"Leave Me Be"

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And so the time has come again where I record a batch of songs starting on the anniversary of their original recording (the 51st, in this cast).  Incidentally, I've neglected to mention that I tagged most if not all of the anniversary posts with "zchronology," and I'll continue to do that as I add more (I queued the September dates to-day).

I started with "Leave Me Be" because I already know most of it.  I played just chords for the organ part because I haven't learned it exactly yet.  In recording this, I also discovered a D note in the bass that I'd been missing, so I made a little bit of progress after all.

"Imagine the Swan"

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Last night, I looked into "Imagine the Swan" some more.  I think I've got the guitar parts from the second stereo version.  I had to split the track to hear them more clearly (in the left channel), and I don't think I'd ever really noticed them before.  And they're great!  It's a good example of my appreciating a song more once I've learned to play it (because otherwise I probably would have continued on in ignorance of those parts).

I think I had a chord wrong, but now that I've changed it, it still doesn't sound right.  I played the bass part a little differently too, but I’m still not convinced that it’s super accurate.

Also, I must amend what I wrote yester-day.  "Imagine the Swan" isn't a Rod Argent song; it's a Chris White song.  It shares that descending bass starting with a 7th chord and the Bach influence, and it's sung by Rod Argent, so naturally, I thought it was written by him too.  I looked it up in the Zombie Heaven liner notes whereby I discovered my error.

The liner notes also say that "it featured the personnel of the soon-to-be named Argent: Russ Ballard on guitar, Jim Rodford on bass and Bob Henrit on drums."  The Zombie Heaven version doesn't include those extra guitar overdubs, so because Ballard is credited there, I'm wondering if there are other guitar parts that I'm still unaware of.

"Imagine the Swan"

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I recently went through some old songs I recorded, and I found the harpsichord introduction to "Imagine the Swan" that I did almost two years ago.  I got thinking about it, and - from what I remembered - the bass part seemed pretty easy.  "Seemed."

Still, I made a lot of progress on this.  I have a very rough version of the bass part, and I think I learned the chords.*  The harpsichord part in the middle is different from that at the beginning, but they have the same structure, so I just played the introductory phrase again because I don't know the actual middle part.

I also learned that, like a few other Rod Argent songs, this uses a 7th chord to start a chromatic descent in the bass part.  It's during "So it was with surprise…" and later "So I let you walk by…."

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*Originally, I put a parenthetical there saying, "If they are played on guitar, they're really low in the mix," but then I went to verify this and discovered that while the version I used as a template for this (the first stereo mix included on an Odessey and Oracle reissue, which is also the one on Zombie Heaven) doesn't have guitar at all, a second stereo mix on that Odessey and Oracle reissue has overdubbed guitar and organ.  I should have referenced that before I started learning the parts.

Still Got That Hunger

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The cover for the Zombies' Still Got That Hunger (out 9 October) via Rolling Stone.

The article talks a bit about recording Odessey and Oracle too.

"Beechwood Park"

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I wrote out the guitar parts for "Beechwood Park" to-day, and then I started doing the actual notation of the guitar and bass parts (I wrote out a whole page, which is only about half of the song, but the structure repeats, so it won't be too difficult to finish it).

I noticed this interesting rhythmic part just after "About your world, your summer world..." and again after "All roads in my mind...."  Except for that two-beat rest (during which the G major chord from the previous measure might still be sounding), the guitar plays quarter notes when the bass plays half notes and half notes when the bass plays quarter notes.  So there's this rhythmic alternating, which I hadn't noticed before (even though I often play these two parts together on piano).

"You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me"

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Lest I forget anything, I've been writing down some parts.  To-day I wrote down the chords and a few of the guitar parts for "You've Really Got a Hold on Me/Bring It on Home to Me."

Because I started doing this same type of project for the Beatles' catalogue (with even less of a chance of ever finishing) and the Beatles also recorded "You've Really Got a Hold on Me," I compared the two versions, even though Rod Argent explains in the Begin Here liner notes that "even though the Beatles have recorded it," the Zombie version "follows the Miracles original rather than the Beatle version" (although the Zombie Heaven liner notes seem to complicate this: "Though the Beatles had recorded ["You've Really Got a Hold on Me"] for their second album the previous year, the Zombies based their arrangement of this classic Smokey Robinson tune on that from The Miracles Recorded Live On Stage, where it incorporated part of Sam Cooke's equally timeless 'Bring It On Home To Me.'").

