When I listened to All Together Now this morning, I thought "Keep on Rollin'" sounded like it was doing the same sort of major/major 6th thing that's fairly common in 1950s rock and roll songs (Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is the only one I can name off the top of my head that does this). I just tried that out, and I was right, but I also discovered that the All Together Now version is in a different key compared to the version on Odessey and Oracle {Revisited}. Provided the first chord (which is all I've figured out so far) is the tonic, the All Together Now version is in C# major and the O&O {Revisited} version is in D major.
In some recent interviews, Argent and Blunstone have mentioned that they still perform the songs in the original keys, so that key change in "Keep on Rollin'" is interesting because 1) there's a key change at all, and 2) it's a key change to a higher key, and in those interviews, it's been a question about lowering the keys because of old age voice changes.
I listened to Argent's All Together Now this morning (I might have an-other post about it later, but mostly it would just be "Oh, this is double-tracked!" or "Oh, that part's overdubbed!"). Anyway, "Hold Your Head Up" reminded me of that 5th, 7th, octave bass figure that's in "Tell Her No," "Whenever You're Ready," and "Time of the Season." Because "Hold Your Head Up" was written after Argent's improvised "Time of the Season," I wanted to check to see how much of the bass part it retained. So I finally got around to doing that this evening.
I'd always thought that "Hold Your Head Up" was in D major, but if the bass part holds to that 5th, 7th, octave phrase, it's in D minor. (It's A, C, D.) So I'm unsure of the key, but it seems like the bass part does retain that tonality (just transposed down from "Time of the Season"'s E minor). The rhythm is different though.
I also figured out a bit of the guitar part because I thought it would be boring to have just the bass part. Way back in October 2011 (which is - I think - when I was first really getting into Argent), I'd thought I'd figured it out (I still have an erroneous tab that I wrote in a notebook for a literature class I was in at the time; it's right under my notes on the Bhagavad-Gita), but then I realized that I was just playing note pairs an octave apart and that the actual part was more involved. I think I have it now, although my guitar tone doesn't match the original very well.
For the last half a year or something, I've been playing around with a harpsichord arrangement of "Beechwood Park." There are some trills in the original guitar part that sound vaguely baroque, and the harpsichord was a baroque instrument, so playing the song on one sort of helps to bring out those influences. Also I just wanted to record this because I was one song away from having recorded 200 this year.
I have a bad habit of unintentionally quickening the pace, and I might have hit a bad note, but there you go.
I listened to Into the Afterlife to-day and noticed some things:
"She's Not There" - Neil MacArthur
For the first two sections, there's an acoustic guitar panned right and an electric guitar panned left. But after the string glissando and tremolo, (at about 2:12) they've flipped channels. The acoustic is now panned left, and the electric is panned right. I've had this album for something like seven years and only just now noticed that.
"Twelve Twenty Nine" - Neil MacArthur
I'd a bit unsure of the "I died" (although I suppose it's an appropriate phrase for a former Zombie), but I think the first two lines of the second verse are:
I died as I kissed the last tear I kissed from her face And through the blur of my own I hurried away from that place
That "face"/"place" rhyme is also present in the Zombies' "Remember You":
I remember your face When I think of this place
There's something like five years between the two songs, and it's almost certainly a coincidence, but I still thought it interesting. For the record, "Remember You" is a Chris White song, and "Twelve Twenty Nine" was written by Peter Lee Stirling and Chris Sedgewick according to the Into the Afterlife liner notes.
"I Could Spend the Day" - Rod Argent/Chris White
I'm pretty sure I've noticed this before, but I don't think I've written about it. The "fall" in "Words you want to hear / Would fall" has a melisma with the later syllables at lower pitches than the earlier ones so that the word itself sounds like it's falling.
"Ma non è giusto" - Neil MacArthur
I'd either started or completed transcriptions of all of the Into the Afterlife songs with the exception of this one, an Italian version of Neil MacArthur's "She's Not There." I figured I'd finally give it a go, since I've been learning Italian since last summer. I didn't get very far, but one of the phrases I was able to pick out is "Io vedo lei" ("I see her"). That's not in Argent's original lyrics, so I'm wondering what else I'll find if I get better at my Italian.
Last night, I spent some time figuring out the bass part for "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me." I got further than I expected but not as far as I would have liked, if that makes sense. I figured out the bass part for "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" (although I think I missed a note), but not "Bring It on Home to Me." And I still haven't really figured out the guitar part beyond just the chords and a phrase or two.
I discovered a couple things specific to the Zombies' version. Unlike the Miracles' original (and the Beatles' cover), they don't start with the introductory phrase; they go right into the first verse. To some degree, because of that in medias res beginning, they can put in the same falling fifth (E to A) that starts "She's Not There," "I Love You," and Argent's "Free Fall."
I haven't made much progress on this one. I did figure out a bit of the bass register of the piano part though. I think the proper bass part follows that during the "verses," but it's different during the middle section.
I was just thinking about the bass part for "I Can't Make up My Mind" and wondering how it would look if notated (I've been getting better at notation and more interested in notation simultaneously; I think they're related). Anyway, I thought the part during the verses would be two eighth notes and then two dotted quarter notes, so I tried this with my MIDI software, and it worked.
The two eighth notes and two dotted quarter notes looked familiar to me, and I realized that this is the same rhythm that's in the bass parts for "Tell Her No," "Whenever You're Ready," and "Time of the Season." There are differences though: this isn't the 5th, 7th, octave phrase, and this doesn't start with an upbeat like those do:
The rhythm itself is the same but - because it's moved over so that it starts on the downbeat and includes different notes - it doesn't really sound the same.
I should note that "I Can't Make up My Mind" is a Chris White song, but those other three ("Tell Her No," "Whenever You’re Ready," and "Time of the Season") are Rod Argent songs.
This is pretty much the same as what I recorded back in September. The beginning is a bit rough though.
Also, I misremembered how I had to correct the instrumentation. Back in September, I used electric piano and then realized that I should have used organ, but before I recorded this, I thought, "Right, so I have to use electric piano instead of organ," which is the opposite of what I should have done.
