"Gemini"

A couple weeks ago, I figured out some of the vocal parts for "Gemini," by which I mean I not only figured out the notes but also notated them (although I'm not too confident in some of my note values).  Thinking about them later, I realized that there are many instances of twos in the music, ostensibly to portray the "two-ness" of Gemini, which is the sign of the twins in astrology.

For the first two verses, the lyrics are comprised solely of two-syllable words (save for "believing").  Usually, each word is sung to two quarter notes, and the rest of the measure has a two-beat rest (again, save for "believing," which is sung to three quarter notes, the first of which encroaches on the measure ahead of it).

The two verses are:

Watching waiting rising falling
Listening calling drifting

And

Touching feeling seeing believing
Hoping sending leaving

The melody for the lead vocal is something like this:

In the second verse, there's a two-voice backing vocal ("I see your shadow coming closer everyday") that consists mostly of half notes (which receive two beats each):

Like I mentioned above, I'm not too confident on some of my note values (and - as always - I might not have even figured out these parts correctly), but it's clear that there are a lot of musical elements in these two verses that emphasize twos.

In the liner notes to the deluxe edition of The Turn of a Friendly Card, Eric Woolfson's daughter Sally writes that "he didn't read or write annotated music" (which why he recorded musical ideas on numerous cassette tapes).  Because he didn't use notation, I'm not sure whether these various instances of musical twos were intended or not.  Notation makes them more obvious (I never noticed them when just listening to the song), but notation certainly isn't necessary for these elements to exist in the song.

"You Don't Believe"

A couple days ago, I figured out the chords for "You Don't Believe."  (I'm not sure if it's actually true, but it seems that I learn more parts from Ammonia Avenue than the other albums.  It's alphabetically first, so when I go to that part of my music collection to try to learn a part, that's the first album available.)  Because that's the only part I know and because listening to a recording of just chords would be boring, I'm not going to record a version.  Furthermore, according to the liner notes for the demo of "You Don't Believe," the chords (in both the demo and the final version) are sampled guitar chords played on a Fairlight, so I doubt I could match the tone very well even if I did try to record it.

I made sure to write them down, and while listening to the recording again to verify them, I noticed a connection between the chords and the lyrics.

The chords for the verses, as I figured them out, are:

C minor | Bb major | Eb major | C minor
Eb major | F major | C minor
C minor | Bb major | Eb major | C minor
Eb major | F major | C minor

Each line in the verses contains both a C minor chord and an Eb major chord.  C minor and Eb major are relative keys; they both have all of the same notes, just starting in different places.  Since "You Don't Believe" fades out at the end, there's no resolution, so it's sort of ambiguous whether the song is in C minor or Eb major (if I had to guess, I'd say C minor because it starts with a C note).  Tonally, it's like the song is alternately pulled toward either C minor or Eb major, and that same sort of division is in the lyrics.  Each line in the verses contains both "my" and "your."

First verse:

My eyes with your vision
My choice but always your decision
My play with your direction
Well it's my lead but always your connection

Second verse:

My words, your expression
My land, always your possession
My song, your production
My expense is always your deduction

Third verse:

My fame, your reflection
My weakness always your protection
Well it's my terms on your conditions
And they're my tunes but they're your compositions

In each line, possession is alternately first person ("my") or second person ("your") in the same way the song seems to be alternately in C minor or Eb major.

The Complete Albums Collection

Last month, I got The Complete Albums Collection box set:

I already had all of the albums; The Sicilian Defence is the only new material, but this is the only way to get it.

I was sort of surprised to find that two of the cardboard CD cases had gatefolds.

I Robot:

And Eve:

I haven't actually listened to the box set yet, partially because I haven't really had the time and partially because I don't really know what to do with some of the albums.  Like I mentioned above, I already had copies of all the albums (save The Sicilian Defence).  Of the copies I already had, about half are just the album as it was originally released, and the other half have bonus tracks in addition to the original album.  The albums in The Complete Albums Collection are only the albums, no bonus tracks (adding bonus tracks to the albums is probably the only thing that could have improved the box set).  When I rip the CDs from The Complete Albums Collection to my computer, I want to distinguish them from the albums I already had, and I don't know the best way to do that.  I'll probably just end up adding "The Complete Albums Collection Disc x" before each album title.

