"I Must Move"

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Last month when I wrote this post about the major-to-minor modulations at the ends of the verses in "I Must Move," I purposefully neglected the third verse:

Take a good look at yourself and at me
Turn right around, open-eyed you will see
When this day is through, I'll be leaving you

I'd been unsure of what exactly the last line was because in the liner notes to both The Decca Stereo Anthology and Zombie Heaven, it's mentioned that the original title was "I Believe in You," which doesn't sound all that different from "I'll be leaving you," specifically the "be leaving" and "believe in."  (I think I even misremembered the original title as "I'll Believe in You.")

But now I'm pretty sure that the lyric is "I'll be leaving you," which works better with that modulation than "I believe in you" would.

"Tell Her No" b/w "What More Can I Do"

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According to Greg Russo's Time of the Season: The Zombies Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (29 January 1965), "Tell Her No" b/w "What More Can I Do" was released in the U.K. (F.12071).

An EP titled "The Zombies" ("Kind of Girl," "Sometimes" / "It's Alright with Me," "Summertime") was also released in the U.K. (DFE 8598).

"He's a Dynamo"

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Last night, I figured out the chords to Argent's "He's a Dynamo."  (Although I think I had most of them one other time.  It's not that unusual of a chord progression.)  The thing is: there isn't much of the song that's just chords; the parts are more complex than that.  So until I figure out some more parts, I don't think I'll record a version.

"Don't Go Away"

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I knew I'd done a version of "Don't Go Away," but I hadn't realized how long ago it was (June 2013).  Since then I've learned that it's actually on twelve-string guitar and that there's a third vocal phrase at the end that I'd been oblivious to.

I still don't think my voice is particularly suited to this (it's too low for a lot of the Zombies catalogue), but this is better than the previous version I did.  I actually did the backing vocals this time (although I guessed at a few harmonies), and I got to use my tambourine again.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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The night after I wrote that post about baroque-influenced trills in "Butcher's Tale" and "Beechwood Park," I realized that I'd totally forgotten about the solo in "Hung up on a Dream," which is also pretty baroque.

There are two parts to the solo: the first is played by both guitar and mellotron and is one phrase that's then repeated an octave lower (I don't think the mellotron drops an octave though); the second section is more contrapuntal between guitar and mellotron.

The phrase in the first section of the solo starts with an extended (but moderately paced) trill between B and C.  In the second section, the guitar phrases start with the same sort of three-note trills that I mentioned earlier: E D E, C B C, C# B C#, F# G F#.

There's an-other extended-but-moderately-paced trill after the solo, during the lines "Until I woke up only finding everything was just a dream" and "That gave me peace and blew my mind / And now I'm hung up on a dream."  That's between B and A with a G thrown in at one point.  The melody of the lyrics follows it there too.

After I realized that I'd neglected that, I remembered that Rod Argent even talks about the baroque influence on "Beechwood Park" and "Hung up on a Dream" (specifically naming Bach) on the BBC Mastertapes program (at about 13:15).

"She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44"

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At the beginning of the year, I started two more of these types of projects where I foolishly try to learn every part to every song (one for the Alan Parsons Project and one for the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and SMiLE [and maybe other albums eventually]).  On Saturday, I got to thinking about tonic chords and the lyrics that accompany them (I wrote this post about "nice" and the tonic chord in "Wouldn't It Be Nice").

Thinking about how the tonic chord is the "home" for whatever key the song is in brought me to the Zombies' common theme of home.  So, naturally, I started thinking about the lines that contain "home" and how/if the tonic chord relates, and "She's Coming Home" and "Care of Cell 44" were the songs that came to mind.

I've compared these before, and "Care of Cell 44" seemed to come out on top, but as far as the relationship between the tonic chord and instances of "home" in the lyrics, "She's Coming Home" is actually better.  In the lead vocals, "home" appears only in the chorus:

But she sent word to me
She's coming home
And so I'll cry no more
I'll dry my tears
She's coming home to me
She's coming home to me

It's in the backing vocals once - in the line "Baby, come on home" after "Well, I remember how I loved her so" in the lead vocals in the first verse.

Each time "home" appears in the lyrics, the accompanying chord is E major - the tonic chord.  During the chorus, the chord progression rises to that E major, emphasizing the return.

In "Care of Cell 44," the word "home" appears only in the chorus (if, indeed, it is a chorus; it's only one line, after all):

Feels so good you're coming home soon

There are multiple chords beneath it, but none of them are the tonic (G major).  It starts on E minor (the submediant and relative minor), then holds out through D major (the dominant), and then C major (the subdominant) before the "soon" comes in on B minor (the mediant).

