"Wind Chimes"

Last week I listened to the fourth disc of The SMiLE Sessions, and over the next few days, I learned the bass part and some of the marimba for "Wind Chimes."  (A couple years ago, I thought "Wind Chimes" had xylophone, but it's marimba.)

Here's the first section.  The original track has upright bass, but since I have only electric bass, I used that instead:

I also wrote out the notation for the parts I learned (as always, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong).  Here's the marimba:

When I lookt at the sessionography later, I learned that there are four marimba tracks, all played by Van Dyke Parks.  I inadvertently combined two parts in my notation.  In track 5 of disc 4 of The SMiLE Sessions, Brian Wilson tells Parks to "hit 'em both at the same time" and later mentions "D and F#."  There are half as many notes for the first two thirds of the track, so it seems that Parks played two notes simultaneously (on beats one and three) on one pass, and played single notes (beats two and four) as an overdub, aside from the few measures where there are two notes on each beat (the beginning of line five in my notation).  I haven't figured out the other two marimba tracks yet.

I figured out the bass part for the entire track (as it appears on disc 1), but I played only the section for which I also know marimba.  It seems that there's an edit at the end of that section anyway.

I referenced the 2004 SMiLE too and noted a few differences in the bass parts.  Mostly, I was pretty impressed by how closely the 2004 SMiLE matches the track from 1966, but the difference in line 6 bothers me a bit.  In track 5 of disc 4 of The SMiLE Sessions - at about 3:17 - Brian Wilson tells the bassist (Chuck Berghofer), "the pick-up is da da da da da," giving him the pitches for that part.  I'm assuming that the musicians who put together the 2004 SMiLE had access to these tapes, so I can't understand why that's different if Wilson draws specific attention to it on the tape.

"Little Bird"

Yester-day, Brian Wilson had a post saying that to-morrow (that is, to-day, the 24th) is the 49th anniversary of the release of the Friends album:

I listened to the album this evening, and I discovered something about "Little Bird."

At about 1:24, there's this phrase (played twice) on muted trumpet:

This phrase sounded familiar to me, so I did some looking and found a very similar phrase (also on muted trumpet) in "Child Is Father of the Man" from SMiLE:

I should note that I guessed on the keys for both of those based on the notes in the muted trumpet parts.  I don't know any other parts for either song.

Aside from the note value of the first note and a half-step transposition, the two phrases are exactly the same.

"Stoked"

Yester-day I remembered that I'd learned the repeating guitar phrases in "Stoked" a few months ago.  Awhile after I learned them, I figured out the note values for the notation, but I didn't get around to actually notating it until to-day.

To some degree, I guess what I notated could be considered the rhythm guitar part, although "rhythm guitar" usually means just playing chords.

I have two copies of the Surfin' U.S.A. album: the 1990s release where it's paired with Surfin' Safari and a more recent reissue (2012) that has the album in mono and stereo.  I'm not sure whether it's the way the instruments were tuned when they were recorded or something with the transfer process, but I think the track is slightly out-of-tune.  The Surfin' Safari/Surfin' U.S.A. version is off even more than the mono/stereo Surfin' U.S.A. versions.

"You Still Believe in Me"

I thought I should do something on this blog because to-day's Brian Wilson's birthday, so here's the notation of the opening piano figure for "You Still Believe in Me."  As always, though, there's the disclaimer that I might have something wrong: