A few years ago, I had the idea to learn every part to every song by the Zombies because they're my favorite band. Eventually, I expanded this and decided to learn all of the songs by the bands that formed after the Zombies' break-up: Argent (the band) and Colin Blunstone. Last September, I started a tumblr where I've been posting rough versions of parts as I've been learning them. Over the past two months, I've brought the catalogue up-to-date with all of the parts I know.
Through doing this project, I've become somewhat obsessed with the idea of learning every song by a particular band or even just a whole album. It is sort of a crazy premise, but it has real and applicable benefits. Learning how to play the songs is an obvious one, but a project like these also forces you to become a better musician. In order to play all of the parts, you need to be able to play all of the instruments and you need to be able to critically listen to the recording in order to figure out how to play the parts.
Aside from all of that, you start to gain a familiarity with the music in a way that's impossible to do just as a listener. Because you're able to play the songs instead of just listen to them, you're familiar with them kinetically instead of just aurally. Plus, you may also start to uncover certain musical features that your favorite band frequently uses. I've noticed that Rod Argent likes to employ two sequential half steps in his bass parts ("I'll Keep Trying," "Whenever You're Ready," "She Loves the Way They Love Her") and that Chris White likes to use chord progressions that center around D F#(m) G and A ("Don't Go Away," "I Don't Want to Know," "Don't Cry for Me," "Brief Candles," "The Feeling's Inside").
Really, the whole point of this post is to promote the idea of learning if not the whole output of your favorite band at least a whole album. You may never learn everything, but it will certainly be an enlightening experience.
I got a new electric guitar last May, which has become my primary instrument. But I still wanted to use my other electric guitar (which was also my first guitar) in some capacity, so back in January I tuned it to open D tuning with the goal of learning how to play slide guitar on it. This has worked out rather well, but not in the way I had expected. I don't really know any more about slide guitar, but I have learned open D tuning relatively well. And I love it.
I remember reading somewhere that open D is sometimes recommended to beginning guitarists because you can play all of the major chords just by sliding your finger up and down the fret board. (I'm pretty sure that Tommy James [of "and the Shondells" fame] explains in Me, the Mob, and the Music that he learned guitar this way [though I read that book about four years ago, so I could be mis-remembering].) And while this is true, I think it's a bit lazy from a musician's perspective. I think that it's important to understand the logic behind the shapes - to know which notes constitute a particular chord. So while the single-fingered-chords are indeed a feature of open D tuning, that's not really a reason why I like it so much. (Though my position on this may change if I ever start learning slide guitar in open D.)
There are three main reasons why I like open D tuning so much. The first is that the chords seem a lot closer to-gether. I'm not sure if this is actually true, but it seems easier to transition from D major to A major in open D tuning than it does in standard tuning. You just switch two fingers and move down a fret.
An-other reason is that you don't really have any barre chords (unless you choose to use the single-fingered-chords technique), and I tend to find barre chords uncomfortable. This may be because I'm a self-taught guitarist and have poor form, but I find that using a lot of barre chords quickly becomes tiresome. There's too much wrist bending. Open D tuning doesn't have any of that.
And finally, I like open D tuning because the notes are in order within the chord shapes. In standard tuning, the notes are all over the place.
For E major, the strings are E, B, E, G#, B, E (root, fifth, root, third, fifth, root).
C major is E, C, E, G, C, E (fifth, root, fifth, third, root, fifth).
A major is E, A, E, A, C#, E (fifth, root, fifth, root, third, fifth).
There really isn't any consistency of note positions between chord shapes. But in open D tuning - using only the middle four strings, which is what I do - the chord shapes have the constituent notes in order, even if you use inversions.
D major is D, F#, A, D (root, third, fifth, root [an octave higher]). You could play the outer most strings too, since they're both tuned to D. And, in fact, you could just play all open strings.
The first inversion of A major is C#, E, A, C# (third, fifth, root, third [an octave higher]).
In my experience, having different notes of the triad on the bottom (mixing thirds with the more regular tonics and fifths) can make for more expressive chord progressions. While inversions with the third on the bottom are possible on a standardly-tuned guitar (if you use the bottom four strings, they're the same shapes as some mandolin chords), they're much easier in open D tuning.
Aside from standard tuning's being a standard, the only superiority it has to open D - as far as I can see - is how easy it is to form suspended chords. It's really easy to transition from, say, D major to Dsus4 to Dsus2. Though I don't think that suspended chords are often a concrete part of any chord progression. I see them more as embellishments than anything else. The same goes for chords with extra notes on the top. Like an E major with an added G# on the high E string. So as far as straight chords go, open D tuning is the best. Although I'm still more familiar with standard tuning.