Last night, I learned most of the bass part for "I Got My Mojo Working." It's pretty much just the same thing repeated, but it changes for the harmonica and guitar solos (so in some ways it's a precedent for later Zombies songs where the bass part changes for the solo). I haven't figured those parts out yet, so this is just the introduction and first two verses' worth.
Because I learned the bass part for "Tell Her No" last week and the bass part for this last night, I now know at least part of a part for every song that the Zombies released on Decca. Those were the only two songs I didn't know any parts of (although I've known for a couple years that "I Got My Mojo Working" is a three-chord song in C).
This one has sort of fallen through the cracks. I haven't recorded it for over two years.
Apparently, I learned the bass part in April 2013, and I remember learning the chords in late 2013/early 2014 (that's when I got my twelve-string guitar, so I figured I'd better learn a song that actually uses a twelve-string guitar). I guess it was in the months after that when I figured out the actual guitar part (it's not just plain chords). But I'd never recorded the parts together.
I was having some problems re-learning and then remembering the bass part for this, so yester-day, I notated the whole thing. In doing so, I discovered that this - like "Summertime" - is in 6/8.
Fifty-one years ago to-day was the third session for Begin Here, so I have a bunch of songs to record again.
I'm starting with "The Way I Feel Inside" because it's short and I have a lot to do to-day. I've been playing this a lot, but where my right hand does the melody, so I haven't been able to practice that extra phrase. I'm not sure it's any more accurate than the last time I recorded, but I also don't think it's less accurate.
I discovered that I had the bass part at the very end wrong. I thought it went down to that Bb in the Edim chord, but it stays at E, just like in the rehearsal version.
An-other thing I was thinking about this morning was the rhythm during the verses of "Changes." I figured out (correctly!) how to notate it (in my head, even), and I discovered that each measure has the same rhythm:
I notated the bass register of the piano part, and I assumed that the vocal melody was the same, just higher. But then I verified it, and I discovered that I was wrong. For the first verse ("Now see her walk by...") it is the same (a half note, two eighth notes, and then a quarter note), but it changes (like the title) when it gets to the second verse ("Now silver and gold..."). The piano part remains the same, but for the last two lines ("Like emerald stones / And platinum glass"), that half note becomes a dotted quarter note and an eighth note:
Before I noticed that difference, I thought something was at odds since the song - as the title would suggest - is about changes (the seasons are mentioned in a cycle, and there's the line "Nothing will last"), yet the rhythm was invariable. But then I discovered that variation in the second verse, and it makes more sense. The rhythm of the piano part and the vocal are the same until the lines after "Nothing will last." It's almost a signal for them to change.
I should note that the key continues to befuddle me, but these sections don't have any accidentals, and there's a high A in the upper register of the piano part, so I'm assuming it's in A minor.
This morning, I was thinking about "Caroline Goodbye," specifically the first line: "Saw your picture in the paper." It has a certain similarity to the beginning of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" ("I read the news today... I saw the photograph"). According to Wikipedia, the Caroline in the song is an actual person, so I'm not sure if that similarity is an intentional reference. It could have just been an actual thing that happened. I thought I'd mention it anyway.
Also, in writing down a note about this so I would remember to post it here later, I almost mis-typed "Caroline Goodbye" as "Caroline, No," the last track from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album. I've actually mixed them up a few times because the titles are rather similar. But then I started wondering if that's intentional. I vaguely remember something about Tony Asher's mishearing "Carol, I Know" and coming up with "Caroline, No," which he and Brian Wilson liked because it was an odd-sounding phrase. "Caroline Goodbye" has that same sort of weird inversion. I think most people would just say, "Goodbye, Caroline." And in interviews that bring up Pet Sounds’ influence on Odessey and Oracle, Blunstone has said he's a fan of the Beach Boys, so he'd probably be familiar with the song.
I was surprised to find that this is only the second time I've recorded "Walking in the Sun." I've had a note on my desktop for about a year to get around to recording it again because a month or so after I first recorded it, I realized how the guitar part actually goes. I'd been playing only one of a pair of notes and in the wrong octave. As I remember, I had trouble recording it the correct way, but sometimes between now and then, I figured out that if I angle my pick (which apparently you're supposed to do), it's not as piercing of a sound, which is what I'd been having problems with.
I went back and referenced my old recording for the bass part during the "You will laugh and walk with me" sections, but I'm still not sure if I have the rhythm right there.
I didn't remember that I'd included electric piano in my first recording, so, really, the only new part about that is that it doubles the bass part during the first half of the verses. As with most of the keyboard parts, what I have is extremely simplified. I'm pretty sure I have the right chords, but Argent elaborates them in way that's still mystifying to me.
Because I know the bass part for the final version of "The Way I Feel Inside," it wasn't too difficult to figure out the part in the rehearsal version. I played the electric piano part more-or-less the same as the organ part on the final version, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
Now that I have the bass and electric piano parts, I don't think the guitar part is right. There are some dissonances in my version that don't seem to be in the original, so I think I may have over-simplified it. I haven't changed the way I play it in the two years since I learned it, so it's certainly possible that I have it wrong.
Originally, of the songs that were recorded at that session on 25 November, I was saving "Tell Her No" for last because I didn't know any of it (I think I knew the guitar phrase a few years ago, but I've forgotten it) and saving it until the end gave me more time to try to learn something. But last night, I figured out the bass part, and it's really exciting, so I pushed it up to to-day.
Last month, I talked about a phrase based on the 5th, 7th, and octave scale degrees that's in both "Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season." It's in "Tell Her No" too! It's at the beginning of each line in the verses.
"Tell Her No" is in E major, so the intervals in "Whenever You're Ready" (in G major) are the same, just lowered a sixth. "Time of the Season" is in E minor, so two of the three notes (B and E) are the same ("Tell Her No" has D# where "Time of the Season" has D natural).
The Zombie Heaven liner notes (and I think a few other things I've read too) say that "Whenever You're Ready" was a strong contender for a hit song, so it's interesting that it shares that 5th-7th-octave phrase with two songs that were hits.
