A couple days ago, I wrote out the bass part for "Brief Candles." When I lookt at it again yester-day, I realized that the rhythm in the bridge is similar to the rhythm of the bass part in the bridge of "Care of Cell 44."
Here's the bridge in "Brief Candles":
I'm not sure what key the song is in, but I put the notation in A major.
Here's the bridge in "Care of Cell 44" (excepting the last measure):
In the bridge of "Care of Cell 44," some of the notes are tied across the bar lines, but otherwise, the two parts have mostly the same rhythm. This similarity lends a bit of cohesion to Odessey and Oracle even though "Care of Cell 44" was written by Rod Argent and "Brief Candles" was written by Chris White.
I'd previously noted the sort of parallelism in the line "Walk in the light of day and talk the night away" in "I'll Call You Mine," but early last month, I was thinking about this again and started wondering if these phrases were also parallel musically. I'd forgotten about this until recently, but yester-day, I figured out the vocal melody for the first two verses in order to investigate this.
The two halves of the line begin the same way (G# A B), and the last few notes of each, while not exactly the same, trace a diatonic descent (F E D and E D C), so there is a bit of musical parallelism that matches the sort of parallelism in the lyrics.
I was also struck by how much of the melody occurs on the off-beats, and I think this may be significant in light of the lyrics. The second verse (repeated as the third verse) ends with the line "I was afraid to try to call you mine," and this delivery that comes just after the beat seems to indicate the narrator's hesitancy and reluctance.
Here's the bass part for "I'll Call You Mine," with the guitar chords written in above the staff. There are eight measures of a piano introduction before this, but I didn't include those in my notation. Of course, there's also the disclaimer that I may have something wrong.
I recently wrote out the bass parts for a couple more Zombies songs, and I finally got around to scanning them to-day. Here's the bass part for "Is This the Dream," although - as always - there's the disclaimer that I may have something wrong:
I recently re-learned Mike Vickers' flute overdub for "I Know She Will" and notated most of it:
At the end, there's a three-note phrase (C# B A), but I'm not exactly sure where in the measure this starts (since the rest of the instruments drop out before then), so I didn't notate that.
It's worth pointing out that in the solo, the last G note is a half note in the flute part but two quarter notes in the guitar part. I think the solo is also doubled with French horn, which is actually easier to hear than the flute.
I'm not sure this was really worth doing because it's so short, but here's the Hohner Pianet solo in the Zombies' "I'll Keep Trying." The guitar plays basically the same thing, just an octave higher and articulated slightly differently (there are some glissandi between the notes, and the C in the third measure is held longer). For a bit of context, I also included the bass part.
Earlier this week, I wrote out the bass part for "How We Were Before." In doing so, I discovered a couple notes I'd been playing wrong and also an odd measure of 6/4 at the end of the verses (the last measure in the second line). As always though, there's the disclaimer that I may have something wrong.
Last week, I wrote out the notation for the bass part in "Whenever You're Ready." I noticed before that writing notation forces me to pay closer attention to parts, and while writing out this part, I discovered a significant contrast between the verses and the bridge.
For most of the verse, the rhythm is two dotted quarter notes and two eighth notes:
(Many other Zombies songs feature a similar rhythm, including "I Can't Make Up My Mind," "Tell Her No," "I'll Keep Trying," "If It Don't Work Out," and "Time of the Season," although some of these substitute a single quarter note for the two eighth notes.)
The bridge retains this rhythm for the first half of each measure, but the second dotted quarter note is often tied to a regular quarter note (although the program I used to make this notation tied an eighth note to a half note instead):
There's a contrast between the rhythms of these two sections, and this mirrors the lyrics in the bridge: "But if you call me / You've gotta treat me in a different way" (my italics). To some degree, this difference is even emphasized because some of the pitches occur in the same order (E F Bb, in the tenth to twelfth measures in the verse and in the second to fourth and eighth to tenth measures in the bridge), making the contrast a bit more obvious.
Here's a scan of the complete notation, with the disclaimer that I may have something wrong:
I wrote out the bass part for the soundtrack version of "Remember You" years ago, but recently, I did it again. My intent was just to make a better looking copy, but in comparing my old notation to the recording, I discovered that I had some notes in the wrong octave. What I have now is more accurate, although there's still the disclaimer that I may have something wrong.
I recently wrote out the bass parts for some Zombies songs, which I'll be posting over the next few days. As always, there's the disclaimer that I may have something wrong. Here's "She's Coming Home":
I squeezed in the last four measures so I didn't have to use a second piece of paper.
I recently re-learned the bass part for "Woman" (I'm in the midst of notating it) and found an old post on this blog where I'd written down the guitar and organ phrases (albeit just with note letters and I misidentified the organ as electric piano). A couple days ago, I realized that since the guitar and organ play the same two-bar phrase, just starting at different points, they form a very simple canon:
My notation shows just four measures, but obviously, these phrases continue.
