I messed up in the bass part after the guitar solo. Well, the blank part where the guitar solo should be.
This isn't accurate as far as instrumentation - this should actually be on twelve-string, and the chords are played on piano (though I'll have to check to see if the piano part is more than just chords or not).
I probably could have done the harmonica part - at least the parts that match the guitar parts - but I'm not a very good harmonica player and would probably take all day to get a good take.
I'm not sure if it was really worth it to record this. It's just the guitar part for the second half, which is the same five-note guitar phrase twenty-one times. I also know the very end of the electric piano part.
Also, I'm pretty sure that this guitar part is the earliest thing I ever figured out by the Zombies. I found a notepad dated 21 March 2010 where I wrote down the tab. This was back when I was obsessed with writing out the tabs for everything, which is something I hardly ever do anymore.
And, actually, I may be playing this an octave too low.
I'm dubious about the veracity of this (I can't really think of a way to say that simpler). I'm pretty sure some of these chords aren't supposed to played so plainly; instead there are more distinct guitar lines.
It's more like I played the bass notes as guitar chords. Still, it's a start.
I've made a tiny bit of progress in learning the organ solo from "I Remember When I Loved Her." I used to know only the first three notes, and now I know roughly the first ten. It's not even half of the whole thing, but I'm getting there.
I think I've figured out the mellotron part during the solo in "Hung up on a Dream." I still feel I may be missing something though, but it's possible that that's just because my fake-flute-plus-fake-strings doesn't sound much like a mellotron.
Upon further review, that bit of "Chained" was not the last thing I knew. Somehow, I had totally forgotten about a few other songs. So between those and some other parts I've learned recently, I'll be able to keep this daily for almost an-other week.
That bit of "Chained" was the last thing I knew, so I spent maybe half an hour figuring out some other parts of other songs.
And it just made me think (yet again) how glad I am that I'm doing this project. Because by learning these songs, I'm noticing things that I would not have noticed otherwise. And I'm pretty sure it's making me a better musician, too.
This is just the first few seconds. Usually, I record these while listening to the original recording, so the tempi are the same, but I can't play this that fast yet.
Some of the guitar parts from Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek." It does get more complex than the D A C repetition, but I haven't figured that out yet. The other part is just a quotation of "Dies Irae," an allusion that I figured out at the beginning of June.
I've been sort of reluctant to do "the hits" because there are so many other Zombies songs that are just as good or better than the three that are always listed. In any case, here's the bass part for "Time of the Season." I've been working on figuring this out for at least a year, so I'm pretty sure of it. The only thing I may have wrong is a few notes during the solos.
It does seem to just kind of break off at some points, but that's when the organ comes in.
This comes with the usual disclaimers - I'm pretty sure I have some notes in the solo wrong and I'm not sure if the chords are broken up or not. Also, I'm missing some notes at the end.
I remember reading an article about the Zombies that said something about "distantly related chords" in "You Make Me Feel Good," which was sort of hilarious because the chords in "You Make Me Feel Good" are pretty standard. It's mostly just the tonic, sub-dominant, and dominant chords in E major - which are the basis of nearly every three-chord song. The only weird thing is the G# major, but even that still fits in the E major scale - it's a chord built on the major third.
But "I'll Call You Mine"… Now that has weird chords. So much so that I'm still questioning whether I have them right. The chorus is pretty standard fare - G Em D C. But the verses! I think it's something like G E F D (which is what I play).
It seems weird to me that there are chords so close together yet none of them are minor. Or even built on accidentals. I would say that this is in G major, but the F major chord conflicts with that because the F has a sharp in the G major scale. So….
Also, I play the piano riff (or most of it) on guitar because I don't know it that well on piano yet.. Also because playing it on guitar is simpler (I don't need to play so many notes, most of which I don't know yet).
In recording incomplete versions of all of these songs, I've remembered that I also know the bass part for "Conversation off Floral Street." However, I'm not going to post it until I learn an-other part of the song because otherwise, it's nearly three minutes of only three different notes, and it would be really boring - not only to listen to, but also to play.