Like the imperfect rhymes that the mellotron emphasizes and the nostalgic and subjunctive elements in the bridge ("We'll walk in a way we used to walk / And it could be so nice…"), the lack of the tonic chord's accompanying "home" in the lyrics seems to indicate that there's something off about the relationship described.

There are other instances of "home" in the Zombies' lyrics, but these two songs are the only ones I've looked into so far.

Trills

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On Friday, I got thinking about "Butcher's Tale," specifically the trills between the third and fourth verses (between "And cover up the boy" and "And the flies come down in Gommecourt, Thiepval").  I still don't know the music for the end of the verses that well, but I do know those two trills.  They're C# B C# and A G A.

Sunday night, I realized that there's a trill of sorts in the bass part too.  Most of the bass part is the recurring phrase D F E D.  But when the chords change (at first alternating between D minor and G major but then going up to F major), that descent starts, only to be interrupted.  The bass part then follows the ascending chords, resulting in the trill F E F.  It roughly corresponds to "but the king's shilling" in the lyrics.

One of my musical projects for this year is to listen to one of Bach's orchestral suites everyday, so I've been thinking about them a lot and realized that those same sorts of trills are in the third movement (at the beginning of the second gavotte) of the third suite (in D major, BWV 1068):  D C# D / F# E F# / A G A / D.  (I've been listening to the first suite lately, but I'd looked up the notation for the third last fall because I'd thought those trills contained the B-A-C-H motif.  They obviously don't.)

On Saturday, I listened to Bach's third partita for solo violin, and I found a similar phrase (also in the gavotte), which I wrote about here.  Essentially:

A section of the guitar part in "Beechwood Park" (F# E F#) bears some resemblance too.

I'm highly dubious that the Zombies took those particular trills from Bach's orchestral suite or partita, but it is a specific musical element that shows the baroque influence present on Odessey and Oracle.

Additionally, there's a trill in the introductory organ part for "Hold Your Head Up."  (I think it's between G and F#.)  It's actually easier to hear in live performances, like the one on Live at Metropolis Studios, where you can see it.  Or even the performance that KEXP uploaded.  I think that that trill more closely resembles the actual definition because it lasts for a longer period of time.  The other examples I've given are just three notes.

"Pleasure"

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I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands on 2 January, and a few days later, I got thinking about a part of "Pleasure."  At first, I'd thought that it contains a phrase in the piano part that's similar to phrases in "Hung up on a Dream" and "Keeper of the Flame."  I've written about the connection between those two before.  I didn't really want to say anything about it until I could figure it out though, which took awhile.  And actually, I figured out only that phrase, so I'm just writing about it instead of posting an audio example.

I'd thought that it was similar to "Hung up on a Dream" in that it was part of a rising scale followed by a descending half-step (the same sort of thing that "Keeper of the Flame" has), but it's actually just the rising scale part that's similar.  That part of "Hung up on a Dream" is in B major (or at least the bass part is; the guitar part is in G major, except for an E major chord [before writing this post, I hadn't noticed that the bass and guitar were in different keys]).  There's a key change after the solo, but that's not important as far as the similarity between these two.  From what I've figured out so far, "Pleasure" is in E major.  But the rising diatonic phrases in both use (most of) the same notes, which isn't too surprising as B major has only one more sharp than E major.  The phrase in "Hung up on a Dream" is B C# D# E F# G# G.  In "Pleasure," it's B C# D# E F# G# A and then back to E.

I'd thought it sounded similar because of a descending half-step (which isn't even in there), but actually they sound similar because they're mostly the same notes.

"Kind of Girl" and "Beechwood Park"

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In thinking about certain musical elements that tie together the songs on Odessey and Oracle, I remembered that "Kind of Girl" from early in the Zombies' career bears some resemblance to "Beechwood Park."  (It's not a unifying musical element specific to Odessey and Oracle, but I think it's interesting nonetheless.)  I discovered this when I learned the chords for "Kind of Girl" in September, but I neglected to mention it then.  In any case, both songs have the same descending chord progression - Em, D, C, G.  "Kind of Girl" includes a B major at the end of the progression too, to complete the phrase.

Those chords aren't unusual at all.  In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page about these chords and their various permutations.  Incidentally, much of "Time of the Season" uses these same chords (albeit in a different order) in the same key.

But, like a lot of other Zombies songs, there are some weird key changes in "Kind of Girl" and "Beechwood Park," and even those are sort of similar.  Both are mostly in E minor, but "Kind of Girl" veers into Bb during the bridge ("But more of that another day…"), and a section of "Beechwood Park" ("All roads in my mind…") is in Eb.  Bb and Eb are adjacent in the Circle of Fifths.

