This evening, I figured out the brass part at ~2:22 in "May Be a Price to Pay." (Later, I lookt in my file and discovered that I'd already figured this out.) In notating it, though, I realized that there are a few elements in it that illustrate how "something's wrong" (the lyrics that are sung at the same time).
I think the part is something like this:
The song is in D minor, but there are some accidentals here. (I don't know if it's technically correct to mix the accidental signs, but I notated them as Eb and C#). In every other measure, the brass plays on the off-beats, and this also contributes to a sense of something wrong.
I was thinking about "Don't Let It Show" yester-day, and I realized that in the line "Don't tell them anything," the three syllables of "anything" are each sung to a different pitch (Eb Db Bb). This musical span gives a sense of that breadth of possibility.
Back in December, I figured out the lower register synthesizer part at the beginning of "Stereotomy," and a couple years ago, I'd figured out the main part. Yester-day, I finally got around to making a recording of the two parts. There's a bit of an introduction before this, but I didn't include that. What I have is just the section that repeats.
I played this on my Moog Subsequent 37. I got it recently enough that I'm still learning how to use it and don't really know what I'm doing. My tone doesn't match at all, but at this point, I'm more concerned with having the right notes. I don't even know what synthesizer was used on the original recording. Specific synthesizer identification is an aspect of this project I'd never even considered before.
I recently got a Hammond SKX. It has more accordion sounds than I could probably ever use, and/so I felt that the first thing I record with it should use an accordion sound.
Here's the accordion solo in "Nothing Left to Lose." I used the A-120 accordion sound, with the |:| symbol. To give it some context, I played the bass part on the lower manual (using the SKX's Fender Piano Bass sound). I'm fairly confident in the accuracy of the part itself and my notation, but I may have something wrong.
I recently ran across a reference to "You are the light of the world" from Matthew 5:14. Later, it occurred to me that the phrase "light of the world" is also in an Alan Parsons Project song (the title phrase, even).
When I lookt at the lyrics, I noticed the line "I am just a stranger in a promised land," and I realized that this bears some resemblance to part of Exodus 2:22: "I have been a stranger in a strange land." "Strange land" from Exodus has just been replaced with "promised land," which also has Biblical connotations.