Mostly, it's a continual repetition of C Bb F, but at one point, it's just a constant stream of Cs. No pun intended.
This may be the song that I know the most parts for, which is sort of ironic because this wasn't written by the Zombies.
The organ part is more complex than I play it, but I discovered its complexity only a few months ago (when I got The Decca Stereo Anthology), and I haven't tried learning it more completely since then.
Also, can I just mention how great that descending chromatic bass line is? I think it's supposed to represent the "footsteps sound[ing] down the hall."
I have a version of "Maybe after He's Gone" that I recorded in October of 2011, so this is an-other one that's long overdue.
This ends a bit abruptly because the end is just voices and I recorded just the instrument parts. Or at least what I know of the instrument parts. I may be missing a bit of piano (and I'm not entirely sure that what I have is correct); I haven't started learning the bass yet (although I'm pretty sure that it follows the same bass notes as the guitar finger-picking); and I'm totally clueless when it comes to percussion.
Along with the chords for "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," I also learned the chords for Colin Blunstone's "Pay Me Later" on Wednesday. Though, again, I'm not sure if they're actually played in the original recording.
Catching up on posting demos of what I know isn't going so quickly because I keep learning new parts, and I feel that those should take precedence.
After doing the guitar parts for "It Never Fails to Please Me" yester-day, I got thinking about the Into the Afterlife album. Back in November, I had apparently figured out the bass part for "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," but I don't really remember it and I didn't record a version.
But I think I figured out the chords for it. I'm pretty sure these aren't actually played in the original version, but I find that it helps to figure out the parts if you know the chords.
It's interesting that the verses and the chorus use the same chord progression - just different melodies - but that doesn't make this any more interesting to listen to.
This is just the guitar parts (and a few notes of the bass part), and since most of the guitar parts are chromatic and sort of sparse, it's rather disjointed listening to them on their own.
This is an-other one that fades out at the end, so I had to extend one phrase for a few notes.
Furthermore, this has necessitated a new "miscellaneous" section in the catalogue, since this was recorded in the nebulous period between the Zombies and Argent.
I'm pretty sure the chords are broken into arpeggios during the "And as you've waited for me" part, but I'm still a bit unsure of how they are broken up, so I just play them straight. Or attempt to. Barre chords on twelve string guitar are still really difficult for me, but it's necessary to play some of these chords that way. Like Gm.
I've been working on the bass part for this too, but there are still a few parts I'm unsure of, so I've held off on that for now.
I have a list of what songs I have left to do rough versions of, and I realized that "Beechwood Park" wasn't on there. I hadn't listed it because I didn't know all of the guitar parts. The only chords I knew was the transition from Bsus4 to B.
So I felt bad about that and figured them out last night. I think they're correct, but I'm a bit suspicious of the F major I put in here.
A few other things:
This is the first time I've really used any effects.
I have four versions of this that I listened to in order to learn it, and it's interesting how much the song changes between each of them. It's also interesting that for a song written in 1967, the first performance was in 2006 (according to the Live at the Bloomsbury DVD).
This ends a bit abruptly, but on the original record, the organ and voices are the only things at the very end.
I finally got around to updating what I know of "Brief Candles." I had a few parts in the bass wrong, and the guitar part was in the wrong octave.
A few months ago, I did some work on the piano part. I know that it's mostly centered around the first five notes of the E major scale, but I don't know it that well (I haven't practised it, and I'm not even sure if I ever figured out the whole melody) and I certainly don't know the accompaniment. I didn't include it here, which is why this starts at the beginning of the first chorus and why there are a lot of empty places.
Also, I'm not sure if I have all of the bass part for the very end. It fades out, so it's a bit hard to hear. Though, like the piano part, I haven't done any work lately on figuring that out either.
I've been listening to Argent's Nexus every Friday since April, and I started playing along to "A Man for All Reasons" when I listened to it to-day. I figured out most of the bass part just by doing that, and, after an-other three or four listens, I had the whole thing.