Anyway, I discovered first of all that "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" is in 3/4, which I hadn't realized.  But - more interestingly - the Zombies' version is in the same key as the Beatles' version (A major), where Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' original is in C major.  I don't own The Miracles Recorded Live on Stage, but I found it on Amazon, and the 30-second sample proves that the live version of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" is in C major too.  Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me" is also in C major.  So while the original versions of "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Bring It on Home to Me" are already in the same key, the Zombies changed the keys of both.  Since it wasn't necessary to change the keys so that they could join the songs and since the key they did change it to is the same key that the Beatles did it in, maybe there's some Beatle influence there after all.

"Whenever You're Ready" b/w "I Love You"

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According to Russo's Collector's Guide, fifty years ago to-day (16 August 1965), the Zombies' "Whenever You're Ready" b/w "I Love You" (PAR 9786) was released in the U.S. and Canada.

I Love You

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Like I mentioned earlier, I listened to I Love You this morning, and I noticed a few other things:

The backing vocals in "How We Were Before" sing the chromatic phrase that's in the chords.  I don't know how I missed it before.  Also, I'd never thought about this before, but the bongos that Hugh Grundy used on "How We Were Before" are probably the same ones that he later used on "Changes" from Odessey and Oracle.

The guitar phrases in "You Make Me Feel Good" have glissandi.  I'd sort of been playing the second (the G# to A) that way, but the first is (I think) D# to E, not just E.

I haven't really figured out either, but the organ parts for "Leave Me Be" and "Sometimes" seem to have a bit of a relation.  Specifically, a three-note phrase that starts on the fifth of whatever chord is being played.  Both have a D major chord above which there's a A, B, C, B, A, B, C, B sort of figure.  I'm not extremely confident on that though.

At the end of "She Does Everything for Me," someone (I think it's Rod Argent) sings along to the last guitar phrase, and I realized that it's the same thing that he does at the end of "Indication," except that's with the electric piano part.

"Goin' out of My Head"

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I listened to the I Love You album this morning because I felt like listening to late Decca-era Zombies.  I noticed the vibes part in "Goin' out of My Head," and I thought, "That's only, like, three notes; I can figure that out!"  It's five, but I still figured it out.  The fake vibes setting on my keyboard sounds like hollow plunks rather than a scintillating waver, but I can't do anything about that.

I also figured out the rest of the bass part (although I might have a few notes in the wrong rhythm) and a very small part of the horn part (I think it's trumpet), which - since it's doubled on piano (in the first verse at least) - I played on piano.

In learning how to play the parts, I split the stereo track from The Decca Stereo Anthology.  It's mixed sort of oddly in that the left track is the vocals and the overdubbed session musicians (vibes, brass, and some percussion [I don't think I ever really noticed the timpani]) and the right is the vocals and the Zombies' normal instrumental ensemble.  It results in some parts of the left track that are more or less a cappella, which is really interesting to listen to.

Planes/Never Even Thought

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I was just looking up Colin Blunstone on Amazon, and I discovered that Planes and Never Even Thought are being released on CD on 4 September!  I haven't heard either of these, but I am very excited!  Apparently, Planes includes a version of "Care of Cell 44" too.

"Let Me Come Closer to You"

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Last night I figured out the guitar part and at least most of the trumpet solo for "Let Me Come Closer to You" from Colin Blunstone's One Year album.  I tried using the fake trumpet setting on my keyboard, but it sounded terrible, so I used melodica instead.

I'm not sure of the last phrase in the solo or the specific voicings of the chords, but I'm pretty sure the rest is right.

"Though You Are Far Away"

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Because I'm a completist, I listened to One Year a few days ago so that I listened to all of the Colin Blunstone albums I have within two weeks.  While listening to it, I remembered that at one point I'd figured out a few notes from the beginning of "Though You Are Far Away."  To-day I figured out the rest, so now I have the whole introduction.

I did this on piano because I don't own a harp, so it's more like the re-recorded version on On the Air Tonight (which I used as a template) than the original on One Year.

I feel like I should note the rubato in the original; it's not my being inconsistent in speed.  Also, I recorded the two hands separately because while I can sort of play the two parts at once, I can't play them together at that speed.

"Once around the Sun"

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After listening to Nexus to-day I figured out the piano part at the end of "Once around the Sun."  It seems like I'd been close to figuring it out a few times before, so it's good to finally know it (although I still have some doubts about the accuracy of the fourth phrase).

It would have been too difficult to match the tempo of the original recording (the piano is the only instrument playing, and it's pretty fluid as far as time signature), so I didn't use it as a template, which is what I usually do.