Now that I know this, I think I'm going to be bothered by interviews and articles and such where people say, "Oh, 'She's Not There' and 'Time of the Season' have the same kind of rhythm." I mean, sure, maybe, but that section of "Tell Her No" and "Time of the Season" share the exact rhythm, and they have a very close tonality.
Additionally, the bass part for "Tell Her No" has two three-note chromatic phrases, and they're the same ones that are in the bass part for the rehearsal version of "The Way I Feel Inside" (which I also learned last night). Both songs were recorded at the same session, too. The phrases are B, C, C# and A, A#, B. However, they're both ascending in "Tell Her No," where in "The Way I Feel Inside," that A, A#, B phrase is descending, so it's more like B, A#, A.
This morning, I was thinking about the harmonica part in "Work 'n' Play," specifically how one part of it is doubled on twelve-string guitar. And I realized that the Beatles did this same thing on "Please Please Me." That's six-string where "Work 'n' Play" is twelve-string, but still, it's a harmonica part doubled on guitar (or guitar part doubled on harmonica, whichever).
Because "Work 'n' Play" was written by Ken Jones though, I don't know if that's the Beatles' influence on Jones or on the Zombies. That is, whether Jones wrote that part with joint harmonica and guitar or whether the Zombies arranged it like that based on what Jones gave them. Of course, it could just be a coincidence that it's similar to "Please Please Me," but I don't know of any other song that doubled harmonica and guitar.
This is the shortest song in the Zombies' catalogue, but I found a fair amount to say about it.
First, I learned the opening organ part (I think). If I have it correct, it (and the rest of the song) seems to vacillate between A minor and A major. In some ways, it's kind of like the Beatles' "I'll Be Back," which also seems to move between A minor and A major. The verses in each have a chord progression in common too: A major, G major, F major (F major 7th in "I'll Be Back"), E major. Each chord lasts for two beats in "What More Can I Do," but four in "I'll Be Back." The bass plays the root of each chord for that section in both songs too.
After the organ part, I learned the bass part (I'm pretty confident about one section [the first half of the verses and the solos, which is the same part], but not so much on the second [starting about halfway through the verses, at "But something always holds me back" in the first and "But something always keeps a hold on me" in the second]). I was sort of surprised to find a three-note chromatic phrase in it. That's typically a feature of Argent's writing, but this is a Chris White song.
Like I mentioned, some of the song seems to be in A major, but the bass outlines most of an A minor scale at the very end (and I'm pretty sure the guitar ends on an A minor chord). I think there's a slight note-bend on the second-to-last note (a C), which I might have over-done.
The guitar part is much more accurate than in the last (and only other) recording I did, which had only the guitar part. I figured out the rhythm of the first two chords in the verses, and - while it might not be exact - my arpeggiation of the next two chords sounds better than playing them straight.
In thinking about the lyrics, I noticed that there's either a line break or a caesura to separate "I wish I knew / What it is that stops me" and "From loving you," which emphasizes that hindrance. In my transcription, I have it as a line break, but I might have my line breaks in the wrong places.
I had to re-learn virtually all of this, but it came back pretty easily. I think I need to start making a distinction between this alternate version of "I Want You Back Again" and the single version. I haven't really compared the two, but that's something I should get around to doing.
While listening back to my own recording, I noticed the rhythm during the electric piano solo (which is missing in my version because I don't know it yet). It's the same sort of thing that the Zombies did with "Just a Little Bit" on their radio performance, which I wrote about earlier this month. There are progressively shorter note values. At first, I thought, "Oh, so they're doing the same thing they did earlier on the radio," but then I realized I had the chronology backwards: this version of "I Want You Back Again" was recorded in November 1964, and that radio performance was in November 1965. As far as the record shows (no pun intended), that rhythmic feature was in "I Want You Back Again" first.
I tried notating it the same way I did the bass part in "Just a Little Bit," but in doing so, I discovered that "I Want You Back Again" is in 3/4 (which I hadn't realized) and - apparently - the notation system I have doesn't understand 3/4. I tried putting in whole notes, but instead of counting for three beats (like they should in 3/4), they counted as four beats. So I had to do the notation by hand:
My bass clefs look weird; I'm still not good at spacing my bar lines well; and I might have written the half rest on the wrong line, but there you go.
I checked the single version of "I Want You Back Again," and - while it does a similar thing during the solo - it's not the same as what this alternate version does. The single version does have progressively shorter notes, but they don't divide as uniformly as they do in this alternate version.
I have a binder in which I've been keeping the tabs, chord progressions, and occasional notation I've written down, and I looked in there last night to see what I had for "I Don't Want to Know." I found that I had the whole twelve-string part (which I still remembered), but I didn't have the bass part (which I'd forgotten). So I had to relearn the bass part, and then I wrote it down.
While writing it down, I realized that this does the same thing as "I Remember When I Loved Her" (the bass part to which I also need to re-learn) and "Time of the Season." I mentioned about a year ago that the bass parts during the solos in those songs are the same as the bass parts during the verses but with extra notes. The solo in "I Don't Want to Know" is much shorter (I think only eight bars) and on guitar rather than a keyboard instrument, but there's a similar feature here. However, it's slightly different in that there are more notes rhythm-wise, not pitch-wise. It's the same D, E, G, F# phrase, but with four notes of each pitch where there are only two or three of each in the verses.
I just listened to the two songs that were released to-day in 1965. I'd already finished my transcription of "Is This the Dream," but I looked over it anyway, and I finished transcribing "Don't Go Away."
Last time I worked on the transcription for "Is This the Dream," the line "'Cause, baby, you'll just cry for a shadow" sounded sort of familiar to me. It wasn't until now though that I placed it. "Cry for a Shadow" is the title of an instrumental Beatles song, recorded in 1961 when they were backing Tony Sheridan. It's track #12 on the first disc of Anthology 1. Apparently it was actually released (in 1964), but - while the Beatles are an acknowledged influence on the Zombies - I sort of doubt that the title of this particular song influenced that line. Still, I thought it interesting.