And, aside from all of the music theory stuff, I like open D tuning because it gives me new shapes to play around with. Because I'm still learning open D, I don't fall into conventional patterns, which is a possibility when I'm using standard tuning.
50/90 ended yester-day, so I thought I would go through and comment on all of the songs I wrote. In general, I'm pretty happy with how I did this year. I actually achieved most of the goals I had. It would have gone even better had I not had a summer class during the middle or had fall semester not started. But next year, I won't have either of those (hopefully), and I can work on what I actually like doing.
Untitled 2013.07.05
50/90 Description: I don't expect too many of these to have titles. For me, that's one of the hardest parts.
I started playing around with the first few chords of the Zombies' "I Remember When I Loved Her" and came up with a nice guitar part. And since I haven't really written anything for mandolin since November, I thought I'd try that on this.
The tracking on this was a bit difficult, and I actually forgot to play a part, but I think it turned out pretty well.
Commentary: There isn't really much I would change with this. The guitar isn't loud enough, and I forgot one mandolin part, but those are faults of just this particular recording.
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Untitled 2013.07.07
50/90 Description: I'm not sure if I'm happy with how this turned out or not.
Commentary: As I recall, my main goal here was to try out this finger-picking pattern with the third on the bottom. Perhaps also to move away from chord-centric keyboard playing. Both of those it does fairly well, but I don't think it's a particularly remarkable song.
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"Permutation"
50/90 Description: I wanted to try integrating two different finger-picking patterns, and I also had some ideas about format, so I just indulged both in this, which is why it's about seven minutes long. If I'd stuck to a more normal format, it would have been two or three. (And if I go back to revisit it, I'll almost certainly shorten it.) I also wanted to use my twelve-string guitar, but I'm not sure that it's exactly suited for this.
Commentary: I'm not sure if I'm going to revisit this, but if I do, I'd certainly condense it. I'd probably revise the melodies and move them to something other than twelve-string.
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Untitled 2013.07.10
50/90 Description: I'm not thrilled with how I lead into the repetitions, but aside from that, I'm pretty happy with this. It's a bit short though.
Commentary: In order to make the transitions between the sections smoother, I think I just need to write an-other part. Also, since recording this, I've written a slightly different ending.
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"Coyote"
50/90 Description: This is basically my attempt at an instrumental R&B song. I followed the format of the Zombies' versions of "Road Runner" (the guitar riff), "Sticks and Stones" (the solos for both guitar and electric piano), and "I Got My Mojo Working" (harmonica).
I've never played slide guitar before, but I think that turned out better than the harmonica part.
I took the name from "Road Runner" too, via the Road Runner and Wiley E. Coyote association.
Commentary: I was having some problems recording guitar, so the sound here is a bit more raw than I would have liked. But as far as the song itself, I don't think I would change much.
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Untitled 2013.07.16
50/90 Description: I've been playing around with the guitar part on this for awhile, but I couldn't get a melody that I really liked. This is the third attempt, and it's good enough.
Commentary: I still feel like I could have written a better mandolin part. I'm almost certain this is the first (and so far only) time I've used parallel thirds, and I feel like I could be more inventive than that.
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Untitled 2013.07.19
50/90 Description: I think I like this the best of my 50/90 songs so far. I was playing around with open D tuning and found a new chord shape, and this was basically an exploration of that.
Commentary: The two electric guitar parts don't work very well to-gether at one point, but aside from that, the only complaint I have against this one is that it's too short.
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Untitled 2013.07.21
50/90 Description: I wanted to try playing the same chords on different guitars - a six string in standard tuning, a six string in open D, and a twelve string - for some sort of interplay among them. I'm not sure if it works very well though.
I think I put more work into this than it deserves; I start doing demos back on 6 July.
Commentary: I'm pretty sure the opening part of this was inspired by Driftless Pony Club's "Dymaxion Chronofile," although where theirs is a descending melody, mine is ascending.
I don't think I realized this as well as I could have. I think I should have kept the open D guitar and the twelve-string guitar playing chords and then overdubbed additional guitars playing those parts. I think I need to write a longer bass part, too. And I'm not too happy about the tone of the guitar playing the main riff.
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Untitled 2013.07.26
50/90 Description: I've wanted to write a song for two mandolins for a while, which is pretty much why I wrote this. One section sounded a bit empty, so I added guitar chords, but I'm not sure if that was the best way to fix it.