These same sorts of key changes (that is, changes to keys that are distant by three or four places in the Circle of Fifths) are present in "I Must Move," "I Want Her She Wants Me," and "Care of Cell 44."  I mentioned that here, although I have to correct what I said about "Care of Cell 44" - at the end of every other phrase in the verses, it changes from G major to Bb major, not to Eb major.  I got confused because the two flats in the key of Bb are Bb and Eb.

Like I've mentioned before, I don't know that much about keys and tonality.  Aside from what I learned in a semester of beginner piano four years ago, I'm completely self-taught as far as theory goes.  But I think I have this right.

I knew that Chris White wrote "Beechwood Park," but I couldn't remember who'd written "Kind of Girl."  I was surprised to find that it was Rod Argent.  Their writing is similar at times, but these chord progressions and key changes were so similar that I thought they would be from the same writer.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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As a sort of recompense for having neglected "Maybe after He's Gone" for so long, I've been looking into it some more.  I learned the rest of the melody for the vocals (I think I've done this for only "Maybe after He's Gone" and "The Way I Feel Inside," but I should really do this for other songs too), and in doing so, I found some interesting things.

The melody during "her smile, her tears" first goes up (G to C) to portray the smile and then down (G to E) to portray the tears.  Interestingly, the "her" is on a G note both times, and I think that that consistency makes this work even better - both descriptions have the same starting note, so the difference between them is… well, somewhat easier to notice.

In the third verse, the melody is slightly different.  The melody that accompanies the lines "As the night folds in around me / Night surrounds me; I'm alone" is more compact than the corresponding section in earlier verses.  The phrase as it appears in that verse contains notes between C and A, but in the other verses, it's between C and the C above (an octave).  The shortened span of the melody kind of imparts "the night fold[ing] in" and "surround[ing]."

At the end of each verse, the melody rises from a G to a G# (the minor third to what's either an accidental or - more likely - a note in some other key), which has some interesting connections to the lyrics.  It's a weird-sounding change, and each of the lines that accompanies it deals with the alienation and loneliness present in the wake of the girl's departure.  There's "Turned to shadow when he came," "I feel life's gone from me," and "Night surrounds me; I'm alone."

I'm not even going to try to suss out the music theory behind that change because it's over my head.  "Maybe after He's Gone" is - at least mostly - in E minor (I think the choruses are in A major), but I'm fairly certain that that G-to-G# change doesn't indicate a modulation to E major (usually, I think it would), but beyond that….

Odessey and Oracle

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While recording my 2015 version of Odessey and Oracle, I kept finding more things to write about, so I just saved them for later.

I'll just go by track order.

I never remember when the mellotron comes in during the verses of "Care of Cell 44," so I wrote down on my arm the words on which it comes in:

It looks kind of funny because arms are not the best surface to write on, and my pen was giving me difficulties.

The last two verses have the same lyrics, but the mellotron comes in on different words the second time.  The first time, it comes in on "again" and "saved;" the second time on "have" and "train."  The whole verse:

It's gonna be good to have you back again with me
Watching the laughter play around your eyes
Come up and fetch you, saved up for the train fare money
Kiss and make up, and it will be so nice

After seeing those four words written out, I realized that they're pairs of imperfect rhymes - "again" & "train" and "saved" & "have."  I'm not sure if this was Rod Argent's intention either in 1) writing those particular pairs of words or 2) having the entrance of the mellotron emphasize them, but as imperfect rhymes they sort of provide the sense that the ideal situation that the speaker/singer is describing isn't going to work out.  This is also seemingly hinted at by the "could" in the line "And it could be so nice," which appears twice in the bridge.

Since 2014's version, I've learned some of the chords for "A Rose for Emily" (mostly from a book I have that has some sheet music for a few of the songs).  Knowing some of the chords has helped in correcting the bass notes I'd had.  And - if I'm right in what I have now - there's a Bachian sort of sequential half step.  C# to D and then G to F#.  I've mentioned multiple times that Rod Argent likes to use sequential half steps, but his are usually linked (the second note in the first pair is the first note in the second pair), but that's not the case here.  It's not strictly Bachian either, because one is a rising half step and the other is a falling half step (in the B-A-C-H motif, they're both falling half steps).  Still, I thought it interesting.

