Acquisitions

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Yester-day, I went to Half Price Books, and I found a few things that might have some influence on this project, if only indirectly.

First, I found They Might Be Giants' Indestructible Object, which contains a cover of "Caroline, No."  (I also got it just because I like TMBG.)  I just listened to it, and their cover sounds pretty close to the original.  I'm sure there are some differences in instrumentation though; I haven't compared them that closely (or really at all).

I also found Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin.  I have a few other books about the Beach Boys (I think this is the fourth), so I've heard of this through bibliographies and such, and I figured I would get it since I'd found it.

More tenuously related to this, I found a compilation album of the Four Freshman.  Except for "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring," which the Beach Boys recorded (it's a bonus track on the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey reissue) and - if I'm not mistaken - used for the melody for "A Young Man Is Gone" on Little Deuce Coupe, none of the titles looked familiar.  I might recognize one or two once I actually listen to them though.  In any case, it'll be interesting to hear how they influenced Wilson's vocal arrangements.  I've read that they're pretty similar.

"I Know There's an Answer" / "Wouldn't It Be Nice"

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Last night, I spent a bit of time trying to figure out the opening keyboard part to "I Know There's an Answer" (I'd previously noted that there's an organ part and a piano part combined in an unusual way) and the chords to "Wouldn't It Be Nice."  I made some progress on both, but I don't think I know enough to post anything yet.

However!  I discovered some interesting musical things.  From what I know so far, I think "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Know There's an Answer" are both in F major.  Along with this project, I do this same sort of thing for the Zombies, and lately I've been looking at the keys of the songs on Odessey and Oracle.  I have this idea that some of the unity of that album has to do with common tonalities.  So now I'm wondering if that could apply to Pet Sounds too.  I'll have to find out what keys the other songs are in to be sure, but I felt I'd at least mention the common key of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Know There's an Answer."

Secondly - and more interestingly - in figuring out the chords to the first part of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," I discovered that the "nice" in the lyrics falls on the F major chord (the tonic) both times in the first verse:

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

Having that particular word fall on that particular chord (in that particular key) weds the musical feeling of centrality with the idyllic nature that the song describes.

I think the phrases start on down-beats too, so while "nice" is in the middle of the line, it manages to be on the first beat of the measure, which works nicely with how it falls on the tonic chord - it's primary in both pitch and meter.

"Barnyard"

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I'm starting with the easier parts, like the guitar part in "Barnyard."  It's just two phrases that are alternated throughout the duration of the song (so this is not a very interesting audio example).  I was sort of surprised to find that it's in C# though.

"Good Vibrations"

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A couple years ago, I learned the bass part to "Good Vibrations."  I haven't verified it recently, so this is it as I remember.  I'd thought I knew the organ part during the beginning, but it sounded weird, so I didn't include that.

I'm pretty sure the organ part I do have is right, although the C major on the original sounds lower, so it's probably an inversion.  I'm not a very good harmonica player, but I did the harmonica part too.

"You Still Believe in Me"

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This is one of the few parts to Pet Sounds that I already know - the opening piano figure for "You Still Believe in Me."  I'm fairly certain I learned this in October last year, after discovering that the "You Still Believe in Me" on M. Ward's Transistor Radio is, in fact, the same "You Still Believe in Me," although arranged differently.

I don't have the same effect on this that's on the original.  Off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly what it is, but I think it's something like holding down all of the keys and then hitting the strings, which is obviously something I can't do with an electronic keyboard.

Introduction

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Last summer, I used some of my college graduation money to buy the deluxe edition of The SMiLE Sessions.  I was really late to the SMiLE bandwagon and didn't even find out about it until those original recordings were released.  While I couldn't afford them for a long time, I did get the 2004 recording, and that - along with a lot of reading about the album - certainly sparked my interest.

A few weeks ago, I listened to The SMiLE Sessions again, along with The Pet Sounds Sessions, and it occurred to me that the way the box sets are formatted is sort of multi-directional in terms of construction.  Sections of the songs are presented in different mixes or different takes, and overdubs are isolated so that the listener can start to see how Brian Wilson pieced together the songs.  But it could also work the other way - as a sort of blueprint to putting together the songs yourself.

At the time, I'd been looking for an-other band whose catalogue I could learn.  In 2012, I started doing this with the Zombies (my favorite band), and - while I'm still working on that (and will probably never finish) - it's progressed much further than I had originally thought.

I'm pretty nervous and apprehensive about this (especially considering the complexity and fame of the albums), but I'm going to try to learn all of the parts to the songs on Pet Sounds and SMiLE.  (Eventually, I might add some other Beach Boys songs, but Pet Sounds and SMiLE are my foci for now.)  I'll probably never finish, but I'm hoping the experience will be similar to what's happening with learning the Zombies' songs.  Even though I don't know a lot of the parts yet, I've gained a much better understanding and appreciation of the music.

I don't own a lot of the instruments that are present on the albums, and it'll take time to learn the parts, so at the beginning things will be incomplete and very probably wrong.  But I have to start somewhere.  My primary focus is still the corresponding Zombies project, so things might be a bit sporadic here.