"Hold Your Head Up"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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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.