Earlier this year, I was thinking about the Hohner Pianet solo in the alternate take of "Nothing's Changed" (available on the third disc of Zombie Heaven), and I realized that most of it is triplets. I re-learned it, notated it, and made this short demonstration of it. The Vox Continental part, which I included in the audio but didn't show in the video, is the same except for an arpeggiated A major at the end. On their own, the two keyboard parts sound a bit odd; for some context, I also played the guitar chords. I used The Zombies Greatest Hits, published by Alfred, as a basis, but I didn't follow exactly what the book has (because I don't think it's entirely accurate). I played C major | C major 7 | D minor 7 | E minor | F major | G major | A major. Of course, there's the standard disclaimer that I may not have this entirely accurate either.
A couple months ago, I dug out my old notation of the bass part in "Can't Nobody Love You" (which I wrote out in 2015). Recently, I made a better copy of it and even found some errors to fix (I had an F in place of a C, and I had the last two notes in the wrong octave). The standard disclaimer that I may have something wrong still applies, though.
I started the notation where the bass part starts, and I wrote the chords in above the staff, but because the bass part doesn't start at the beginning of the song, there are a few chords that aren't written in. For the guitar solo, I put just a single measure of rest with a fermata. I don't know the proper way to deal with a section like that, and this is the best I could come up with.
Partially because I felt I should be doing more on this project and partially because I've been doing these sorts of videos lately, I made a video about the Mellotron flute part in "A Rose for Emily," which actually wasn't used in the final version.
I played the Mellotron part and the piano part on my Nord Electro 5. For the piano, I used Nord's Steinway sample. I intentionally mixed the piano part a bit lower than I normally would have so that the Mellotron part is easier to hear.
The Mellotron occurs only in the second and third verses, so that's all I included (also because I don't know the piano part for the entire song). For the piano part, I referenced a book published by Alfred (The Zombies' Greatest Hits), although I didn't follow exactly what that has. As always, there's the disclaimer that what I have may be wrong.
A couple weeks ago, I re-learned and notated the bass part in "She Loves the Way They Love Her," specifically the version that appears on Into the Afterlife.
What I have now is more accurate than what I had before, but I still wouldn't guarantee complete accuracy.
*These two notes are played as Cs in the recording, but based on previous sections, they should actually be Bbs. A bit of dissonance between the bass and the piano can be heard there in the recording.
Last month, I re-learned and notated the bass part for the single version of "Remember You." As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong:
Rather than use a second piece of paper for only a handful of measures, I squeezed together a few at the end.
Recently, I've been re-learning some parts that I never wrote down and have forgotten. Last night, I re-learned and notated the bass part for "The Way I Feel Inside," and I thought I'd post it here (appropriately, on Chris White's birthday).
The bass plays only in the last section of the song, and there's a ritardando at the end.
I was working on some notation for a different project when I remembered that two weeks ago, I scanned the notation for the bass part in "The Look of Love," which I'd finally finishing writing down a couple weeks before (and a year and a half after I originally learned it).
As always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong. I'm a bit unsure of what octave some of the notes are in and of those two measures that - apparently - have only two beats rather than four (I'm not sure how that works).
Yester-day I listened to the second disc of Zombie Heaven in order to listen to the Decca era songs to which the Zombies added overdubs in December 1968. The French horn part in "Walking in the Sun" sounded easy to figure out, but while I was figuring that out, I discovered that I'd forgotten all of the other parts I'd learned for the song and that I hadn't written them down.
I re-learned the guitar part pretty easily, and in comparing it to my old recordings of the song, I discovered that I'd been missing a few things. There's a little phrase in the transitions from C major to A minor, and I'd missed an F minor.
Here's my updated recording, with (fake) French horn, guitar, and electric piano. I'm sure the electric piano part isn't that accurate; mostly I included it to fill out the sound a bit more and to demonstrate the Hohner Pianet sound I can get on my Nord Electro 5.
I notated the French horn part. At the beginning of each verse, it's:
And then it doubles the title phrase (note that this is repeated):
---&---
Here's the guitar part, a combination of tabs and chords.
The third time through, the song fades out during this repeated section.
Bridge
A minor | C major
A|---3---0-|
E|-3---3---|
A minor | F major | F minor
B|:-5-5-3-5-5-5-:|
G|:-5-5-5-5-5-5-:|
Repeat from the beginning of the verse
---&---
There are C majors under:
B|-5-5-3-5-5-5-| G|-5-5-5-5-5-5-|
and F minors under:
B|-6-6-5-6-6-6-| G|-5-5-5-5-5-5-|
---&---
As I mentioned above, in my previous recordings, I'd missed the guitar phrase in the transitions from C major to A minor. I'd like to point out that in one transition from a C major to an A major in "I Don't Want to Know," Paul Atkinson plays this same phrase (albeit an octave lower).
