I said I wasn't going to post a version of Argent's "Dance in the Smoke" because my voice isn't suited for it, but I am anyway (without vocals though). I know less of the solo than I thought I did.
It's a bit sparse in the "I recall it was too tall / To see the flames grow high" parts but whatever. Also, I'm pretty sure that the chords aren't played on guitar in the original, but I find it helps to figure out the chords before working on specific parts.
I recently figured out the opening guitar part and the chords for Argent's "Dance in the Smoke," and I tried recording a rough version this afternoon, but - like so many other songs - it's one that is not in my range/not suited to my voice.
And since - without vocals - the only interesting part would be the guitar solo (which I know only half of), I'm not going to post a version.
I think I've learned the bass part for "She's Not There." I've known most of the verses and the little riff that bridges the first two verses since the end of June, but then I got stuck.
But I was playing through it to-day, and I think I've figured out the part for the "Well, let me tell you 'bout the way she looked" parts.
I learned a bit more of the opening organ part from "Rejoice" to-night. I don't know the bass accompaniment for this new part yet, so some of the melody sounds a bit weird. You can kind of hear how I'm hesitant to hit a few notes at the end; I think they're right, but they sound weird without the accompaniment.
I was just playing around on guitar when I discovered the first interval in Argent's "Rejoice," which is actually just an octave. So then I figured out the first phrase.
I'm really excited about this because the opening (and closing) organ part in "Rejoice" is one of my favourite pieces of music.
I was just playing around with guitar chords (because 50/90 starts soon, and I don't really have any ideas), and part of what I played sounded familiar. I figured out it was the first part of "Losing You" from the neglected New World album, so I just figured out the rest.
This definitively defeats my proposition that all suspended chords in the Zombies repertoire revolve around A major, as this includes both Dsus4 and Gsus4. In fact, Dsus4 is the first chord.
I also mess up somewhere, but since this is just the chord progression and is pretty boring just on its own, I didn't particularly feel like going back to re-record it correctly.
While going through and tagging all of the posts with the relevant song titles, I discovered that I'd learned the bass part to Argent's "I Am the Dance of Ages," which I had pretty much completely forgotten about.
The bass part by itself is pretty boring and doesn't sound like much, but here it is anyway!
I just went through all of my posts and tagged the relevant song titles and then linked to those tags in the catalogue. Not only will this make it easier to keep the project up to date (in fact, it removes all work on my part), but it also provides a look at the process of learning the songs.
I was playing bass along with "This Will Be Our Year" yester-day, not particularly trying to play the right notes, but then I realised that I was, and it was super easy.
And then a few hours later, I realised how brilliantly simple the bass part during the verses is. (That's the only part I know for bass so far.) The chords are in A major (I think), but the bass part during the verses is chromatic on the twelve-tone scale! Without those chords, the bass part would sound simple and boring. It's the combination of the two that's brilliant I made a chart:
I belatedly realised that C#m is actually C#, E, G#.
The bass part goes straight from A to E without skipping a single note, but all of the notes that it plays are contained within the chords, so it doesn't sound weird.
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This is just the piano and the bass part for the first half. (I apologise for playing it too quickly. I was excited.) Then it goes into a key change, which I didn't include because I haven't practised it at all. I also do the final piano part, but since I didn't do the key change, it's half a tone too low. Also, it's purposely mixed weird in order to make it easier to hear the twelve-tone chromaticism of the bass part.
A further also: this is the piece that taught me how to roll chords.
I figured out most of the mellotron parts for "Care of Cell 44." The only ones I'm missing are in the bridge. And again, I played them on melodica. (I feel I should admit that it was mostly by watching Darian Sahanaja's hands on the Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert DVD that I learned this.)
This is just the bass part and most of the mellotron parts, so it's a bit empty. I didn't even include the first half of the first verse because there's no bass or mellotron part in it.
Stripping this down to just a few instruments really demonstrates how Rod Argent wrote the parts integrally. During the verses, the bass part is pretty chromatic around the G major scale. It breaks off at F#, but the voices resolve it.
