"I Am the Dance of Ages"

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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!

Catalogue

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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.

"This Will Be Our Year"

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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.

"Care of Cell 44"

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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.

Mellotron

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I just realised how ridiculous it is that I have to simulate the sound of a mellotron.  Synthesizing a synthesizer….

"Changes"

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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.

Catalogue

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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.

"Don't Go Away"

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A rough version of "Don't Go Away"

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.

"A Love That Never Was"

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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.

A major

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Also, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but every suspended chord that I've encountered in the Zombies' repertoire so far has been around an A major.

• The end of the solo in "She's Not There" (Asus4 to A major)
• The very end of "A Rose for Emily" (Asus4 to C# - ending on A major's third)
• The guitar part in "Call of the Night" AKA "Girl Help Me" (seemingly constant variation between Asus2 and A major during the verses)
• A very small guitar part in "I Don't Want to Worry" (an Asus2 thrown in between two A majors)

"You'll Go from Me" / "Don't Go Away" / "Brief Candles"

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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.