"Gotta Get a Hold of Myself"

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Apparently, this is only the second time I've recorded "Gotta Get a Hold of Myself" too.  I haven't learned any more of this, but I corrected a few errors.  I'd thought that a section of the bass part was just a scale (which I erroneously claimed was a "chromatic" descent when I last recorded this, before I knew what "chromatic" really means), but it doesn't complete the scale.  Instead of going to C and repeating, it goes to G and then starts over with C.  It's the kind of thing that notation would explain better than text does, and it doesn't help that this song has sections in multiple keys (C minor, C major, and E major, I think).

I also had the rhythm wrong with a section of the guitar chords.  I don't usually pay as much attention to strumming rhythm as I probably should, but this was something easy to fix.  I'd been continuously strumming throughout the second half of the verses ("I talk to you as though you can hear what I say…"), but it's actually two strums per chord in that third line and three per chord for the first half of the fourth.

I added some arpeggios to the organ chords in that same section (where the chord progression alternates between Bb major and Ab major).  I'm not sure that's strictly accurate, but the organ part is more than just straight chords, and doing it this way makes my recording a bit more interesting to listen to.

The guitar part for this is just chords (which I'm pretty confident I've figured out correctly), so I plan to post them in a couple days.

"Indication"

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For the last couple days, I've been working on the guitar part in "Indication."  Previously, I knew only the five-note phrase at the end, but I've made a lot of progress.  I'm pretty sure on the chords, but the second half of the introductory phrase feels off.  I think it's entirely double- or triple-stops, but I can't figure them all out, so I have a couple single notes.

I also made a bit of progress in the opening organ part; I have the bass register now.

"She Does Everything for Me"

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I've gotten into the habit of playing the backing vocal part from the chorus in the bass register of the electric piano part (the "And now I know" is prominent), which I don't think is particularly accurate, but which makes this more interesting to listen to.

I'm not sure that my tambourine part is exactly accurate, although the tambourine's dropping out for the third chorus is correct.  I don't know why it's that way on the original recording.  A couple times when I was playing it, I forgot that the chorus repeats there, so maybe whoever played tambourine forgot too and then they just didn't go back to fix it.

"I'll Call You Mine"

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Because I learned the bass part for it about a month ago, I decided to start with "I'll Call You Mine" from the four songs the Zombies recorded fifty years ago to-day.  I attempted the vocals too, which sort of buried the bass part, but whatever.  I was surprised to find that this is only the second time I've recorded "I'll Call You Mine" for this project.  The last time was in 2013.

I'm sure I don't have Rod's harmony part right, and I think there's an-other vocal part I'm missing during the "I'll call you mine"s during the choruses (so I just doubled the one I knew).  The piano part is just a pale representation of what it should be too.

Still, I thought this turned out fairly well, considering my voice isn't as good as any of theirs.

Recording Session

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According to The Decca Stereo Anthology liner notes, fifty years ago to-day (4 May 1966), the Zombies recorded "Indication," "I'll Call You Mine," "Gotta Get a Hold of Myself," and "She Does Everything for Me."

Unlike the previous Zombies sessions (all held at Studio No. 2 at Decca West Hampstead), these were recorded as Lansdowne Studio.

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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When I was learning the bass part for the demo version of "Summertime" last week, I started paying attention to the backing vocals.  The backing vocals in the demo version are actually more complex than those in the final studio version, but I found something interesting that's present in both.

I figured out and notated (I think correctly) the backing vocals for the studio version:

It occurs to me that "backing vocals, second verse" is sort of superfluous because there aren't any backing vocals for the first verse.  You might be able to see a bunch of eraser marks because the higher range of treble clef still gives me difficulties in notation; I had to re-do all of this because I did it wrong the first time.

What caught my attention here is the melody in the first four bars (the repeated E F# G# F#).  This sounded familiar because a very similar melody is in the backing vocals for "I Want Her She Wants Me":

Again, the "backing vocals, second verse" is superfluous because the first verse has no backing vocals (which is a similarity in itself).  Also, I'm not certain of the quarter rest or bottom harmony here; I might be misconstruing the harmony with the bass part.

Starting in the third measure, there's the phrase E F# G F#.  They're half notes where the phrase in "Summertime" is whole notes, but that and a half step (G instead of G#) are the only differences, even though "Summertime" is in A minor and "I Want Her She Wants Me" is in G major.

The more I got thinking about this, the more I started to convince myself that "Summertime" was floating around Rod Argent's head as he wrote this (even if it was just a subconscious influence).  I found some (admittedly slight) lyrical similarities too.  The first line of "Summertime" is "It's summertime, and the livin' is easy," and "I Want Her She Wants Me" has some similar lines in "I sleep so easy" and "And life seems kind now."

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, "I Want Her She Wants Me" was "written and demo'ed by the band almost a year prior [to its recording] in September 1966."  Rod Argent was certainly thinking about "Summertime" when he was writing "Time of the Season," since he's admitted in interviews that "Who's your daddy? / Is he rich like me?" is a nod to "Your daddy's rich, and your mama's good-lookin'" in "Summertime," but "Time of the Season" seems to be one of the last songs written for Odessey and Oracle, with some accounts of Argent still working on it the morning before it was recorded, so I'm not sure how convincing that is as evidence.