I also included a D note at the end, which seems to resolve it, although I don't think it really comes until the very beginning of "Infinite Wanderer."

Nexus

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I just listened to Argent's Nexus as the first album in my new listening schedule, and I noticed two things:

There's extensive alliteration in the second chorus of "Music from the Spheres":

Music from the spheres assails my ears 
It stills a season's song

I mention this only because that effect seems to provide extra emphasis to a song that's about music itself.

In "Thunder and Lightning," there are bass parts that mirror the lyrics that they follow.  After "There are times when you feel so good / That the only way to move is down" in the first verse, there's a downward phrase, and after "You play the game, and you just can't lose / And you're walking with your feet off the ground" in the second and third verses, there are upward phrases.

"Maybe after He's Gone"

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Back in late April/early May, I noticed a few things about "Maybe after He's Gone," and I'm finally getting around to writing about them (after this post has already been sitting in my drafts for almost three weeks).

I'm pretty sure that I've previously noted the descending chromatic phrase in the backing vocals during the choruses.  After reading some of the Wikipedia article on lament bass, I'm not sure if it perfectly applies here, but as a chromatic descending phrase, it does provide an impression of sadness, which gives a melancholic edge to the lyrics.  That descending chromatic figure questions the hope in "Maybe after he's gone / She'll come back / Love me again."

I'm fairly sure that the verses are in E minor and the choruses in A major.  So that descending chromatic figure works against the lyrics, but also against the relative happiness of A major (compared to E minor, which - as a minor key - is usually perceived as sad).

Yet there are also an ascending chromatic phrase in the piano part during the choruses (after "Love me again"), which I don't know how to reconcile.  Maybe there's a conflict between optimism (characterized by that ascending chromatic phrase on piano) and pessimism (characterized by the descending chromatic phrase in the backing vocals).

Incidentally, those ascending chromatic phrases are almost identical to those in Argent's "Christmas for the Free."  "Maybe after He's Gone" has A B C C#, and "Christmas for the Free" has A B C C# D (of course, the A isn't part of the chromaticism, but it's in both phrases).  The rhythms are different, but the notes are the same.

"Hung up on a Dream"

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Yester-day I got to thinking about the bass part in "Hung up on a Dream."  Since 27 January I've been meaning to get around to saying that it changes keys.  It ascends in either E major or B major*, but it descends in G major.

But what I got thinking about yester-day was the shape of the phrase:

It doesn't work out this way in the notation** because visually G# and G natural are on the same line, but audibly, between the key change and the melody itself, there's a sort of hook.  There's the ascending phrase in either E major or B major, and then the next note (G) is the first in G major and a semi-tone lower than the last in the ascending phrase.  Plus, the rhythm changes, so that G note sticks out rhythmically and tonally.  It sounds angular, almost as if it's a hook on which the titular dream is to be hung.

I'm not sure if any of that's making sense, but if nothing else, I finally got around to mentioning that there's a weird key change in "Hung up on a Dream."

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*There are at least four sharps, but the phrase doesn't go high enough to play an A or A#, so I can't tell if it's E major or B major.

**I just used accidentals instead of putting in key changes because I don't know how to use my software and it's intended for programming MIDI, not for notation.

"Mary Won't You Warm My Bed"

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I felt like figuring something out to-night, and since I've been focused on Colin Blunstone's solo albums recently, I decided to figure out something from One Year.  It's the only one of the five Blunstone albums I have that I haven't written about or figured out a part from in the last month or so; I haven't even listened to it recently.

After a failed attempt with "Caroline Goodbye" (I still know only two chords from it), I figured out the chords for "Mary Won't You Warm My Bed."  I should note that as far as rhythmic accuracy, this is horrendous.  I couldn't even maintain a consistently wrong rhythm.  But the tonality is right… I think.

"I Want Some More"

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Two days ago (which was actually the day after I listened to Ennismore), I figured out the guitar chords for "I Want Some More."  There are only four, which was a surprise.  I figured out the vocal melody too, and I played that on guitar.  Some of the phrases don't match up exactly with the original recording, but it's close enough to give an idea.  The melody is really great, and I think having it makes my recording a lot more interesting.  It would be been pretty boring if I had just the chords.

The guitar part (in some places at least) is doubled on acoustic.  I doubled the whole thing, which might not be strictly accurate.  And I might be playing the rhythm wrong too.  I'm really bad at copying rhythms exactly.

Still, with all that said, I'm really pleased with how this turned out.