Commentary: I'm still bothered a bit by the added guitar chords, but I think if I soften them a bit, this would be fine.
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"The Array"
50/90 Description: I just threw a bunch of stuff to-gether.
The first guitar riff I've had written for ages, so I'm glad I finally got to use it in something. It's so old that I adapted it into a bass part for a song I wrote for 50/90 last year. It's actually a re-working of the riff from the Surfaris' "Wipe Out."
Even though I haven't really played it for nine years, I wanted to use trombone in something for 50/90. I used it in a song during FAWM, but this one turned out much better (even if it still isn't the best).
I'd also wanted to try inverting the guitar chords & bass part so that the bass is playing the chords and the guitar is playing what was the bass part. And then I had the idea to have every string play the same note but constrained within the lower twelve frets. I got a bit carried away with that. Also, I did that thing where you hit record twice and then miss the thing you intended to record, so I'm missing one of the guitar parts (and instead got a minute of my re-setting for an-other take).
I think I should have increased the tempo for the last part. After the first riff, it seems pretty slow.
Commentary: Mostly this is just "I got carried away." Especially with the colors at the end....
I'm sure I could record a better version of this, but I'm not sure I want to.
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Untitled 2013.08.03
50/90 Description: Way back in November 2011, I came up with a melody that sort of sounded familiar. I later figured out that half of it was pretty much the opening to the Beatles' "Nowhere Man," but the other half was apparently my own. Last July I further developed it, but it was still missing something.
Just recently I listened to "We Can Work It Out" and realized that there's a harmonium in it, which I had either never noticed or never paid much attention to. So I thought that I would try to add something like that to this (although I ended up trying to evoke a mellotron sound instead). It doesn't sound exactly like I want it to though. I can't tell whether it's too heavy (texture-wise) or too synth-y.
Also, I played this much too fast.
Commentary: I think my only complaint about this is that it's too fast.
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"Ruban"
50/90 Description: I'd been listening to a lot of Les Paul when I wrote the opening guitar part, which I think is the reason for its jazziness.
I think I've been playing around with this acoustic part since 50/90 started this year; I didn't really know what to do with it. But then I'd remembered this melody that I'd written last June (it's the third of the three main "verses" here), and the two seemed to fit.
Commentary: Of all of my 50/90 songs this year, this is probably my favorite. I'd make only minor changes to the way I recorded it here. A few less note bends, and a few extra notes in the electric guitar part.
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Untitled 2013.08.09
50/90 Description: I hadn't really intended to do this one to-day, and I haven't spent that much time on it, so it could probably be improved.
Commentary: I haven't worked it out yet, but I want to combine this one with the untitled song from 3 August. I feel like they go to-gether somehow.
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"Vantage"
50/90 Description: I wrote this opening mandolin part during 50/90 last year, so I'm glad I finally got to use it in something.
Commentary: I think I could record a better version of this. This one seems a bit sloppy and maybe a bit too fast.
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"Middle Mountain Flight"
50/90 Description: I feel like this is missing a part, but I've already been working on it for two weeks, so I thought I'd just record a version.
Commentary: This still feels incomplete to me. I think it needs either an-other part or some revision of what's already there.
Also, the title of this is a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost. In Book I, he writes, "I thence / Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song / That with no middle flight intends to soar / Above th' Aonian mount while it pursues / Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme" (lines 14-16). Probably too lofty of a title for the sparse track I've recorded....
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"Idolon"
50/90 Description: I wrote the main guitar part of this after playing around with "Dies Irae," so I figured a title in Latin would be fitting. "Idolon" means "ghost" or "apparition," which is also fitting, since one of my 50/90 songs from last year was titled "Apparition," and this resembles it to some degree.
Commentary: I think I liked this a lot more when I wrote it then I do now. It's repetitive without being interesting. And, while I didn't realize this when I was writing it, I'd already used one of those guitar parts.
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Untitled 2013.08.22
50/90 Description: I'd been doing so well with actually giving my songs titles until this one.
I recently figured out how to do the guitar chime-y thing. In messing around with that, I wrote a thing in G, and since the rest of this is (mostly) in G, I figured that I would put that in the beginning. This chord progression is something I came up with last summer that I finally got a chance to use. I'm pretty sure it's inspired by the chord progression of America's "Lonely People."
I also recently got a harmonica in G, so I tried that too. And then I revisited the idea I had to double track harmonicas (which I tried during FAWM). One is in G, and the other is in C. The harmonica parts don't exactly match because I'm still not very good at harmonica; I've only really been playing it since FAWM.