I do make some mistakes (because some parts are a bit difficult to play - jumping between the lowest and highest strings, for example) and I'm pretty sure I have some of the rhythms wrong, but I just learned it to-day.
I can't take complete credit for learning this one. About five years ago, I got a copy of a book published by the Alfred Company that has some music for the Zombies' songs, and I learned this from that about three or four years ago.
I learned this from the demo, so it's slower and slightly different from the version that appears on New World. Also, I had to extend it a bit at the end because even the demo ends in a fade out, and I'm against fade outs and refuse to use them.
I hit quite a few bad notes in here because, while this isn't really difficult to play, it's difficult to play well.
Also, in learning this, I've noticed that there seem to be two different endings. In one, the final guitar strum occurs after the last lyrics, and in the other, they occur at the same time.
Until yester-day, I didn't know any songs from Colin Blunstone's solo albums (aside from a bit of "Though You Are Far Away"), so I decided to learn the chords for one of them. I figured that "Andorra" would be pretty easy, and, for the most part, it was. The only difficult thing to figure out was a weird B7 in the chorus. Usually, a B7 will retain a B as the root, but this one doesn't (assuming that I'm playing it correctly).
I only started putting serious effort into learning "I Don't Want to Know" a few days ago, so this may be a bit rougher than most.
For instance: I need to find a new way to play the riff because otherwise the A note sustains for too long. I don't know the solo yet, so there's a sonic dead spot in the middle of this. And I'm not sure if the chords are played straight or broken up into arpeggios or something. I'll have to listen to the Decca Stereo Anthology version.
Also, to-day marks the tenth day in a row I've done VCP demos!
I still have some more songs from Begin Here that I have to post rough versions of, but I decided to skip ahead to "Friends of Mine" for now.
I tried doing the vocals for this too, but they didn't turn out very well. So either my voice changed or I'm more particular about it because I remember recording a version of this in 2010 (though - sadly - I've since deleted it).
Lately, I've been posting rough versions of a lot of songs from the Begin Here album, and I'm getting close to the point where I can play all of the songs straight through on at least one instrument (although most of them are just the guitar chords), so I thought I would try learning some of the other ones.
So I went back to "I Don't Want to Know," which I figured out the main riff for about a year ago. If I can trust the "date created" for the .txt file I started for it, it was 28 April 2012.
Anyway, in playing through that, I've discovered that - again - Chris White uses the F#m G A D chord progression that he's (apparently) so fond of.
The isolated guitar part of this sounds even weirder than the isolated guitar part of "Sticks and Stones." The opening notes are meant to be played on bass, but I included them anyway.
I'm not sure if I have one of the riffs right either….
Apparently, this is a cover of a song by Gene Vincent (written by Bob Bain), but unfortunately I do not have a version by Gene Vincent, even though I do have his first two albums.
It seems like I've known the bass part for this for a few months, but it's probably closer to a year or more. I also know the first part of the electric piano solo. I learnt it on bass, but it's a lot harder to play on electric piano.
I sort of think that the electric piano solo is in a different key from the bass part because the bass is solidly in E major, but the first notes of the electric piano solo are E, G, A, and Bb. Aside from E, none of those notes are in the E major scale. So something weird is going on there.
Back when the only Zombies album I had was a compilation album called Night Riding, this was my favourite song by them.
After recording this, I found that I had a version of just the bass part that dates from 12 September 2012. So this is long overdue.
I've been working on learning the guitar parts, and The Decca Stereo Anthology has helped somewhat, but the riff is the only guitar part I know so far.
Again, since I mentioned "Sticks and Stones" a few days ago, I felt I should do a version. Because I always play along the recording, I didn't realize how empty this sounds without drums.
This is just the riff and the chords; I don't know the solos yet.
Because I mentioned "Road Runner" a few days ago, I thought I'd record a version of it.
I think the volume peaks a few times, but I had already adjusted the input volume twice and done a few bad takes, so I didn't feel like doing it an-other time.
While listening to The Decca Stereo Anthology two days ago, the bass part for "Remember You" didn't sound very hard. So I sat down last night and figured it out.
