Back in March, I got a tremolo pedal in order to do the guitar part from "Beechwood Park." Yester-day, I got an adaptor for it, so I don't have to use batteries for it all the time (the batteries don't last very long).
So I finally got around to doing a more complete version of "Beechwood Park." I don't think I've posted a version since I figured out the little bass part that goes from B down to F# and then up an octave to F#.
There is some noise in this; I think it's just the way I recorded the organ part. Sometimes it doesn't turn out the cleanest.
For the past few days, I've been working on the part of "This Will Be Our Year" after the key change. I'm still not very good at it (I make at least one mistake in this, and after the key change it's still pretty choppy), but at least I know the chord shapes now.
There's still a bunch of non-chordal stuff in this that I have yet to work out too.
I've been thinking about the pieces in the Zombies' repertoire that start with a falling fifth (because I recently learned that "Indication" also starts with a falling fifth). I wrote a post about this a few months ago, but in it, I sort of imply that "I'll Call You Mine" is a Rod Argent song. That's not the case; it was written by Chris White. (Other songs that start with a falling fifth are "She's Not There" and "Hung up on a Dream.")
Still, it illustrates that their writing was pretty similar at times. (Along with starting pieces with falling fifths, they both also used chromatic bass parts and really interesting relationships between bass parts and chords.)
I was just thinking about "Care of Cell 44" - as you do when you're about to go to sleep - and I realized that the first part of the first verse is a bit fugal.
The song starts off with that piano riff, and that same riff is played in the bass part later. After that exchange, it's not fugal because it doesn't develop anymore - that phrase just stays in the bass for the rest of the song.
But that first part - the piano playing that phrase and then the bass playing that phrase with a different piano part on top of it, that's fugal.
Well, it is as long as my understanding of fugues is accurate.
I'm fairly certain I've learned (at least a rough version of) the bass part for "Indication." The first part felt empty, so I figured out a bit of the organ part. The second half of what I play is wrong - there's chordal accompaniment instead of the diatonic descent, but whatever.
I hadn't noticed until now that the guitar part is articulated differently in alternating phrases. Sometimes there's a glissando between the D and the E and sometimes there isn't.
Also, the second half of the bass part is really difficult because it's just a bunch of A notes for a whole minute.
I'm figuring out the bass part for "Indication" (I think there's only one more part I need to figure out before I have at least a rough version), and I found something interesting.
I've noted before how Rod Argent likes to use two sequential half steps in his bass parts. This occurs in "I'll Keep Trying," "Whenever You're Ready," and "She Loves The Way They Love Her" (and probably in some others too). "Indication" has three sequential half steps. G to F# to F to E.
It actually bears some resemblance to the bass part for "This Will Be Our Year," which is chromatic from A to E (A, G#, G, F#, F, E). They're both in the same key too - A major. Well, mostly A major; "This Will Be Our Year" has some unusual chords and also a key change to Bb (and I haven't figured out the chords for "Indication" yet, but what I know suggests A major). "This Will Be Our Year" is a Chris White song, but there's still a fair bit of resemblance between the two, which I don't think I would have noticed had I not been learning the bass parts.
I think I've figured out the guitar part for "Is This The Dream." While listening to The Decca Stereo Anthology last month, I thought it was just a two-chord song. I played around with it a bit and amended it to three - E major, A major, and B major. For the non-chord parts, it's the same as the bass. Or at least I think so.
Coincidentally, the last time I posted part of this song was exactly eight months ago.
While listening to the I Love You album a few days ago, I remembered that I knew the first chord (A major) and guitar riff from "She Does Everything for Me." So I figured out the rest of it, including - to my own surprise - part of the electric piano part (although I'm not sure it repeats as much as how I've played it here).
In that post I wrote about the I Love You album, I said I got it for my 17th birthday. The more I got thinking about that, the more I'm unsure of it. I may have gotten it earlier. I know I got Begin Here and I Love You at the same time. I know I got Into the Afterlife for my 17th birthday, and I know I got As Far As I Can See the day after. But I don't think I got all four albums within two days. Still, whatever point I made about it still stands.
More relevant commentary: "She Does Everything for Me" sees Rod Argent's playing around with keys again. It seems like most of it is in A major, but there are some weird accidentals, like an F natural in the guitar riff and G major and C# major chords. (A major would have F#, G# major or minor, and C# minor.)
There's a glissando in the guitar part at the very end (from D to C#), but I'm not sure I did it very well.
I realize I haven't been doing very much on this project lately, but by the end of the week, I'll be completely done with university, so I'll have some more time to work on this. I do have some songs I've been meaning to update ("Is This the Dream," "Remember You," and "Beechwood Park" in particular).
In the meantime, I just wrote a post about the I Love You album as part of my Collection Audit project:
I went a bit out-of-order this morning and listened to the Zombies compilation album I Love You. The Zombies have been my favorite band for the past five or six years, yet I'm still finding new things about their music (although I don't know whether that means they're a incredibly nuanced band or whether I'm not very good at listening).
I finally determined that "How We Were Before" features twelve-string guitar. I'd been suspicious of this (I'd played parts of it on my own twelve-string and thought it sounded pretty good), but now I'm fairly certain of it.
I discovered that Rod Argent uses organ on "Woman." This realization came after noticing the really long sustain on the G major chord during the guitar solo. It just keeps going, which means it has to be organ rather than electric piano.
For the first time, I noticed the three distinct vocals parts at the end of "Don't Go Away." Two parts are alternating with "don't go away," but the third is just an "ooh."
This album includes some stereo mixes of songs (which in some cases are different stereo mixes than those that appear on The Decca Stereo Anthology), so on some songs, things were placed in sonically different places, which made it easier to distinguish some parts. This is the case on "I Love You," and because of that I heard some interesting rhythmical interplay between the guitar and the bass during the "if I can find / the words in my mind" part.
Another suspicion that was confirmed is the guitar glissandoes at the beginning of "Remember You." I'd been suspicious of these since I listened to The Decca Stereo Anthology about a month ago. The guitar part at the beginning alternates between two D's an octave apart and a D and some-other-note-that-I-still-have-to-determine that then slides up to a D.
Also, I may have found a reference to "She's Not There" in "She Does Everything for Me." "She's a girl who makes me feel / That you're not there, you weren't real" recalls the "she's not there" from "She's Not There." The "she" in "She Does Everything for Me" seems to have replaced the "she" in "She's Not There." In any case, it's an interesting parallel, as "She's Not There" was the Zombies' first single for Decca, and "She Does Everything for Me" was the B-side of their last single for Decca. Also, kudos to Rod Argent for getting the relative pronoun correct.
I got that album for my 17th birthday, and now I'm 22, but I'm still finding new things in the Zombies' music.
Also, I just checked my posts for "How We Were Before," and when I did a rough version last September, I actually did use twelve-string. So apparently I forgot I knew it had twelve-string.