I recorded this in something of a rush this morning before going to Thanksgiving and didn't get to upload it until now.
I haven't really made any progress on this, so it's mostly just the guitar part (with chords where the solo should be). I did learn that the opening and closing guitar part is doubled with organ, and I think the closing on organ is an octave higher than the opening, but - like I said - this was recorded in a bit of a rush, so I might have that wrong.
According to Russo's Collector's Guide and the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (26 November 1965), the Zombies' "Is This the Dream" b/w "Don't Go Away" (Decca F12296) was released in the U.K.
The Zombie Heaven liner notes list just "November 1965" for the U.S. release (Parrot 9821).
As part of my listening schedule, I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows this morning, and I noticed a couple things about a few songs.
"Sanctuary"
The vocal effects in the third verse are what I noticed here:
When all around seems to be trouble When life seems only to deceive When nothing really seems to matter And I look in desperation For something I can believe
I'm not sure if it's Blunstone doing separate backing vocals or some echo on the last word or two in each line, but after "When all around seems to be trouble," there's a separate "trouble." There's the same thing with "to deceive" and "to matter" in the next lines.
For "trouble" and "deceive," that extra word emphasizes the lyrics. The "trouble" in the main lyric is centered, but the echoed "trouble" seems distant, panned left and right. So, directionally, there really is "trouble" all around. That effect also is either the cause of or takes advantage of the inversion in that line - how it's "all around seems to be trouble" rather than "trouble seems to be all around." That effect wouldn't be achieved as well if "trouble" didn't end the line.
There's a similar thing with "deceive." There's the "deceive" in the lyric, but also the echoed "deceive," which provides a sense of duplicitousness since there are two of them.
Argent's harmony comes in for the last two lines, and having an-other voice for the "desperation" emphasizes that feeling too. It's as if more force is mustered coming down to the last hour.
"Baby Don't You Cry No More"
After the first line of the first verse ("I'm listening to that midnight whistle blow"), there are some glissandi in the guitar part, apparently a musical representation of the whistle.
"Love Can Heal the Pain"
The first two lines of this (as formatted in the liner notes) are:
You know love can conquer Almost every thing my friend
I found this interesting not so much for the lyric itself, but that it's an altered version of the old phrase amor vincit omnia, which - translated - is the title of "Love Conquers All" from the New World album, from about a decade before Out of the Shadows. "Love Can Heal the Pain" was written by Argent; "Love Conquers All" by Blunstone.
Yester-day I was thinking about the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" again, and I realized that that G note isn't only in the chords and the bass part; it's in the vocal melody too. There are only four different notes in the vocal melody for the bridge; the bold in the following is entirely G notes:
We'll walk in a way we used to walk And it could be so nice We'll talk in a way we used to talk And it could be so nice
So now I know of three things there that emphasize the frozen and static nature of the past.
Last night/this morning I figured out the bass part for "Road Runner." While recording this, I also discovered that I'd unknowingly simplified one of the guitar parts into a B major chord. I haven't figured it out yet though, so I just kept the B major chord.
Apparently, this is only the second time I've recorded "Road Runner."
Because I'll be focusing on the Begin Here sessions for the next week or so, I thought I'd actually listen to Begin Here. The CD copy I have has bonus tracks, the first of which is "It's Alright with Me." I noticed something about the first line of the last verse: "So you see I can only offer a man that's poor."
It might be a bit pedantic, but I'm in favor of "that" for things and "who" for people as far as relative clauses go. If you follow that rule, here, there's a "that" where there should be a "who." The speaker/singer is devaluing himself, which seems to go along with the other not-so-positive qualities he chooses to mention, like the "frost and debt and trouble" in the next line. Actually, having that second "and" there emphasizes it too. "Frost, debt, and trouble" would be understandable, but "Frost and debt and trouble" has an insistence because of that repeated "and" (although meter and/or syllable count for the line might figure into that too).
The first session for the Begin Here album (when the Zombies recorded "I'm Going Home," "Sticks and Stones," and "Road Runner") was fifty-one years ago to-day, so I have a bunch of songs to record new versions of and hopefully learn new parts to. The second Begin Here session (seven more songs) was fifty-one years ago to-morrow, so I'll be doing this daily for a week and a half.
I picked "I'm Going Home" to do first (even though it wasn't on the album) because, of the three songs recorded during this session, I know the most parts for it. The last time I recorded this was in August last year, so it's been awhile, and I had a lot I had to re-acquaint myself with. Thankfully, I'd written out about a third of the bass part (in notation even!), so I didn't have to work so hard on that.
I learned a bit more of the bass part, but I'm still stuck on the part during the last section (the chords are the same as the earlier sections, so I played the bass part from the earlier sections). I also cleaned up a phrase in the guitar part. I think it starts with Es an octave apart and then alternates between progressively lower notes and that high E where earlier I'd started with a fourth (E to A) and then alternated with that A note. I learned a bit of the organ part too, but I learned just the parts where the organ doubles the guitar part (or vice versa), so it's not that much progress.
A few days ago, I wrote about a feature that the chords in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" share with the chords in the verses of "I Know She Will" and how - since "I Know She Will" is a Chris White song but "Care of Cell 44" is a Rod Argent song - it seems that Argent took the sequential-chords-with-a-common-note feature from White's song. Just now though, I found something in those "Care of Cell 44" chords that's characteristic of Argent's writing: two linked half-steps. After the initial G major, it's A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), G major (G, B, D). That same three-note phrase is in the second chord sequence too: G major, A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), Dsus4 (D, G, A), D major.
Yester-day I listened to Argent's Encore because according to Russo's Collector's Guide it was released in the U.K. on 22 November 1974.
I'm pretty sure I noticed this the first time I listened to the album, but I haven't written about it: in that version of "Hold Your Head Up," Rod Argent includes half of a hymn tune in the solo (he plays it twice from about 6:01 to 6:26). I know it best as the tune for "God of Grace and God of Glory," but the tune itself is known as "CWM Rhondda" and was written by John Hughes.
