"Nothing Left to Lose"

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.

To-day's also Eric Woolfson's birthday.

The Turn of a Friendly Card

Last night, I figured out about half of the bass part in "Time" (up until ~2:18, just before the bridge).  I was particularly interested in the bit underneath the lines "Who knows when we shall meet again / If ever":

(This is from the second verse; the last measure is a bit different in the first verse.)

There's a chromatic descent, but the notes appear in different octaves.  This is somewhat similar to the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose" (up until ~2:35, at least), in which a majority of the measures contain the same note just an octave apart.  I wrote about this (and its similarity to the bass part in a movement of one of Bach's orchestral suites) about three years ago, but here's some notation with better formatting than what's in that post:

Both this bit of the bass part in "Time" and most of the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose" use the octave interval, and that gives a bit of cohesion to The Turn of a Friendly Card.

"Nothing Left to Lose"

Yester-day I was thinking about "Nothing Left to Lose" and realized a small thing:  "Ways" in the line "You change your life in a thousand ways" is sung with a melisma (D C Bb), musically giving a sense of that "thousand."

"Nothing Left to Lose"

I recently loaded the French accordion mellotron sound on my Nord Electro 5D.  It reminded me that when I listened to The Turn of a Friendly Card back in December, I thought that the accordion solo in "Nothing Left to Lose" didn't sound too difficult to figure out.  It took a bit of effort, but I think I have it:

One of the notes in the mellotron sample (the high F) sounds a bit off, which gives a bit of credence to what Alan Parsons said about the mellotron in this interview from a couple years ago:  "I always thought that the sound was compromised by the use of mellotron over orchestration."  Still, were it not for the mellotron sounds, I probably wouldn't have learnt this part now and I certainly couldn't have recorded it because I don't know how to play accordion.  I was going to record it using melodica (which doesn't sound too different), but my melodica doesn't have the range necessary to play this part.

Along with this solo, there's also an accompaniment part (which I haven't figured out), played either with the lower register or as a second part.  I know very little about accordions, so I don't know if it's even possible to play those two parts on a single instrument simultaneously.

"Nothing Left to Lose"

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.

"Nothing Left to Lose"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Last night I learned the bass part in "Nothing Left to Lose," up until the tempo change, at least.  There's a minor difference in rhythm during the second chorus, but my recording doesn't encompass that; it's just the first two verses and the first chorus.

After eight measures of Bb notes in alternating octaves, there's a section in the verses that descends diatonically, skipping octaves after every pair of notes and then going back to single note octave-skipping:

I'm not sure if it's intended as a sort of reference or homage to it, but Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 has this same feature in the second movement (the Air):

(notation found here)

I've found that same feature in some other pieces too (like Grieg's Holberg Suite, Op. 40), but because I first encountered it in that Bach piece, that's what I thought of first.