It's pretty fun - especially the glissando from C to D and the arpeggios outlining B major and E major.
I already did a rough version of "Remember You" back in March, but I didn't know the bass part then, so I'll have to get around to re-doing that sometime. (Which I'd wanted to do anyway because I know I can do it better than I did.)
I listened to The Decca Stereo Anthology last night. I think it was only the second time I've listened to it since I got it a few months ago. (I'm sort of ashamed I haven't listened to it more.)
In any case, it's a really great resource for trying to learn the parts because it's in stereo. Things that are covered up by other parts when mixed in mono are easier to hear, especially if you listen to it in the dark, like I do frequently.
I learned "Road Runner" to a greater accuracy. I'd known it was mostly a three-chord song with a riff in E, but I found I'd been missing a few notes. I also finally figured out the part at the end (it's the same as a part in "Sticks and Stones," which I suppose makes sense because "Sticks and Stones" is also a three-chord song in E).
I also hadn't realized just how many songs Paul Atkinson uses his twelve-string for. Or how good of a twelve-string player he is.
Most importantly for this project, listening to the album made me realize just how many songs I know (or know parts for) that have not made their appearance here yet. So I'm hoping to rectify that.
I said I wasn't going to post a version of Argent's "Dance in the Smoke" because my voice isn't suited for it, but I am anyway (without vocals though). I know less of the solo than I thought I did.
It's a bit sparse in the "I recall it was too tall / To see the flames grow high" parts but whatever. Also, I'm pretty sure that the chords aren't played on guitar in the original, but I find it helps to figure out the chords before working on specific parts.
I recently figured out the opening guitar part and the chords for Argent's "Dance in the Smoke," and I tried recording a rough version this afternoon, but - like so many other songs - it's one that is not in my range/not suited to my voice.
And since - without vocals - the only interesting part would be the guitar solo (which I know only half of), I'm not going to post a version.
I think I've learned the bass part for "She's Not There." I've known most of the verses and the little riff that bridges the first two verses since the end of June, but then I got stuck.
But I was playing through it to-day, and I think I've figured out the part for the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" parts.
I learned a bit more of the opening organ part from "Rejoice" to-night. I don't know the bass accompaniment for this new part yet, so some of the melody sounds a bit weird. You can kind of hear how I'm hesitant to hit a few notes at the end; I think they're right, but they sound weird without the accompaniment.
I was just playing around on guitar when I discovered the first interval in Argent's "Rejoice," which is actually just an octave. So then I figured out the first phrase.
I'm really excited about this because the opening (and closing) organ part in "Rejoice" is one of my favourite pieces of music.
I was just playing around with guitar chords (because 50/90 starts soon, and I don't really have any ideas), and part of what I played sounded familiar. I figured out it was the first part of "Losing You" from the neglected New World album, so I just figured out the rest.
This definitively defeats my proposition that all suspended chords in the Zombies repertoire revolve around A major, as this includes both Dsus4 and Gsus4. In fact, Dsus4 is the first chord.
I also mess up somewhere, but since this is just the chord progression and is pretty boring just on its own, I didn't particularly feel like going back to re-record it correctly.
While going through and tagging all of the posts with the relevant song titles, I discovered that I'd learned the bass part to Argent's "I Am the Dance of Ages," which I had pretty much completely forgotten about.
The bass part by itself is pretty boring and doesn't sound like much, but here it is anyway!
I just went through all of my posts and tagged the relevant song titles and then linked to those tags in the catalogue. Not only will this make it easier to keep the project up to date (in fact, it removes all work on my part), but it also provides a look at the process of learning the songs.
I was playing bass along with "This Will Be Our Year" yester-day, not particularly trying to play the right notes, but then I realised that I was, and it was super easy.
And then a few hours later, I realised how brilliantly simple the bass part during the verses is. (That's the only part I know for bass so far.) The chords are in A major (I think), but the bass part during the verses is chromatic on the twelve-tone scale! Without those chords, the bass part would sound simple and boring. It's the combination of the two that's brilliant I made a chart:
I belatedly realised that C#m is actually C#, E, G#.