Argent includes some variations, but the original part that he quotes is:
Last night I was playing through the chords to "I Know She Will" on keyboard. Since I learned the flute part, I've been playing that fairly regularly, and I really love the chords during the verses. I think I had some suspicion that they were familiar, but I didn't place it until last night. They share a feature with the chords during the bridge of "Care of Cell 44."
Both have a string of chords that all have a single common note, and they end in a modulation in which that single note falls a half-step (from a fourth to a third in relation to the root of the final two chords). In "I Know She Will," that common note is an A, which then falls to a G#. It's D major (D, F#, A), D7 (D, F#, A, C), A major (A, C#, E), Esus4 (E, A, B), E major (E, G#, B). In the bridge of "Care of Cell 44," it's a G note, which is further emphasized because it's the only note played by the bass until that half-step descent, when the bass goes back to the opening phrase. So, G major (G, B, D), A7 (A, C#, E, G), C minor (C, Eb, G), which - after going back to G major - repeats before going to Dsus4 (D, G, A), D major, (D, F#, A).
At first, I thought, "Oh, it's just Rod Argent doing the same sort of thing again," but then I looked up the writing credit for "I Know She Will" just to make sure, and I discovered that it's actually a Chris White song. I think I've always regarded Argent as the more sophisticated writer from a technical standpoint, but it seems that in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44" he was actually taking something from White's writing.
I listened to the second disc of The Pet Sounds Sessions to-day, and during the tracking session for "God Only Knows," Brian Wilson says something about the E E F# G phrase that leads into the verses. I didn't think very much about this at the time, but just now I was playing "Maybe after He's Gone," and I discovered that the vocal melody in the first two verses starts with that same E E F# G phrase. The rhythm is slightly different, but the notes are the same.
Pet Sounds is often cited as an influence on Odessey and Oracle, but in interviews and things, the Zombies haven't seemed to talk about it all that much. Rod Argent's talked about bass parts, but not very specifically, and Colin Blunstone has talked about being a fan of the Beach Boys. "Maybe after He's Gone" is a Chris White song though, and I can't seem to remember his mentioning Pet Sounds in any interviews.
It's such a small phrase that they have in common, and that's even excepting the difference in rhythm, so I'm not sure whether there's anything to this or not.
Last week when I listened to Ring of Hands, I forgot to mention that I discovered that the guitar solo in "Chained" is double-tracked. Because I was still thinking about this (because I forgot to write about it), I realized that it's kind of a play on words with the title. As a feature, double-tracking requires the second part to be exactly the same as the first, so in a sense the two guitar tracks have to be "chained" together.
I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands this morning, and I think I figured out the arpeggiated keyboard part of "Pleasure." I knew there was organ panned right, but I couldn't really tell what was going on in the left channel. When I listened to it this morning, I thought it was electric piano doubling the arpeggios but with a guitar part of just the bottom note, but I split the stereo track, and - hearing it slightly more isolated - I think it's the electric piano playing both the arpeggios and the bottom note (an octave lower). I'm fairly sure I figured out the specific notes for that whole section, but it goes too fast for my current ability, so I'll have to practice that before I attempt to record a version.
According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Just a Little Bit" for "The Beat Show." The show was broadcast on 11 November.
I had some problems recording this, the bass part especially, which I had to record eleven times. Eventually, I just stuck together two tracks. I'm rushing the end a bit, but I didn't feel like recording it yet again. The mixing didn't go too well either.
I figured out some of the electric piano part, but I'm still not very sure of it. It doesn't help that Argent's Hohner Pianette has a brighter sound than the generic "electric piano" voice on my keyboard. I plan on getting a Nord keyboard eventually, so I can use the Hohner Pianette samples from their library (along with the Vox Continental, the mellotron, and probably some others), but that's more than four times the total amount of money I currently have, so it's not an option.
In any case, there seems to be some similarity between this and "She's Coming Home" in that the verses are pretty much just E major and A major. There's also a similar descending line; where "She's Coming Home" goes diatonically from E to B, "Is This the Dream" has E to F# - almost a complete E major scale.
According to the liner notes of both Zombie Heaven and The Decca Stereo Anthology, fifty years ago to-day (10 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Is This the Dream."
After listening to "Just a Little Bit" to-day, I figured out the bass part. It gets pretty fast near the end, and since I just learned it, it's probably not as good as it could be.
I'd never really paid attention to it before, but the part during the organ solo is really interesting. As it goes on, the note values become progressively shorter. First, they're whole notes, then half notes, then quarter notes, and then finally eighth notes:
I'm not familiar with any other version of the song, so I don't know if that's a feature specific to the song or something that the Zombies came up with.
According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (8 November 1965), the Zombies recorded "Just a Little Bit" for "The Beat Show." The show was broadcast on 11 November.
I listened to Colin Blunstone's One Year album to-day because according to Russo's Collector's Guide it came out in the U.K. to-day in 1971, but last night I figured out the rest of the chords to "Caroline Goodbye." I've known the first part (which just alternates between two chords) for a fairly long time, but I was stuck on all the rest of it.
Two days ago, NPR posted the audio of a concert that the Zombies did about a month ago, and they performed "Caroline Goodbye." I guess I was subconsciously thinking about it, and just in playing around, I happened across about half of the chorus. So I spent a bit of time on it and figured out the connecting part.
I'm not sure if I have all of the rhythms right, but I'm pretty sure I have the chords right.
There are a couple of interesting features I want to point out. During "No use pretending / I've known for a long time / Your love is ending," there's a descending chromatic phrase in the chords. It starts with a major-to-major-7th transition, and while "Caroline Goodbye" was written by Blunstone, starting a descending phrase via a major-to-major-7th transition also seems to be a fairly common feature of Argent's writing (although Blunstone's "How We Were Before" has it too). Here, it's A major (A, C#, E), A major 7th (A, C#, E, G#), A7 (A, C#, E, G), D major (D, F#, A).
In the choruses, there are cymbal hits on "better" and "sooner" in "But I should have known better" and "And I should have seen sooner." They act as a type of emphasis.
