Re-Establishment

About two years ago, I started a project in which the goal was to learn every part to every song on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and SMiLE albums.  I don't think I ever thought I would actually achieve this (and I still don't), but I thought it a worthy objective all the same.

I started this project on tumblr, but recently I've started to feel dissatisfied with it.  I felt I should have a cleaner, more professional-looking platform.  (I found some aspects of tumblr's interface less than ideal too.)  Initially, I went with tumblr only because I could directly post audio files of my own recordings of the songs, as a way to demonstrate that I had in fact learned the parts I said I had.  But I can achieve the same thing just with embedded YouTube videos.

So essentially, I'm jumping ship.  I'm going to continue doing everything I would normally do for this project, just on Blogger rather than on tumblr.  I'll be going back and copying my old posts over to this blog, so I'll have the complete archive, but it'll take a while to transfer everything.

"Wouldn't It Be Nice"

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Last night I figured out the mandolin tremolos in "Wouldn't It Be Nice."  I'm not sure how many mandolins are on the original track (although I suppose I could look it up), but I have four: two for each part.  I put some reverb on my recording, which I don't normally do, because - despite having played mandolin for six years - I'm not very good at tremolos.

"Vega-Tables"

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I knew it had been a long time since I workt on this project, but I was surprised (and a bit embarrassed) to find that the last time I recorded anything was in March.

A couple days ago, I figured out the bass register of the piano for the verses of "Vega-Tables."  I think I have the chords too, but I don't know the rhythm they're played in yet (and even if I did know that, I don't think I'd be able to play both hands together, at least not without a lot of practice).  I'm not sure of the specific phrasing either.

At the end of my recording, I added an extra E note (which isn't in the original) just to resolve it.

The Elevated Musical Consciousness of The Beach Boys

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"Good Vibrations: Gold Star 4/9/66" (from The SMiLE Sessions)

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Collection Audit:

Lately I've been listening to The SMiLE Sessions box set.  I listened to the fifth disc this morning, and I noticed that in the second track ("Good Vibrations: Gold Star 4/9/66") at about 1:03 before the next take starts, a guitar plays part of the melody from George Gershwin's "Strike up the Band."  It's the melody to which is sung: 

Let the drums roll out
Let the trumpet call
While the people shout
Strike up the band 

The final note (for "band") either isn't played or isn't audible (there's some other noise that occurs at the same time that might obscure it), but I was still very excited to hear and recognize this. 

Wilson's cited Gershwin as an influence, but I don't know if this quotation is anything more than just coincidence.

Here's an interesting but perhaps not very significant thing I discovered while listening to The SMiLE Sessions recently.

"Hushabye"

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Collection Audit:

I just listened to the Beach Boys' All Summer Long (the 1990s re-issue packaged together with Little Deuce Coupe and some bonus tracks).  I transcribed some of the songs (because my transcriptions of Beach Boys songs are frightfully scarce), and I noticed a couple things about the lyrics in "Hushabye," written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. 

The last two lines in the first verse are: "Guardian angels up above / Take care of the one I love."  I'd always understood the "Guardian angels up above" line as a vocative because there's a vocative in the preceding line: "Oh, my darlin', don't you cry."  The line break seems to further that reading too.  Consequently, the next line - "Take care of the one I love" - is an imperative. 

Listening to and transcribing the song now, I realized that it could just be a statement interrupted by a line break.  Instead of "Guardian angels up above, take care of the one I love," it's just "Guardian angels up above take care of the one I love."  Rather than the singer/speaker commanding the angels to guard his loved one, he's reassuring his love that she's being watched over. 

I'm most familiar with "Hushabye" via the Beach Boys' version, and I'm fairly familiar with Jay & the Americans' version, but the liner notes for the Little Deuce Coupe/All Summer Long re-issue mention that the original was by the Mystics.  I happened to have the notation for the Mystics' version (from 1959) in Hal Leonard's Essential Songs: The 1950s.  In those lyrics, there's a comma between "Guardian angels up above" and "Take care of the one I love," indicating that those lines are a vocative and an imperative: 

 

Both readings are grammatically viable though. 

(For what it's worth, while the notation here is in F major [and I'm assuming the Mystics' version is in F major too, since the notation is based on their version], the Beach Boys' version is in E major, and Jay & the Americans' is in G major.) 

The second thing I noticed is the phrase "dawn's early light" in the bridge:  "Lullaby and goodnight / Till the dawn's early light."  I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but that same phrase is in the first line of "The Star Spangled Banner" - "Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"

I've been focusing on my Collection Audit project instead of this one (and others), but I noticed something about "Hushabye" from All Summer Long, so this sort of overlaps here.

Pet Sounds

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ModestyAndMonocles:

16 May '16 To-day's the 50th anniversary of the release of this spectacular album, so it's the first thing I'm listening to to-day.

A post shared by David (@modestyandmonocles) on May 16, 2016 at 10:36am PDT

I'm reblogging this from my personal tumblr (because there's a mess of linked accounts and whatnot), but Pet Sounds' 50th anniversary!

"Let's Go Away for Awhile"

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Last night I remembered that the vibraphone part in "Let's Go Away for Awhile" was an-other part that sounded like it would be pretty easy to figure out.  The pairs of notes are either sixths or augmented fifths.  I also included the four-note guitar phrase that I figured out last year.

"Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"

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I listened to Pet Sounds yester-day, and then I learned the electric bass part for "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)."  It starts about halfway through the first verse, so the beginning sounds a bit weird.  I have to specify that this is the electric bass part because I'm pretty sure there's also an acoustic bass part con arco.

There's a repeated glissando from a G# to a C#.  Or at least there's something of a glissando.  The G# slides down, but not all the way to C#.  I played the G# on the D string (6th fret) so it can't go all the way to C#.  I think it's that way on the recording too.  It's like an interrupted glissando.  In any case, that part comes after the line "Don't talk; put your head on my shoulder," so it could be interpreted as that movement - placing a head on a shoulder.

"Cabin Essence"

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The same time I learned the opening for "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times," I also figured out the bass part for a section of "Cabin Essence."  It should have been obvious just from listening to it because it's only two notes and a common interval (a fourth).  I think this is the first time I've used fuzz bass.

Since I last recorded this, I haven't acquired any of the actual instruments used in the first section, so that still has substitutions for banjo, clarinet, and harmonica.

"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times"

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I haven't done much work on this project lately, so last night I tried learning a part.  I got a little bit of the opening of "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times."  It's not a lot of progress, but it's still some progress.

"That's Not Me"

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I was playing through the guitar parts for "That's Not Me" last night, and I realized that the two parts I figured out are in two different keys.  The six-string guitar part is in A major (and I think most of the rest of the song is too), but the twelve-string part is (I think) in Db major (or at least something with a handful of flats).

Two years ago, I read Kent Hartman's The Wrecking Crew, and I remembered that he mentions a Brian Wilson song that has two parts in different keys.  I just looked that up, and it's not even "That's Not Me."  According to the book, "Wouldn't It Be Nice" has parts in D major and A major, but from what I've figured out so far, it's in F major.  In any case, it shows the complex tonality of Wilson's songs.