The bass part goes straight from A to E without skipping a single note, but all of the notes that it plays are contained within the chords, so it doesn't sound weird.
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This is just the piano and the bass part for the first half. (I apologise for playing it too quickly. I was excited.) Then it goes into a key change, which I didn't include because I haven't practised it at all. I also do the final piano part, but since I didn't do the key change, it's half a tone too low. Also, it's purposely mixed weird in order to make it easier to hear the twelve-tone chromaticism of the bass part.
A further also: this is the piece that taught me how to roll chords.
I figured out most of the mellotron parts for "Care of Cell 44." The only ones I'm missing are in the bridge. And again, I played them on melodica. (I feel I should admit that it was mostly by watching Darian Sahanaja's hands on the Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert DVD that I learned this.)
This is just the bass part and most of the mellotron parts, so it's a bit empty. I didn't even include the first half of the first verse because there's no bass or mellotron part in it.
Stripping this down to just a few instruments really demonstrates how Rod Argent wrote the parts integrally. During the verses, the bass part is pretty chromatic around the G major scale. It breaks off at F#, but the voices resolve it.
I got an-other microphone to-day, which means I can record in stereo now, so I figured I would try it out. And since the last version I posted of the mellotron part from "Changes" had an error, I thought I would fix it.
I figured out a better way to simulate the mellotron sound, but I didn't bother with that for this. This is just on melodica.
I just made a catalogue of all of the songs that I've done versions or parts of so far, and listing all of those songs made me realise that there are at least fifteen others that I can play at least one part of all the way through that I haven't posted. (And embarrassingly, two of the songs on the list have parts that I've discovered I've played wrong.)
So I'm going to try to work on those. I don't know how much I'm going to get done though because I have only about one month this year where I don't have classes. And since I have other music projects I'd like to work on, those might take precedence.
I figured out the last guitar part for this to-day… sort of. In one particular part, I don't think the precise notes are right (in fact, I'm pretty sure that what I have is wrong), but they're based around G major and A major.
My voice isn't particularly suited to this song, but it's not as bad as some others.
I've known the chords for "A Love That Never Was" for about a year, but I think I've finally figured out the specific notes played within those chords.
This is super rough, and I miss a lot of notes. After all, I just learned it to-day.
Also, even though in a previous post I said that I've encountered suspended chords in Zombies songs only around A majors, I play Esus2 and Esus4 in this. I'm not sure if that's actually in the guitar part, but playing it that way includes the same notes as the "ahs" in the vocal part.
I've been listening to the Zombies everyday since the start of June in an attempt to internalise their music, and - unsurprisingly - I've been learning how to play some parts.
I'm pretty sure I just figured out the chord progression for "You'll Go from Me," which was later reworked into "Don't Go Away." At one point, there's F# G A D F# G A, which is really similar to a section of the bass part in "Brief Candles," which is F# G A D F# G A B.
I learned a few bits of Argent's "The Coming of Kohoutek" earlier, and I figured out a better way to play one of the guitar parts in "It Never Fails to Please Me" from the Into the Afterlife album.
I also realised that the parts I had sort of made up for "I'll Keep Trying" are actually pretty accurate. Since they're probably as accurate as I'm going to get, I'm just going to say I'm done with that. I may record a version of just the guitar part to-morrow. I know the bass part too, but I've already done a version with that, and it hasn't changed.
Two days ago, I learned the first part of the bass part for "Summertime." I figured out the part that goes with the solo this evening, so now I know the whole thing.
KEXP uploaded videos from the Zombies' set at SXSW. I'm not sure whether it was just because I hadn't listened to "I Want You Back Again" for a long time or because I could watch Rod Argent, but it became obvious to me that the chord progression was based on fifths. So I figured it out. It's mostly just C minor and F major.
I think that makes "I Want You Back Again" one of the few songs where I learned the piano part before anything else. This is a bit rough, and I play the wrong notes in a few spots, but I just learned it to-day. The blank part is where the solo should be.
