Live Evolution

I've been listening to the Zombies everyday this month, and the weekends have consisted entirely of their live albums.  Excluding the fourth disc of Zombie Heaven (which is the same as the Live on the BBC album and which I've been listening to on Tuesdays), I have four live albums - Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London (which is technically a Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent album), Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert, Live at Metropolis Studios, and Extended Versions.  Because these are all a few years apart (2005, 2008, 2011, 2012), it's been really interesting to hear how their live shows have evolved.

"She's Not There" presents the best example.  In the later versions, there's a guitar part at the beginning of the second verse that isn't in the original 1964 recording, but it seems to have become a part of the song.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if that part would have been in the original recording if it had been written at the time.  It seems like the kind of addition that becomes integral to the song.

In the Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London version, it's not there.  Keith Airey has a guitar solo later in the song, but it's structured in the same manner as Rod Argent's electric piano/organ solo (an organ solo seems to be a standard addition to the recorded version, too).

The Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert version is probably the closest to the recorded version (when comparing these four).  The extra guitar part isn't there, and Rod Argent doesn't extend his solo to the organ.  The only instrumental difference between this version and the 1964 recording is that this one includes brass parts.

It appears on Live at Metropolis Studios, on Extended Versions, and on the version they did at SXSW, and since all of those performances were when Tom Toomey was with the Zombies, I'm wondering if he wrote that riff.  Since it doesn't appear before his time as a Zombie, it's quite possible.

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"Time of the Season" is a bit more consistent, but there are a few interesting changes.  The version on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London has a really fast tempo.  It's almost as if they're rushing to get to the end of it.  Jim Rodford also sings some of the parts - "Is he rich?" "To show."  While the tempo is a lot faster than the original recording, the vocal part distribution is the same; Jim Rodford takes over Chris White's parts both on bass and on vocals.  But on all of the other versions I've heard since that one, Rod Argent has taken those extra vocal parts.  Frankly, I don't understand why.  I like the way it was originally written, and I don't think that Jim Rodford gets enough distinct vocal parts.  (His vocal part on Argent's "He's a Dynamo" is one of the reasons I love that song so much.)

The versions on Live at Metropolis Studios and Extended Versions also include an interesting chromatic organ part in between "is he rich like me" and "has he taken any time to show you what you need to live."

This isn't in the version on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, but you do get a hint of it on the version on Odessey and Oracle 40th Anniversary Concert.

The version that they did of "Time of the Season" at SXSW has an interesting feature too - while playing his organ solo, Rod Argent also plays chords on electric piano.  I think it's a great addition to the song because it's different, but it's not as drastic a change as writing a new part would be.

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I think it's great that they're still touring and playing these songs, and their changing different parts proves that they're still invested in what they're doing and that they're enjoying themselves.

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On Chord Construction

A few weeks ago, I was playing around with some variations on the chord progression from the Byrds' "Time Between," and I accidentally figured out chord inversions with the third on the bottom.  Most other chord shapes - the ones you see in books and such - have either the root or the fifth on the bottom.

It seems to me that when most people start to learn guitar, they learn just the chord shapes and not necessarily how the notes work to-gether to form the chord.  I'd wager that that's true for almost all self-taught guitarists (at least initially), and I'm no exception.  I didn't really understand chord construction until 2011, but I started playing guitar in 2009.

I think the reason that most guitarists learn chords first is that chords have an immediate payoff.  You don't really have to understand the note intervals involved in a chord; as long as you can make your fingers form the shape, you can get a decent sound out of your instrument.  Learning the chord shapes is a sort of instant gratification.  It's not exactly instant, as getting your fingers to form the shapes is sometimes a bit difficult (B major is particularly difficult at first), and it takes a while to be able to transition between chords smoothly.

While it's certainly not a clear cut distinction, I feel that - for the most part - you can determine a guitarist's seriousness by whether or not he understands how chords are constructed.  If he's focused merely on the shapes, he's probably just playing for fun (and there's no-thing wrong with that), but if he's at least attempting to understand the logic behind the shapes, playing guitar is probably more than just a hobby.

So for me, figuring out how to construct a chord with the third on the bottom (even if it was initially by accident) reaffirms that I'm taking this seriously and not just duplicating the chords shapes I've seen illustrated.  Based on the knowledge I've gleaned from those common chord shapes and what I learned about music theory from the piano class I had in 2011, I'm trying new things, and they're working.

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Shallow, Instrumental Beauty

A few days ago, there was an article on NPR about whether music or lyrics are more important.  At the time, I read the article and pretty much agreed with what the author says:  "When judging a song based on first impressions, my primary concern is that 1) the music is done right; and 2) the words, whether in content or presentation, aren't done wrong."

But last night, I got to thinking about things, and I realised that - for me - the point of music is that it sounds good.  I don't usually pay that much attention to lyrics, and I don't spend that much time analysing them.  They only start to sink in if I listen to a song incessantly.  I started writing a post about this and wrote "For me, it’s not so much what a song says as what it sounds like," but then I realised that that's a pretty shallow view. If you substitute visuals for audio, you end up with "It's not so much what a person says as what she looks like."  With that kind of logic, you end up listening only to people you perceive as beautiful and neglect everyone else based on only one criterion.  And the ugly people you ignore are likely to have something important to say.

And while that analogy offers an iron-clad argument to take a deeper look at music (or, more accurately, a deeper listen), problems present themselves.  What about nearly all classical music?  Symphonies and concerti don't have lyrics.  Does that mean that liking them is shallow because that preference is based on only one factor?  If liking a person because she looks beautiful is shallow, is liking a symphony because it sounds good also shallow?

I'm undecided about this.  While the music/person analogy is useful in some cases, I'm not sure it always applies.  If you take the art for art's sake approach - which I'm prone to - appearance and effect are the extent of a piece's content.  The point is no-thing more than to sound nice.  I suppose that's why most of my music has been instrumental lately.  I have no other goal than to make things that sound nice.  (Though, based on how many people are listening, I'm evidently not doing a very good job.)  But I also realise that making only things that are meant to sound nice is kind of a shallow goal.  It's certainly a limited one.

I do have some plans on presenting ideas within my songs and getting back to lyric writing.  But I find writing lyrics much harder than writing music, and I think part of that is because I find it much easier to play an instrument than to sing lyrics.

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