"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.

"Good to My Baby"

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On Wednesday I listened to Today!, and I became really interested in the guitar part in "Good to My Baby," particularly the glissando.  So I figured that out, and then I got the chords too.

I waited until now to record and post an example because Pet Sounds and SMiLE still take precedence.  This is just a rare divergence.

There's an interesting feature at the very end of the verses.  The chords go from D major to G major to E major, within which there's a chromatic phrase (D, F#, A; G, B, D; E, G#, B).  They're half-step increments, the smallest interval.  The lyrics there are "And when I give her my love, it's between her and me" in the first verse and "And we stay together while other couples come and go" in the second verse.  That chromatic phrase seems to portray the lyrics both times.  Because it's the smallest interval, nothing can get between the notes, just like the singer/speaker's love is "between her and me."  Similarly, they're adjacent, in the same way that the singer/speaker and his girlfriend "stay together."

"Let's Go Away for Awhile"

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I'd forgotten the bass part for "Let's Go Away for Awhile" since I learned it in May, so I just re-learned it and was writing it out (in notation, because I've been getting more into actually notating things recently).  There's a transitional bit (at about 0:58) that I'm not sure how to notate, but after that, I think the time signature changes.

I'm still not very good at notation, so I might be wrong about this, but I think the first part is in 4/4 time, but the second half is in 3/4 or maybe even 6/8.  Some triple meter.

"Cabin Essence"

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I've been focused on Pet Sounds lately, so last night I thought I'd try figuring out something from SMiLE.  I figured out three parts from "Cabin Essence," but I don't own any of the instruments that they're actually played on.  Instead of banjo, I used guitar, and instead of clarinet and Eb harmonica, I used melodica (with the clarinet part panned left and the harmonica part panned right).  Eventually, I plan on acquiring the correct instruments and learning how to play the parts on them, but currently I don't have the money to do that.

It sounds a bit weird because I couldn't use the correct instruments, but I'm pretty sure that the parts themselves are correct.

"Sloop John B"

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Yester-day I learned the flute parts for the choruses in "Sloop John B" (or at least a chorus; they're each slightly different).  It sort of invalidates what I said about the resemblance between these flute parts and the guitar parts in "That's Not Me" because there aren't two measures of rests between each phrase.  That's only for the first half; the last two phrases are longer.

I don't own and don't know how to play a flute, so I just used the fake flute setting on my keyboard.

Pet Sounds

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Between yester-day and to-day, I listened to the third and fourth discs of The Pet Sounds Sessions (because otherwise I would have ended the year in the middle of the four discs), and I discovered a few things:

"You Still Believe in Me"

There's a slight ambiguity in "I try hard to be more what you want me to be."  It's either straight-forward like that ("I try hard to be more [of] what you want me to be," or it could be two different descriptions ("I try hard to be more, what you want me to be" or even "I try hard to be more [and] what you want me to be").  It's a question of whether "more" is just a regular adjective (modifying the relative clause "what you want me to be") or a substantive adjective.

"I'm Waiting for the Day"

The "blue" in "I know you cried, and you felt blue" has a melisma.  Where it would normally have only one syllable, here it has three (at least I think it's three; the double-tracked vocal there isn't spot-on).  The later syllables are at lower pitches, so as the word goes on, it falls.  Musically it adds a "down in the depths" kind of feeling to the blue sentiment that's already there in the lyric.

"God Only Knows"

This is probably a bit trivial, but - as far as pitches - the "stars" really are "above you" in "But long as there are stars above you."  "Stars" is sung to an F#, and "you" to a C#.