"Add Some Music to Your Day"

I've been listening to Sunflower pretty regularly lately, and I noticed a couple things about "Add Some Music to Your Day."  To-day I listened to the 2000 re-issue of Sunflower and Surf's Up on the same CD because to-day's Paul Atkinson's birthday (he co-produced the re-issue [and was the original guitarist for the Zombies]), and I transcribed the majority of the lyrics.

The first line is "The Sunday mornin' gospel goes good with the soul."  "Soul" can have two meanings here.  There's "soul" in the same sense it has in later lines like "Music / When you're alone / Is like a companion / For your lonely soul" and "Music is in my soul."  And there's also "soul" in the sense of the music genre.  Gospel is mentioned in the same line, and the next line continues this cataloguing of genres:  "There's blues, folk, and country, and rock like a rollin' stone."  I think "soul" in the sense of a person's intangible essence is the primary meaning, but the other sense is certainly relevant too.

The other thing I noticed is the "Ev'rywhere" in the backing vocals during the section where the lyrics are just "Add some music" over and over.  It's sung with a melisma, with the "-where" part sung to the notes E B C# B.  Its being sung to more than one syllable and to a variety of pitches is a musical representation of the "ev'rywhere."

"Cool, Cool Water"

Last month, I learned the bass part for the first section of the version of "Cool, Cool Water" that's on the Sunflower album.  Recently, I notated it (after re-learning what I'd forgotten and discovering that I'd been playing some notes in the wrong octave), and then I compared it to the version from The SMiLE Sessions (the one labelled "version 2").  It's pretty much the same.  The SMiLE Sessions version alternates between Bb and F for a few more measures, and a G note that's a single half note in the Sunflower version is two notes in The SMiLE Sessions version:  a dotted quarter note and an eighth note.

Since it's just one part, I'm not going to record a version (I decided it's not worth it unless I know two simultaneous parts), so here's the notation:

"Barnyard"

Yester-day I listened to the second disc of The SMiLE Sessions [Deluxe Edition Box Set], and I noticed that in "Barnyard," there's a piano phrase that nearly doubles the vocal melody (I think it leaves out a few notes).  It sounded easy, so I figured it out.  I also noticed that the bass has double stops, where in my previous recording, I'd played just single notes.  While I was correcting that, I discovered that the bass part changes about halfway through the song.  First, it's just quarter notes:

But then about halfway through, it changes to a dotted rhythm:

I referenced the version on the 2004 SMiLE, and it doesn't have that dotted section; it maintains the quarter notes throughout the song.

When I recorded my new version, I tried the guitar part on electric twelve-string, which sounds a bit closer to what the original recording has.  I referenced The SMiLE Sessions booklet for details about the instrumentation on the track, and it seemed equally confused about whether it's an electric or acoustic guitar.

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.