In copying out those two lines just now, I've realized that "I should have known better" is also the title line in the Beatles' "I Should Have Known Better," so there might be a bit of Beatle influence there.
I also figured out some of the piano part, and the part immediately before "No use pretending" - while in a different key - is the same as a guitar riff in "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," provided I have it (the part in "Caroline Goodbye") right. I've actually written twoother posts about this phrase because I found it in the Moody Blues' "So Deep within You" and the Tremeloes' "Hello World."
I listened to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess yester-day, so I started thinking about "Summertime," particularly the first line: "It's summertime, and the livin' is easy." It occurred to me that in the Zombies' version, there's a vocal glissando during that "easy," so there's a sort of melodic ease to which that word is sung. I just went through about a dozen versions of "Summertime" that I have, and with two exceptions, none of them have that glissando. (And neither of those two glissandi are very similar to the Zombies'.) So while it's not unique to their version, it seem like it might be original.
Also, I got to thinking about the story that Argent's frequently told about how the line "Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good-lookin'" inspired the "Who's your daddy / Is he rich?" in "Time of the Season." I think I found a few other lyrical nods to "Summertime" in "Time of the Season." Both have a temporal element in their title and lyrics ("Summertime" and "Time of the Season," although Argent's also told the story about how he got the phrase "Time of the Season" from mishearing the lyrics in a Miracles' song), and both describe something as "high." "Summertime" has "the cotton is high," and the "time of the season" in "Time of the Season" is "When love runs high." There's a slightly different meaning there, but it's the same word in a similar description.
I would have thought those merely coincidental similarities were it not for Argent's admission of that "Your daddy's rich"/"Who's your daddy / Is he rich?" reference.
For a really long time (at least months, probably even a year or more), I thought the opening bass parts for "Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season" had some similarity. I got thinking about this last night, and I finally realized that they sound similar because they're essentially the same part.
While they're in different tempi, the rhythms are the same (I think I've notated them correctly):
Aside from the key, the notes that comprise the parts are the same degree on the scale. It's the 5th, the 7th, and the octave (the root).
"Whenever You're Ready" is in C major, so it's G (the 5th), B (the 7th), and C (the octave). "Time of the Season" is in E minor, so it's B (the 5th), D (the 7th), and E (the octave).
I should note that these aren't the same intervals. The interval between the 7th and the octave is a half-step in a major scale but a whole-step in a minor scale. So you couldn't transpose the opening bass part for "Whenever You're Ready" up a few steps and get the opening bass part for "Time of the Season," but they are incredibly similar. For instance, the classic clap and exhale from "Time of the Season" fits during the opening of "Whenever You're Ready."
After I realized this, I thought it really interesting just because it seems to be such a feature of Argent's writing (that rhythm in "Time of the Season" is a fairly frequent topic in interviews), but then I remembered the story about "Hold Your Head Up" and how Chris White wrote it from a riff Argent (the band) improvised when playing "Time of the Season." It seems that in concerts Rod Argent often introduces "Hold Your Head Up" with that story. But because that phrase in the bass parts for "Whenever You're Ready" and "Time of the Season" are essentially the same, that story could have an even broader scope.
I intended to clarify this yester-day, but I got busy and forgot.
A few days ago, I wrote about the "for" in "To Julia for When She Smiles" and how it's actually a conjunction. It occurred to me later that while it's a conjunction in the lead vocals, it's a preposition in the backing vocals because they consist only of "Julia / For when she smiles." There's a different meaning, which hinges on whether "for" is a conjunction or preposition, depending on whether you're paying more attention to the lead vocals or to the backing vocals.
Yester-day I listened to Odessey and Oracle, and the a cappella ending of "Maybe after He's Gone" caught my ear. I already knew the main vocal melody and one of the harmonies, so all I had to do was figure out the third part, which sounded pretty simple.
I don't think my voice is that great (certainly not when compared to the original), but it's a good enough example, although I'm pretty sure I'm singing Blunstone's part an octave lower than in the original.
Blunstone sings the melody, and that chromatic phrase (panned left) is Argent, so that third phrase is White. "Maybe after He's Gone" is one of White's songs so I don't know how involved Argent was in the arrangement, but it's a fairly good example of what Blunstone said about the Zombies' harmony in the 2013 SXSW interview:
Rod would try and set a very easy harmony for Chris, because he had to play bass at the same time, so he would be playing a different note to the note he's singing. I don't know how bass players do this, so Chris' harmony very often would be just a straight line. [Sings a single note] "Ummmmm," like that. And then Rod would have to fill in all the holes. So his harmony would be [sings notes at seemingly random intervals] "la-la-la-la-la-la," like that.
While this is an a cappella section, there are different notes in White's harmony from what he plays on bass when this section isn't a cappella. And it is pretty simple. It's just four whole notes. The interesting thing, though, is that the last three of those four notes, like the entirety of Argent's part, form a descending chromatic phrase: F#, F, E. So they too contribute to the song's feeling of sadness through the seemingly-inherent melancholy in descending chromatic phrases.
Argent's part here isn't as random as it might be in some other songs; it's just a chromatic phrase from E to C#.
I still want to look at this part more closely with notation, but one thing I noticed just when playing the parts together on piano is that while they resolve to an A major chord, none of the constituent notes are next to each other. By that I mean there's (from lowest to highest) an E (White), a C# (Argent), and an A (Blunstone), and there's an A between that E and C#, and an E between that C# and A. They could have resolved to an A major within the interval of a fifth, but instead it's an A major with its three notes spread over an interval that's more than an octave. The song resolves, but there's still something off and almost-literally isolated and disjointed, which matches the feeling of the lyric.
It's like the first A major here, not like the second, which is more typical:
In writing out that paragraph above, I've realized that the A major is actually upside down in a way. It's E, C#, A where usually it would be A, C#, E, so it might also act as an indication of how turned around the singer/speaker's life is now that he's alone.
