"Pure Love"

This is just a small point about "Pure Love."  One of the lines starts with "Lovely lady," and I realized that this has both alliteration and internal rhyme.  Combined, these poetic effects help to portray that "lovel[iness]."

All Together Now

I recently listened to Argent's All Together Now a couple times and found some things to write about.

"Hold Your Head Up"

After the organ solo, starting at about 4:24, the titular "Hold your head up" is sung to this melody:

(I'm still not sure whether "Hold Your Head Up" is in D major or D minor, but this part fits more readily into D minor since there's an F natural.)

First of all, the melody here ascends, so there's a musical portrayal of "up."  More interesting though, this is something of an inversion of the famous phrase that opens Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.  Here are the first few measures of the string section:

(notation found here)

Like Beethoven's phrase, the phrase in "Hold Your Head Up" consists of three notes of one pitch followed by a single note of an-other pitch.  Although the phrases are going in opposite directions, the phrase in "Hold Your Head Up" even uses the same notes as the second phrase in Beethoven's opening:  D and F.

Musically, it's flipped, and the mood is flipped too.  The opening of this Beethoven symphony is often used in television and films to convey foreboding.  In contrast, "Hold Your Head Up" is a song about encouragement: "And if it's bad, don't let it get you down / You can take it."

"He's a Dynamo"

I still can't make out many of the lyrics in this, but I noticed that the line "Smoke risin' high from his strings" ascends (I think it's F# G# A A# C# D# F#), so there's a musical representation of the "risin'."

"Pure Love"

"Rest your head / Waiting you lie / For tomorrow you die" resembles part of Isaiah 22:13: "'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'"  "For tomorrow you/we die" is the same at least.

"Pure Love: II. Prelude"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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As promised, here are the guitar and bass parts to (a very small part of) "Pure Love."  This is actually a bit more than I had when I first mentioned having figured out part of it a few days ago.  There's a bit more to the bass part before this section repeats (albeit with a different organ part on top of it), but it goes quickly, so I'm having trouble figuring it out.

"Pure Love"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Back in January I listened to Andrew Bird's Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs for my Collection Audit project, and I thought the guitar part at the beginning of "Banking on a Myth" sounded like a phrase in Argent's "Pure Love" - the organ phrase at the beginning of II. Prelude.

I finally got around to checking that, and - while I still think it's just coincidental - they're very similar.  The phrases are different lengths, but the first halves of each are pretty much the same, except for the keys and some note values.

In any case, in re-learning that organ phrase (I learnt it [or sort of learnt it] back in 2014), I also learnt the bass and guitar parts that go under most of it.  But I won't get to recording and posting that for a few days because I still have these historical recordings to get through and then the riff from "Play It for Real."  But, coming soon: rhythm parts for "Pure Love: II. Prelude."

"Pure Love"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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A tiny bit of Argent's "Pure Love."  (A very tiny bit, considering the whole song is about thirteen minutes.)

This just popped into my head, so I figured it out.  (Although first I had to figure out what it was.  For a few minutes, I wondered if it was a song by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.)  I had to adjust the second part a bit because, in my head, the second part was just a repetition of the first.  Surprisingly, when I figured it out by memory, I was in the right key - G minor.

I think I may have figured out the bass part too, but I'll save that for later.