Commentary: To some degree, I feel like this is too similar to other things I've written - specifically in the structural organization - but I still like it. The only change I'd make is adding a few notes to one of the guitar parts.
I got the idea for multitracking harmonicas (not double tracking, as I erroneously wrote) from Brian Wilson's SMiLE. At one point (I think in "Cabinessence"), there's a part with harmonica and melodica, and I had mistaken it for two harmonicas playing different things.
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"Stone Rooms"
50/90 Description: I'm not super happy with some of the melodies in this, but I've been working on it long enough that I felt I should post something.
Commentary: This one has sort of grown on me, and I think I would make only a few changes to what I have here.
The title I took from a line in Argent's "Like Honey."
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Untitled 2013.08.29
50/90 Description: This is kind of short and more repetitive than I'd like, but I think some simplicity is permissible considering how inexperienced I am at slide guitar (this is only the second time I've used it and the first time I've used it for the melody).
Commentary: I wish I would have prepared a bit more for this; at the end, the two slide guitar parts aren't very much in sync - not because of any technical reason, just because I didn't really know what I was playing.
I doubt I'll do anything with this. Mostly, it was just a chance to see if I could use slide guitar for a melody.
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Organ Piece in F minor
50/90 Description: This could stand some expanding. It's pretty much just the same melody with different accompaniments, so it becomes a bit redundant.
Still, I like what I have so far.
Commentary: Since writing this, I've expanded it somewhat, but I'm still not finished revising it.
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Untitled 2013.09.05
50/90 Description: For some reason, this doesn't feel very cohesive to me. I wrote most of these parts at the same time though, and they are related musically, so maybe I feel that way just because I recorded it in so many pieces (I'm not a very good keyboard player).
Commentary: This still feels disjointed to me. I'm not a very good keyboard player, and I think that everything I write on it is too short and too chromatic. That's a lot of what this suffers from.
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Untitled 2013.09.12
50/90 Description: I started playing around with "Dies Irae," hoping to use it in one of my earlier 50/90 songs (the organ piece in F minor). It didn't fit, but I still liked the variation I'd written, so I used it for the first part of this. In many ways, this is a continuation of that other piece, so I may eventually combine the two, but I'll have to re-work some parts.
Commentary: I don't think I should have used twelve-string guitar for this. I'm still not very good at it, so it's a lot twangier than I'd like. And because I used three of them, it ends up just sounding like a lot of noise.
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"Calculation"
50/90 Description: This is probably the most experimental thing I've done. I have one part in 4/4 playing a linear repetition and one part in 3/4 playing a cyclical repetition. So occasionally, the notes change at the same time.
I'm not sure if I'll do anything else with this, but I suppose the next step would be to try to write a melody for it.
Commentary: I think most of the motivation for doing this was just getting an-other 50/90 song. It's not particularly musical.
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Untitled 2013.09.20
50/90 Description: I wrote this guitar part earlier this month, and, after a bit of playing around, I wrote one of the mandolin parts. But then I had the idea to try to write something fugue-like out of it. As long as you accept my four note/two pitch subject and overlook how I don't change keys, I think the second half of this does qualify as a fugue for two mandolins with a guitar continuo underneath. I'm a bit hesitant to call it "Fugue in Em" though.
I wish I would've played it a bit faster, but some of the chord changes are difficult to pull off, so I kept it at a slow tempo.
Commentary: The tempo is the only thing I would fix here. I probably could have done it faster had I taken the time to do it, but I had other things to do besides 50/90 at this point.
I don't think I noticed this at the time I was writing it, but this is quite similar to my first 50/90 song this year. They both use the same finger-picking pattern; they both start on a minor chord; and they're both for guitar and mandolins.
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Fretted String Quartet in G major "Alberti"
50/90 Description: I recently "audited" an online music class from Yale, in which I learned about the Alberti bass. So I started playing around with it and wrote something I liked. Then I wrote a brief melody on top of it and a second part (which turned out more complex than the first). I kept playing around with it and then had the idea to write it as sort of a string quartet. (It fits the definition, but it doesn't quite fit the tradition.)
Commentary: I've been contemplating about inserting a key change into this. It would make it longer, and I think it would also lend some more credibility toward the traditional definition of a string quartet. Aside from that, the only thing I would change is the highest part. It plays the same notes through all of the variations, and the piece as a whole would be more interesting if it changed.
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