But because I was looking at the lyrics, I realized that I'd always misunderstood the first line (grammatically misunderstood it). You have to take the first two lines together to really understand it: "To Julia for when she smiles / An orchard wind will warm my face." That "for" is a conjunction, not a preposition. It's not "To Julia for [the time] when she smiles," but rather "To Julia [because] when she smiles / An orchard wind will warm my face."
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*I'm assuming it was related to this blog but got sent over there because I don't have the ask box enabled here. It's not enabled because I worry about getting inundated with requests for chords or tabs (although it's not like a lot of people follow this blog anyway). It's a mix of "I'm not super confident in what I've figured out" and the sort-of-snobbish "You'll be a better musician if you figure it out for yourself." Although lately I've been wondering if I should post some. It's not like I have the rights to them or anything.
When I listened to "Just out of Reach" yester-day, I noticed a four-note organ phrase during the last two-thirds of each verse. There's more to the rest of the organ part than just chords, but that's what I have for now, along with that phrase and the first few bars of the solo (!). I think this is the first keyboard solo I know a part of.
I also discovered that I was playing one of the guitar phrases in the wrong octave.
The guitar and bass aren't totally in sync during the middle of the organ solo (or rather, the place where the organ solo should be), and I was having some interference problems with my keyboard (I tried to cut out most of the excess noise, but there might still be some), so this isn't the best recording, but I do know more of the song now.
Just over a week ago, I figured out most of the instrument parts for the Beatles' "I'll Be Back" (I have a project like this for the Beatles too, although I'm focusing mostly on A Hard Day's Night for now). I'm not as convinced of this as some other potential influences, but the first guitar phrase in "I'll Be Back" is fairly similar to the first guitar phrase in "Don't Cry for Me." The first three notes of "I'll Be Back" arpeggiate an inverted Bsus4, and at the beginning of "Don't Cry for Me" - after a few notes - there's an arpeggiated and inverted Bbsus4 before the verse starts.
After that arpeggiation, the songs go to different chords (even adjusting for key). "I'll Be Back" goes to A major, and "Don't Cry for Me" goes to F major. Still, they both start with an inverted sus4 chord. It's a very slight resemblance, but it's still possible that it's an indication of the Beatles' influence.
A few days ago, I realized that the bass parts for the verses of "Just out of Reach" and "I Love You" are quite similar:
Standard disclaimer that the notation might be wrong since I did it myself. I guessed at the keys, although I'm more confident that "Just out of Reach" is in A major (that's what it resolves to at the end) than I am that "I Love You" is in A minor. I should also note that the phrases repeat*, but I've included only four bars of each. The phrase for the verses in "Just out of Reach" is only two bars, so that one's there twice.
Both phrases are comprised of the same four notes in the same order (A C D E), save for a C at the end of the phrases in "Just out of Reach." I didn't realize this until I notated them, but each measure starts with the same rhythm too - a dotted quarter note and then an eighth note.
I looked up the recording dates to get the chronology right: "Just out of Reach" was recorded on 2 March 1965, and "I Love You" on 8 July 1965. "Just out of Reach" is a Blunstone song, so I'm unsure how involved Chris White was in coming up with that bass part. It seems that either that bass part may have provided some inspiration for him to write "I Love You" (since the bass part for the verses of "I Love You" is basically an expanded version of that in "Just out of Reach") or both bass parts just illustrate his style of bass playing really well.
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*I'm a bit unsure whether the phrases in the verses of "I Love You" really repeat or not because I can't tell if there are two verses of eight lines or four verses (in pairs) of four lines each.
I just played through the guitar parts for "Just out of Reach" and "Remember You" because - according to Russo's Collector's Guide - they were released to-day in 1965, and as soon as I started playing "Just out of Reach," I realized that it's in A minor, not A major like I said a few weeks ago. According to the book of Zombies music notation by Alfred Music, "I Love You" is in A minor too, so these two bass parts are more similar than I thought (because I stupidly remembered the key wrong for "Just out of Reach").
According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (25 October 1965), the Zombies' "Just out of Reach" b/w "Remember You" was released in the U.S. and Canada (PAR 9797).
When I listened to Ennismore yester-day, the first section of the bass part in "Exclusively for Me" sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out. I even identified the correct intervals (a fifth and a fourth) before figuring out the specific notes. The first section is mostly just falling fifths between E and A, which is the same interval that starts "She's Not There."
This afternoon I figured out the middle section (I'm pretty sure it's just one note, but I don't have the exact rhythm yet) and the last half. It's doubled by either 'cello or upright bass (I'm not sure which), and that same part - on 'cello or upright bass alone - precedes the electric bass's coming back in. I played that string part on my keyboard with a fake string setting because I don't have either of those instruments.
I listened to Colin Blunstone's Ennismore to-day because according to Russo's Collector's Guide, it was released in the U.K. to-day in 1972.
For awhile I'd be aware that I'd totally forgotten the chords to "Andorra," so I re-learned those (and wrote them down!), and I also learned the guitar tremolos.
This is only about the first third of the song because the sections repeat.
I was just playing through "Whenever You're Ready" (just for the sake of it), and I discovered some odd features about the bridge.
First, I discovered that there's an ascending chromatic phrase in the chords:
(A, C, E)
(E, G, B)
(F, A, C)
(Bb, D, F)
(D, F#, A)
(G, B, D)
The bridge is the optimistic part of the song, looking forward to change ("You've gotta treat me in a different way"), and that rising chromatic phrase seems to confirm that musically.
But then I realized that it starts with an A minor chord. I think this is a fairly common feature of songs - the bridge goes to the relative minor. In this case, it goes from C major to A minor. So it's weird that the major sections (the verses) have the sad parts ("I've been hurt like this before," "I've cried like this before," et cetera), and the minor section (the bridge) has the optimism.
On Thursday, I played through almost all the bass parts on Odessey and Oracle (the bass part in "Brief Candles" is too short, and I don't know the bass part for "Friends of Mine" yet), and I realized that I've been playing part of "Beechwood Park" wrong. During the "And I can't forget you, won't forget you, won't forget those days" part, there are pairs of bass notes ("notes" as in "pitches") for each chord, but when that part is repeated, there's only a single note (played twice) for the first two chords, and no notes for the last two.
