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).
I was thinking about "Beechwood Park" this morning, and I had an idea about the rhyme scheme of a few lines. Incidentally, I recently re-worked my transcription so that the line breaks are more accurate, so my older posts with quotations aren't right.
Anyway, I was thinking about the lines "And the breeze would touch your hair / Kiss your face and make you care." The "hair"/"care" rhyme works well in these lines because "the breeze" is the subject and a breeze is moving air (the "hair"/"care" rhyme simplified as "-air"). So there's a hidden sort of wind in the rhyme, and it's also in the actual lyrics.
I'm probably thinking about this too much, but there might be something to it.
Last night I figured out the flute parts for the overdubbed version of "I Know She Will." I've known the three-note phrase at the end for a long time already. The other parts just double existing parts from the Decca-era recording: the vocal part during the verses (which I think is Argent) and the guitar solo.
I used the fake flute setting on my keyboard because I don't own and don't know how to play a flute... yet.
I had to re-learn sections of the bass part for this, so I should probably write that down so I'll still have it if I forget it again.
Also, I discovered that I had an E note in the wrong octave in the guitar part, and I think there's an Esus4 that I was missing.
I think Mike Vickers played flute for the overdub, although I did some research and couldn't find anything to confirm it. He's credited with the arrangement though, and the Zombie Heaven liner notes say that he played flute on "Smokey Day," which - along with the overdubs to some of the Decca-era material - was recorded in December 1968. So it's pretty likely that it is Vickers.
According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (20 September 1965), the Zombies recorded "If It Don't Work Out," "Whenever You're Ready," "It's All Right," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and "When the Lovelight Starts Shining through Her Eyes" for "Saturday Club." The show was broadcast on 2 October.
I was playing through "The Way I Feel Inside" yester-day, and I discovered that the BACH motif is in the melody of the vocals… sort of.
(disclaimer that since I did the notation myself, it might be wrong)
I'd noticed before that there are three pairs of half-steps at the end of the first two sections (the "I want to say to-night"), but yester-day, I realized that the "to say to-night" pairs of half-steps have the same intervals as the BACH motif. It's D C# E D#, not Bb A C B, but it's still the BACH motif!
I'm not sure whether Argent consciously inserted that or whether it's just subconscious influence, but it's really exciting to find such a strong connection to Bach.