Apparently I've severely neglected "Maybe after He's Gone."  Before this year, I've mentioned it in only two posts.  So it's good that I have six things to say about it:

1. For the first time, I noticed how much of the music is chromatic and diatonic.  Excepting the chorus ("Maybe after he's gone / she'll come back / love me again") the chords are almost entirely diatonic, and there's a chromatic phrase (E to C#) in the backing vocals (it's most prominent at the end, when the instruments fall away).  Similar to Argent's imperfect rhymes and mellotron, I don't know if this is what Chris White had in mind while writing the song, but that predictability and steadiness of the diatonicism and chromaticism give the assurance that the singer/speaker seems to need so desperately.
2. There's an-other instance in "Maybe after He's Gone" of remembering - "I remember joy and pain."  I'm fairly certain that joy is present in some Zombies songs and more particularly in early Argent songs (like "Bring You Joy," obviously), but - again - I need to work on a lyrical concordance to investigate this.
3. "Maybe after He's Gone" also has crying!  The line after "I remember joy and pain" is "Her smile, her tears are part of me."  Later, there's "And all the dreams I'm dreaming now / Hide the tears that I cry."
4. And, of course, dreams: "All the dreams I'm dreaming now."
5. Along with the A, Bm, D chord progression that I mentioned earlier, "Maybe after He's Gone" contains an-other musical element that's present in some of the other Odessey and Oracle songs and that helps to tie the album together.  Specifically, high and insistent A notes.  During the chorus, these A notes are in the piano part (later, they move to B, then D, then back to A, to follow the chords, and then there's a chromatic phrase from B to C# [which is a good example of Rod Argent's type of sequential half step - B to C to C#]).  There are also high A notes in "Changes" (also on piano) and in "Brief Candles" (prominently on guitar, but I think also on mellotron).  The bass parts for "Care of Cell 44" and "Brief Candles" also contain high A notes at times (high for bass, at least).  Incidentally, both sides of the album start on A notes.  That is, both "Care of Cell 44" (the first song on Side One) and "Changes" (the first song on Side Two) start with an A note.
6. In checking the notes for that chromatic phrase, I learned how to play the melody for the lead vocals (just to see how the two parts go together), and I discovered a phrase that's also in the mellotron part in "Hung up on a Dream."  The melody that accompanies the lyrics "she'll come back, love me a[gain]" (just the first syllable of "again") is the phrase G# A B G# A B.  And if I have that section of the mellotron part from "Hung up on a Dream" right, that phrase (even repeated like that) is in the solo (at about 1:04).  Some of the note values differ, but not too greatly.

I have one other thing I noticed about "Hung up on a Dream," but I still have to look into that.

"A Rose for Emily" and "Maybe after He's Gone"

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I'm in the midst of writing up a post about more stuff I noticed while recording my annual version of Odessey and Oracle, and in fact-checking stuff against the recordings, I thought I'd discovered that "Maybe after He's Gone" has the same sort of cadential ending as "A Rose for Emily" (a fourth [A and D] to a major third [A and C#]), but I think it's actually a minor third (B and D) to a major third (A and C#).

Still, two sequential songs end with the same two notes.

Odessey and Oracle

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2015 Odessey and Oracle

Between last year's version and this year's, I think I've learned all the guitar parts and all the mellotron parts.

I have some more commentary things to say about this, but those will come in a later post.  (I have some stuff to research, and also typing is currently difficult because the fingers on my left hand are inextricably swollen.  I'm just glad I got this done while it was still somewhat manageable.)

Odessey and Oracle

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I feel like I've been posting a lot here lately, but I've had lots to say lately.

Yester-day I recorded the guitar parts for my annual Odessey and Oracle, and I discovered something.

I don't know if I've written a post about it specifically, but I think I've mentioned this idea I have about the coherence of the album - that part of it is just because the musicality of the songs is similar.

In any case, I found an-other instance of that.  I'd forgotten the chords for parts of "This Will Be Our Year" (I really need to start writing things down), and it took me awhile before I came up with them again (B, Dm, A).  Once I did, I realized that the same three chords (in a different order - A, B, Dm, A) comprise a section in "Maybe after He's Gone."

I think it's also significant that part of "Brief Candles" has the progression D, A, D, B.  That's D major instead of D minor, but I still think it belongs in the same group.  Besides, the D minor in "This Will Be Our Year" is later raised to a D major.

"Sweet Mary"

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I listened to Argent's Ring of Hands a few days ago, and the bass part for "Sweet Mary" sounded pretty easy, so I learned some of it.  I'm fairly certain that the keyboard part that precedes this includes at least part of this bass line, but I haven't tried it yet.

Interestingly, it's sort of the opposite of the bass part in "This Will Be Our Year."  At one point, this goes chromatically from E to A (ascending), where the bass part in "This Will Be Our Year" goes chromatically from A to E (descending).

