"Hung up on a Dream"

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A couple days ago, I was thinking about the backing vocals in "Hung up on a Dream," and I realized something about the phrase to which "Gentle love" is sung:

(It's sung in falsetto, so it might have been more accurate to notate it an octave higher, but then there's a mess of ledger lines.)

The first two notes have the same rhythm and pitch as the first two notes of the mellotron part at the beginning of "Changes," which just happens to be the next track on the album (after flipping the vinyl, of course):

Although the songs are in different keys, those phrases' having the same rhythm and tonality is just an-other element (albeit a small one) that gives Odessey and Oracle a kind of cohesion.

"Don't Cry for Me"

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The Decca-era song I lookt into last week was "Don't Cry for Me."  I wrote out the bass part and put the guitar chords above the staff:

The guitar part has this little lick during the first two measures:

The tildes (~) indicate glissandi.

According to what I figured out, the bass part is usually the root note of whatever chord it's beneath (with the notable exception of a D note underneath an F major, essentially making an F major 6th [although writing it out made me question my accuracy there]), which is why it's so baffling to me that in The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream (p. 138), Claes Johansen says that the song is "driven along by Grundy's excellent drumming and Chris White's increasingly innovative bass-playing."  I think Chris White's a great bass player (although I'm obviously biased), but I have to say: this isn't the most interesting bass part.

"Call of the Night"

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I'd actually forgotten about this, but two weeks ago I learned the bass part for the verses of "Call of the Night."  The bridge is still giving me some problems.

At the beginning of the year, I started looking into one of the Zombies' Decca-era tracks every week, either trying to learn an-other part or write down parts I already learned before I forget them.  For "Call of the Night," I notated as much of the bass part as I know (I'm missing only twelve measures!), and I wrote down the chords.

"It's Only Money, Pt. 2"

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A couple months ago, I learned the recurring phrase in "Money (That's What I Want)" (although I have to admit that I'm familiar with only the Beatles' version on With the Beatles).  A little over a month ago, I realized that it has some musical similarities with the opening guitar figure of Argent's "It's Only Money, Pt. 2."  I remember reading somewhere that the Argent song was based on "Money (That's What I Want)" (although I'm not sure how authoritative that claim is), so it really wasn't that surprising to discover those similarities.

The phrases are similar in two different ways.  First, there's the rhythm.  Here's (most of) the figure in "Money (That's What I Want)":

In every other measure, there're three eighth notes, a quarter note, and then three more eighth notes.  The phrase in "It's Only Money, Pt. 2" has the same rhythm in every other measure too (it begins on an up-beat, so it's not in the first measure, but it is in measures 3, 5 and 7):

The second similarity is a three-note chromatic phrase.  In "Money (That"s What I Want)," there's the phrase G, G#, A:

In "It's Only Money, Pt. 2," there are the phrases B, A#, A (followed by a G# in one instance, making a four-note chromatic phrase) and G#, G, F#:

While those aren't the same groups of notes and while they go in different directions, pitch-wise, both songs do have three-note chromatic phrases.

"Tell Me How"

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Yester-day I learned the chords and bass part for Buddy Holly's "Tell Me How," which is one of the songs that Colin Blunstone covered on Planes.  I've listened to Blunstone's version only twice, so I don't want to go straight into analysis, but I did reference it enough to say with some confidence that it's a half-step above Holly's original key (Bb major instead of Holly's A major).

"Be Glad"

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I'm not sure it's really worth posting, but here's the notation for the tubular bell part at about 6:00 in Argent's "Be Glad."  I've been notating some things recently (partially to practice my notation skills and partially so that I have some record of parts if I forget them), and this one seemed easy.

This might be a bit grandiose, but I also feel that by preserving these parts in notation, I'm acting as something of an archivist for these songs.

I don't think the whole song is in G major, but this part fits into it nicely:

Rod Argent

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Rod Argent around 1980, found on page 59 of Rock Hardware on Google Books.

Counterpoints / Moving Home

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For Christmas, I got vinyl records of Argent's Counterpoints and Rod Argent's Moving Home, so now I'm pretty sure I have the complete catalogue of both (although Rod Argent has done guest appearances on a lot of tracks and albums by other artists).  I've listened to both only once so far, but here are my initial thoughts and comments:

