Last week, I learned some of the backing vocal parts for "Nothing Left to Lose." I didn't have an opportunity to record them until recently though, and I had to change the key to fit my range. The original is in Bb major; mine's in F major. I also doubled-tracked each part to make it sound better with my voice.
My referent for the parts was the bonus track on The Turn of a Friendly Card that's just Chris Rainbow's vocal parts. Comparing that with the final version reveals that I have a lot less than I thought I did. I have up until about 0:40 on that track (and the first ten seconds or so is just Rainbow's getting ready), but I think that's only half of the backing vocals for the verses in the final version.
Anyway, in that first forty seconds, there are four parts, and each is four measures long. Every four measures, a new part is added. After adding all of the parts, I sang them a fifth time too.
Last night I learned some more parts for "A Dream within a Dream." I listened to Tales of Mystery and Imagination yester-day and discovered that "A Dream within a Dream" has slide guitar. I mean, I'd certainly heard that part before, but it wasn't until yester-day that I realized that it's slide guitar. I learned that first and discovered that it has the same four pitches (A, D, E, and G) as the recorder part. They have a different order and rhythm, but they're the same four pitches.
I can't remember if I already knew the bass part or not, but it's only one note (A), so that was simple to either learn or re-learn. I knew I was going to write a post here at least to mention that the slide guitar and recorder have the same notes, but I didn't know if I should record a version because - while I'd have the bass part - there's a lot of space between those two elements. In order to fill out my recording, I learned the electric piano part and the acoustic guitar chords. My recording still feels a bit empty, but I guess five parts are better than only three.
I'm pretty sure the recorders are double-tracked in the original. One might be lower than the other, but all I have is a soprano recorder, so doubling that is the best I could do. I'm looking into getting a tenor recorder, although I'm not sure that's what's used in the original recording.
I double-tracked the acoustic guitar and the slide guitar. I'm not sure that's accurate; I just thought it would sound better. I don't have the delay effect on the slide guitar because I simply don't know how to do that yet. I briefly played around with some effects in my recording program, but even the shortest delay I could get was too long compared to what's in the recording.
This evening I figured out a couple guitar phrases in "The Tell-Tale Heart." While doing so, the lines "So for the old man / Ashes to ashes, earth to earth, and dust to dust" caught my ear. It's from Ecclesiastes 3:20: "All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return."