"Are You Lonesome Tonight?"

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For my Collection Audit project, I'm listening to The Essential Elvis Presley.  In the spoken part in "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," there's a reference to Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage" from As You Like It:  "You know, someone said that the world's a stage and each must play a part."

This reminded me that there are references to that same line in "A Moment in Time" from the Zombies' Breathe Out, Breathe In and "Circus" from Argent's Circus.

"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" is from 1960, so it's after the Elvis period that Rod Argent really likes (he said that in the first three years, Elvis' voice was "transcendent").  (I think one of the Beatles said that after Elvis was in the army, his music wasn't as good, which seems to be the same position that Argent takes.)  It's unlikely then that this Shakespeare reference inspired the same Shakespeare reference in these Argent-related songs, but I still think it's interesting that - despite how "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" is after that revered Elvis period - it has that same reference in common.

"Summertime" [demo version]

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To-day in 1964, the Zombies recorded a demo of "Summertime."  As far as the parts I know, it's pretty much the same as the version they recorded at their first Decca session on 12 June.  The electric piano solo is longer, and Paul Atkinson's guitar sounds more electric than acoustic (he used the same guitar for most of the Decca sessions, but he had an electrified acoustic guitar, so he could get different sounds out of it).

While learning the bass part during the solo, the backing vocals caught my attention, and I discovered some really interesting things about them (specifically, how they seem to have influenced a later Zombies song).  In order to write about that properly though, I need to work on some notation, so it'll be a few days before I get around to it (plus I still have things that I noticed when I recorded my annual Odessey and Oracle that I need to write about).

Also while learning the bass part during the solo, I discovered I had one part wrong in the studio version.  I think a fair bit has been written about its being in 6/8, but I think it's actually in 3/4.  In any case, the rhythms seem like they would be relatively easy to notate, so at some point, I'd like to do that too.

"I Want Some More"

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I updated what I know of "I Want Some More"!  When I listened to Ennismore recently, I discovered that I had a few notes wrong in the bass part.  I had the wrong rhythm for one part, I was completely missing an A note, and an-other A note I had in the wrong octave.  I also discovered that the acoustic and electric guitars are double-tracked for each channel.  So there's acoustic and electric panned left and acoustic and electric panned right.

Like last time, I recorded only the first verse, but these same elements are repeated later in the song.

"Changes"

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I mentioned a week ago that while recording my annual Odessey and Oracle I learned the bottom harmony part to the chorus of "Changes."  I finally got around to notating it so that I can talk about it (and a few other things).

I'd realized before that the lead vocal for the chorus is almost exactly the same as a line in the mellotron part that opens and closes the song (it's two bars shorter and omits the F# whole note that's sustained under the B C B phrase because you can't sing two notes at once).  This is where the notation becomes useful.  The top two lines are the mellotron part (I notated each hand separately, but it wasn't until after I scanned the notation that I realized that the left hand should have been in the bass clef, so I'll have to fix that sometime).  The third line is the lead vocal, and the fourth line is the harmony vocal.  (I haven't figured out the high harmony part, so I couldn't notate it.)  Obviously, the opening mellotron part and the first chorus don't take place simultaneously, but notating them in the way I did makes it easier to see the similarities between the one mellotron line and the lead vocal.

This is way too many words to make a simple point, but between the opening mellotron part and the first chorus, the supporting harmony changes, so the title of the song is represented musically.

The three-note phrase at the end of the opening mellotron part is also changed later in the song.  It remains on mellotron, but instead of

it becomes

It's still a G A B phrase, but the rhythm changes, and the whole phrase is a measure shorter.

While recording this for my annual Odessey and Oracle, I also noticed that the finger cymbals for the last chorus are used more sparingly, so there's an-other change.  At some point, I should really just notate the song in full, but I still don't know the high harmony vocal or the extra piano part (which - incidentally - is an-other musical change within the song).

"You Must Believe Me"

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I haven't recorded "You Must Believe Me" before (because I didn't know any parts), and I still don't know many parts.  I'm pretty confident about this guitar part (which is only three pitches), but that's it.  I'm dubious about the bass part, and while I think I learned the chords, I can't even approximate a correct rhythm, so I left them out entirely (I think it's just B, E, and F# though).

I've mentioned before that I have a Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions anthology, which includes the original version of "You Must Believe Me," and I plan to listen to that sometime in the next few weeks.  Hopefully hearing the original will be enlightening.

Ennismore

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Collection Audit:

This morning I listened to Colin Blunstone's Ennismore.  I noticed a couple things about two songs, but since they're not major points, I'm putting them in the same post. 

The first thing I noticed is in "I Don't Believe in Miracles."  After the line "I believe I was your game, your ball" in the lead vocals, the backing vocals echo, "Your ball."  There's something of a glissando on that "ball" though, so the pitch is raised as the word is sung, which anticipates the next line in the lead vocals: "If you threw me up, then I would fall." 

The other thing I noticed is that in "Andorra" after "rain" in the line "But down the mountains came the rain to soak our head," there's a guitar part that seems to represent raindrops.

Some notes on Ennismore from my Collection Audit project.

An-other thing I noticed when I listened to the album this morning is that I have a few notes wrong in the bass part for "I Want Some More," which I'll get to correcting in a few days.