I've tried doing my own version of "A Love That Never Was" a few times, and I always got hung up on the first note of "Thinking of a love that never was." Or, as it appears in other instances, "Memories of a love that never was."
I figured out yester-day why that note is so difficult: it's a C and the rest of the song up to that point is in A major. That C is an accidental.
I didn't realize it until writing this post, but that C kind of throws out the key that Rod Argent had been using. In a way, that C transforms the song from A major to A minor - sort of the opposite of what Chris White does in "This Will Be Our Year." But the rest of "A Love That Never Was" doesn't really even follow A minor. Because, after that, the chord progression is weird. It's something like D Dm A / B Bm / A Am / E. And, to some degree, that constant key shifting musically illustrates the despair about the titular love that never was.
I'm going to start posting some more analytical things here too, besides just my trying to figure out how to play the songs. Because often in learning how to play the songs, I discover other interesting things about them.
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A few months ago, I noted that "Hung up on a Dream" and "I'll Call You Mine" both start with a falling fifth (from D to G).
For whatever reason, I was thinking of this last night, and I realized that "She's Not There" also starts with a falling fifth, in the bass part. Although that's E to A.
The falling fifth was something that Robert Schumann apparently used often and in reference to his wife Clara. Rod Argent listened (and probably still does listen) to a lot of classical music, but I don't know if Schumann's falling fifths are where he got the idea to start those three songs with falling fifths (or if he listened to Schumann at all). I'm sort of disposed to think not because they don't function in the same way. Argent's falling fifths start the pieces with something of a jolt. But I think the connection is still worth noting.
Last time I did a version of "Beechwood Park," I thought it sounded weird because "I played a B major on guitar and an E note on the organ, and they don't go to-gether." (This is why I didn't play those guitar chords when I did a rough version of the whole album in January.) That specifically was not the problem. I was right in thinking it's not a B major, but the problem I had in December was that erroneous B major conflicting with a G note, not an E.
In any case, I was playing some Zombies songs last night, and "Beechwood Park" came up on shuffle on my practise playlist, and I just happened to play a G major where I had that trouble spot, and it worked.
And then later I felt really stupid because the chord progression in that section is Em D C G, which is a really simple (perhaps even over-used) chord progression, and had I realized that I already had third fourths of it, maybe it wouldn't have taken so long to get that G major.
Also, I fixed some tempo problems in the "summer world" section. I had been coming in too early with the partial organ chords. Still, this particular recording isn't as tight as I'd like it to be.
The little organ parts I added as a rough approximation don't seem to go with the rest of the parts, so I guess that's the next thing to work on with this song. Although I think the bass part follows the organ part through half of the song, so maybe that would be easier to learn first.