Because I had that wrong, now I'm worried that there are other parts of this that are incorrect. In listening to the recording, I noticed a higher organ note, so I think it plays a third (B, D#) during the introductory phrase and then that 4th-to-3rd transition (B, E to B, D#) along with the guitar.
I should also note that some of the organ phrases are incomplete.
For whatever reason, I got thinking about "A Rose for Emily" this morning, and I realized that there's a descending chromatic phrase in the chords. However, since the chords are really difficult, I'm not sure of the extent of that phrase. It's at least four notes: G F# F E.
In any case, there are few interesting things about this:
1. It's an-other instance of a chromatic phrase in one of Argent's songs. Usually, they're three-note phrases, but this one is longer.
2. As a descending chromatic phrase on Odessey and Oracle, there's some connection between this, the backing vocals during the choruses of "Maybe after He's Gone" (chromatic from E to C#), and the bass part during the verses of "This Will Be Our Year" (chromatic from A to E). Descending chromatic phrases are a feature that's present in multiple songs and give the album a coherence.
3. It doesn't fulfill the definition of a lament bass (it might be a perfect fourth, but it's certainly not from the tonic to the dominant, and it's not in the bass, rather it's sort of hidden in the chords), but as a descending chromatic line, it fits with that tradition, and so do the lyrics of "A Rose for Emily."
A few days ago, I realized that the bass parts for the verses of "Just out of Reach" and "I Love You" are quite similar:
Standard disclaimer that the notation might be wrong since I did it myself. I guessed at the keys, although I'm more confident that "Just out of Reach" is in A major (that's what it resolves to at the end) than I am that "I Love You" is in A minor. I should also note that the phrases repeat*, but I've included only four bars of each. The phrase for the verses in "Just out of Reach" is only two bars, so that one's there twice.
Both phrases are comprised of the same four notes in the same order (A C D E), save for a C at the end of the phrases in "Just out of Reach." I didn't realize this until I notated them, but each measure starts with the same rhythm too - a dotted quarter note and then an eighth note.
I looked up the recording dates to get the chronology right: "Just out of Reach" was recorded on 2 March 1965, and "I Love You" on 8 July 1965. "Just out of Reach" is a Blunstone song, so I'm unsure how involved Chris White was in coming up with that bass part. It seems that either that bass part may have provided some inspiration for him to write "I Love You" (since the bass part for the verses of "I Love You" is basically an expanded version of that in "Just out of Reach") or both bass parts just illustrate his style of bass playing really well.
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*I'm a bit unsure whether the phrases in the verses of "I Love You" really repeat or not because I can't tell if there are two verses of eight lines or four verses (in pairs) of four lines each.
When I wrote this post about the Picardy third in "Time of the Season," I was dimly conscious of the Picardy third in "Butcher's Tale," but then I got thinking about them some more and I realized that they're pretty similar in that the Picardy third comes at the end of a section, and that section is just repeated to make up the song. (This might not be strictly true of "Time of the Season" because that section changes a bit for the organ solos. The basis is fairly similar, but I don't think that Picardy third is there because there aren't any vocals.) In any case, those similar structures are an-other feature that gives the album a coherence.
Also, because I'd been oblivious to that Picardy third for so long, I thought, "What other things am I missing!?" So I was thinking about the album and looking at the lyrics, and I discovered something about "Brief Candles."
There's a great feature in the parallel phrase in the third line of the first verse: "To realize that she was strong and he too weak to stay." There are two clauses (as objects of "realize") here: "she was strong" and "he too weak to stay." That second clause doesn't have a verb of its own; it's only understood through that parallel structure and taking the verb from that first clause. So: "she was strong and he [was] too weak to stay." The he is sort of a parasitic pronoun in that it has to use the verb from the other clause; like the person it refers to, it's weak.
I just read this interview with Chris White (which actually has some errors in the introductory section; it seems like every recent interview or press release I've read had at least one error), and he talks about the phrasing in "Time of the Season" that Argent and Blunstone had an argument about.
While I've heard that story many times, I don't think I knew what phrase in particular was problematic. White says it's "When love runs high." And that got me thinking that 1) "high" has a melisma and 2) the second syllable of "high" is a higher pitch than the first, so the meaning is reflected in how it's sung. I figured out the notes for that part, it's only a whole step (A to B), but it's still a higher pitch.
I figured out a bit more of the vocal melody, and I discovered that there's a Picardy third at the end of the verses (it's the last syllable of "loving" in "It's the time of the season for loving"). "Time of the Season" is in E minor, and the "loving" is sung to the phrase G, G#. So the Picardy third (that change from minor to major by raising the middle note of the triad) corresponds to the "loving," as if love is changing the key of the song.
I was thinking about "I Know She Will" last night/this morning because it's the last song I learned a part for, so that's what I've been focusing on lately. I got thinking about the "go"s in the recurring line "No matter where you go." There's a really wild melisma on it; the one-syllable word is broken up into something like four or five syllables (this is why I haven't had a go at doing vocals for that; I don't think I could pull it off). But the erratic nature of that "go" sort of helps to emphasize the line's meaning. No matter if you go to various places (like the flighty pitches in the syllables of that melisma'd "go"), "She'll be for you."
I listened to Still Got That Hunger this morning, and I think it's great (even better than I expected). This is just a note to say that I'm intentionally going to avoid talking about the album for a while (probably around a year) just because I want to be able to listen to it and enjoy it without feeling the need to analyze everything and start figuring out parts already (I'll get to that eventually). I also want to avoid feeling like I'm forcing people to pay attention to certain things and think about them a certain way before they've had a chance to become familiar with the album for themselves.
One thing I noticed that I will briefly mention is that this is different from previous Zombies albums in that there isn't a song where Argent has all of the lead vocals. Begin Here had "I Got My Mojo Working;" Odessey and Oracle had "I Want Her She Wants Me;" and Breathe Out, Breathe In had "Show Me the Way." I remember an interview where he said that he always saves one song for himself to sing, but I guess there are exceptions (like As Far As I Can See).