• John Verity sings more leads parts on Counterpoints than he did on Circus (actually, I'm not sure if he sings any leads on Circus), and he sounds a lot like Russ Ballard, which is interesting because Verity (and John Grimaldi) joined Argent around 1974 since Ballard left.
• One of the songs on Counterpoints (I'm pretty sure it was "Rock and Roll Show") references Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
• It seemed that a lot of the songs on both albums mention memories, dreams, and home, which wasn't very surprising since a lot of the earlier Rod Argent-related songs have those same themes.
• There's a greater degree of synth parts on both too.  On Moving Home, there's a picture of Rod Argent with a Minimoog (which is probably the only synth I'd recognize by sight), and the credits also list the Yahama CS80 (which I've heard of because it's also listed in the credits of some Electric Light Orchestra albums).
• I'd seen a picture of the record sleeve for Moving Home, which has all of the lyrics, so I knew that "Home" is the same song that's on Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows, but I was surprised to find that "No. 1" on Moving Home was later re-recorded (solely on piano) and re-titled "Sea Picture No. 1" for Rod Argent's Classically Speaking album.

At some point, I'm going to make vinyl rips of the albums, so that listening to them is more convenient.  But I'm probably going to do the same thing I did with Still Got That Hunger and just take a year to familiarize myself with them.

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I also got a sustain pedal for my keyboard, which means I can start going through my piano books again.  I started going through them over the summer, but I ran into difficulties when both of them wanted to teach me how to use the pedal.  I didn't have one to learn how to use.

I also got a few other related albums:  a vinyl-reissue of Bill Evans' Portrait in Jazz, which I wanted because Rod Argent's mentioned him in some interviews; Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which I plan on listening to a lot next year; and a set of John Lee Hooker, although it doesn't include "No One Told Me," the song that Rod Argent took the first line of "She's Not There" from.

"Just a Little Bit"

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I've been looking into bass parts recently, so I wrote out the notation for "Just a Little Bit."  In doing so, I discovered that I was wrong about the bass part during the organ solo.  I'd thought the notes get progressively shorter, but it's actually just that they become more frequent.  What I thought were whole notes and half notes are actually just quarter notes.

I should also mention that I'm not quite sure about the time signature change at the end.  But I knew that if I didn't write down something, the notation I'd already done would just languish unfinished.

For much of this, the guitar just doubles the bass, just an octave higher.

"If It Don't Work Out"

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Last week, I was thinking about the rhythms in the bass parts of some Zombies' songs (ones written by Rod Argent, specifically).  I plan to write a lengthy post about them, but for now, here's the notation for the bass part in "If It Don't Work Out," which is one of the songs I was looking into:

"Without Her"

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Yester-day I listened to a Harry Nilsson compilation album.  The bass part for "Without Her" (which Colin Blunstone covered under his Neil MacArthur pseudonym) sounded easy, so I just figured that out (while simultaneously notating it [it's still incomplete, but I have at least one instance of each section written down]).  I just referenced the Neil MacArthur version and discovered that while that bass part is more complex, at least it's in the same key.  Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what key it is, but I would guess A minor because there aren't any accidentals.

"Never My Love"

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Verulam Cover Project:

I happened to hear the Association's "Along Comes Mary" on the radio this evening, and it reminded me that - hey! - the Association is a band I like (although I have only one album and it's the compilation The Association's Greatest Hits!).  Later I tried figuring out some parts to "Everything That Touches You," which is one of my favorites by them, but I didn't have any luck on it.  But then I tried "Never My Love," and I ended up getting all of the chords (although I'm sure not all of them are actually played in the song; some are implied or something like that).

And that's relevant for this project because Colin Blunstone recorded a cover of "Never My Love" under his Neil MacArthur pseudonym (although - honestly - I prefer the Association's original; the opening string part in the Neil MacArthur version strikes me as over-dramatic).  As far as I can tell, he uses the same chords as the Association, but his version is a half-step higher, which I'm grateful for.  The Association's version is in Db major, which is one of the most difficult keys (because it has five flats); a half-step higher is D major, which is much simpler (because it has only two sharps).

I noticed that going into the bridge ("How can you think love will end…"), there's a modulation from I to III, which is unusual (there's a accidental in that second chord that makes it major instead of minor).  However, that same change is also in "Friends of Mine."  ("Butcher's Tale" has a III to V modulation, and because "Butcher's Tale" is in a minor key, I think that's comparable, although I'm out of my depth here.)

Anyway, now that I know the chords, it should be easier to figure out some other parts.

I spent some more time verifying these as I wrote them down, and I discovered that I was missing two chords, one of which is sort of significant with regard to the I to III modulation I made so much about above.  I'd thought it was just Db major to F major (or D major to F# major in the Neil MacArthur version), but there's actually an Fsus4 (or F#sus4) in between there.  In the Neil MacArthur version, those middle notes (B to A#) are actually sung in the backing vocals as "ah"s.

So, it's still something like I to III, but there's that interstitial chord there (that I don't know how to simplify into the Roman numeral convention).