Additionally, the rising chromaticism helps to musically portray the line "Take me higher."  Although, as "This Will Be Our Year" is a pretty optimistic song, I don't think you could apply the same sort of programmatic aspect to that chromatic bass line.  That is: just because it's descending doesn't mean that it isn't a happy song.

This is a new one in the catalogue, but I don't know enough of it to really feel satisfied yet.

"Time of the Season"

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Starting last year (which was shortly after I learned at least one part for every song on the album), I decided to record a version of Odessey and Oracle every year, so I could see how much I learned.

I just finished recording the bass parts for this year's version (which is all I've done so far), and I realized that I haven't played the bass part to "Time of the Season" since recording last year's Odessey and Oracle.  So I'm surprised I remembered it as well as I did.  Also, I learned a bit more of it.  Like I mentioned a few months ago, the bass part becomes more complex during the solo, and I'd been missing a few notes.

The Zombies

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I don't want to say that they're wrong about this (after all, it is their album, so they should know when it was released), but the book where I've been getting the dates for their releases (Greg Russo's Time of the Season: Collector's Guide) says that the LP came out in the U.S. on 8 February 1965.

And, actually, the picture they have there is the re-issued album from 1973.  You can tell by the catalogue number (PAS 71001).  The original album was PA 61001 (and in rechanneled stereo as PAS 61001).

"Be Free"

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After listening to Argent this morning, I learned some of "Be Free."  I'm most certain of the organ part in this.  The guitar part is pretty close, but some of the notes might be wrong, and I'm even less sure of the electric piano part (although I'm pretty sure the chords are right).

Oh, and this is a new one in the catalogue.  A good way to start the year.

Keats

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An-other one of the many CDs I got for Christmas is Keats' self-titled, debut, and only album.  Keats was a band in the mid-80s composed of Colin Blunstone, Pete Bardens, Ian Bairnson, David Paton, and Stuart Elliott.  I've heard it described as an Alan Parsons Project spin-off band.  Except for Pete Bardens, all of the band members were involved with the APP, and the album itself was produced by Parsons.

In any case, more songs to learn!  I didn't know this until listening to the album, but it contains what is apparently the original version of "Turn Your Heart Around," which Blunstone re-recorded for his somewhat-recent album On the Air Tonight.

Speaking of the APP…  I'd been unsure of what to do with the handful of APP songs that Colin Blunstone provided vocals for, but I recently started an-other blog that's virtually identical to this one where the object is to learn all of the parts to all of the songs by the Alan Parsons Project.  So those songs will appear over there (hopefully).  I'm sure it'll be a bit rough in the early stages because I don't really know any APP songs yet.

Argent

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I listened to Argent this morning and worked on transcribing the lyrics.  And I noticed some things.

In "Like Honey," there are some lines about flying:

So rise and learn to fly
Help the lonely hour of the night pass by
So rise and spread your wings
Help the lonely hour of the night begin

And then a few songs later, in "Be Free," there are more lines about flying:

If you're gonna spread your wings
And hear the song that freedom sings
Remember that I told you to be free
If you're gonna sweep the sky
And feel the wind come rushing by
Remember that I told you to be free

Both sets of lyrics are also pretty parallel structurally.

This might even bear some comparison to "Wings against the Sun" from the Zombies' 2004 album As Far as I Can See.  I haven't explored that yet.

On the second side, there's an-other instance of this - where the same theme is present in two songs - although it's not as strong a connection as that between "Like Honey" and "Be Free."  "Stepping Stone" has the line "I would gladly made you happy," and "Bring You Joy," the next song, has:

And I'll make you feel so happy
You could cry
Yes, I'll make you feel so happy
You will die

However, while those lines are sort of similar, the songs have different outlooks.

Additionally, I found some more instances of remembering, which is a major theme in Chris White's and Rod Argent's songs.  "Be Free" has the line "Remember that I told you to be free."  "Schoolgirl" (written by Russ Ballard) starts out with "Remember when you were a schoolgirl."  And "Stepping Stone" starts out with "Remember days when we were close and warm as night turned to dawn" and later has "Remember fresh and sweet the thought of summer ways, loving eyes, lazy day."  Those lines in particular connect "Stepping Stone" to the Zombies' "Beechwood Park," specifically the first two verses:

Do you remember summer days just after summer rain
When all the air was damp and warm in the green of country lanes
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Do you remember golden days and golden summer sun
The sound of laughter in our ears and the breeze as we would run
And the breeze would touch your hair, kiss your face, and make you care
About your world, your summer world
And we would count the evening stars as the day grew dark in Beechwood Park

Both refer to summer, warmth, and the day-to-night transition (although "Beechwood Park" is day to night and "Stepping Stone" is night to day).