"A Dream within a Dream"

About two years ago, when I figured out the recorder part for "A Dream within a Dream," I mentioned that I have a recorder but it wasn't working.  Recently, I discovered why it hadn't been working:  I wasn't covering any of the holes (although I think its not having been played for over a decade didn't help either).  According to a fingering chart I found, covering at least one hole is required to make a note.  Now that I discovered my error, I can play my recorder again (although I'm still re-learning the fingerings).  The only part I could think of that's specifically for recorder is in "A Dream within a Dream."  Since it's only four pitches, I learned how to play that, and I also figured out the notation:

I have a soprano recorder, but I'm not sure that's what's used in "A Dream within a Dream."  Mine sounds higher.  The APP website lists just "recorders," which isn't very specific.

"Winding Me Up"

I haven't done much work on figuring out songs on Eve, so yester-day, I did some work on "Winding Me Up."  I think I have all of the electric piano part at the beginning, the bass part for the verses, and the chords for almost the entire song (there might be some differences at the very end).

This is just the first minute or so, but I'm pretty sure the sections are the same when they repeat.

"The Gold Bug"

I figuring out the whistling at the beginning of "The Gold Bug," and in doing so, I realized that it's the same melody that's played on brass at the beginning of "May Be a Price to Pay."  I'd never noticed that before.

In "May be a Price to Pay," that melody is in D minor, and in "The Gold Bug," it's in A minor with a few extra trills.  So it's not exactly the same, but essentially it's the same melody.

"Limelight"

Last week I learned the bass part* for "Limelight," but because that's the only part of the song I know, I didn't bother recording it.  I did notate it though.  The standard disclaimers that this isn't official and that I might be wrong apply:

While notating this, I found a few parts that connect to the lyrics.

For the line "Holding on isn't always easy" (later "Holding on wasn't always easy"), there are rests, almost as if the music can't hold on either:

For the second line in that couplet, "I ain't gonna change my mind" (later "Nothing can change my mind"), the bass plays only Bb notes.  There's a constancy of pitch, reflecting the determination in those sentiments:

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*There are actually two bass parts in "Limelight."  In the "credits" section on the APP website, there's the distinction between just "bass" (played by David Paton) and "fretless bass" (played by Ian Bairnson).  On the CD re-issue of Keats, there's a bonus track that's an interview with Bairnson, and in response to the interviewer's question about his bass playing, he says:

You do actually hear some of my bass playing from time to time, for example on "Limelight," an Alan Parsons track.  David played bass on that, but after he'd left and gone home, I was in doing [the] guitar solo and bits and pieces like that, and at the very end of the song "Limelight," there's that kind of piece where it, where the tempo disappears.  You know, it's just, just before the last line: "After all the years of waiting..." da di da di da.  That stuff.  And Alan said, "Oh, we need something in these gaps," so we hired a fretless bass, and I played the bass licks in between these bits.

I haven't learned that part yet; what I notated above is David Paton's bass track.

"Light of the World"

Earlier this evening, I learned the opening piano part and the bass and guitar parts for the verses of "Light of the World."  In my recording, I have just one verse of the bass and guitars, but I think the other verses are the same.  If anything, there are just some differences in the rhythm of the bass part.

While learning these parts, I found an-other reference I'd missed:  in the third verse, there's the line "I can fly so close to the sun, that I cannot see it rise."  It's a reference to Icarus, who flew too close to the sun so that the wax that held his wings together melted and he fell into the sea.  I think this phrase is all there is to the reference though; there doesn't seem to be anything else about Icarus in the song.

"In The Real World"

This morning I listened to Stereotomy, and I noticed the line "Too many windmills in my way" in "In the Real World."  I'm pretty sure this is a reference to Don Quixote.  It's been a few years since I read Don Quixote (and even then, it was just excerpts in a literature class), but the episode with the windmill is pretty widely known anyway (there's a whole Wikipedia page about it).  At the beginning of the story, Don Quixote reads too many old stories about knights.  He starts to think that he himself is a knight and goes on various imagined adventures.  During one of these adventures, he attacks a windmill, thinking it's a giant.

In "In the Real World," there's the recurring line "Don't wanna live my life in the real world," which sort of describes the same situation Don Quixote is in:  living in an imagined version of the real world, rather than the real world itself.  Although, if I remember aright, Don Quixote isn't aware that what he's imagining isn't real.

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In referencing the lyrics in the liner notes of the CD, I discovered that while the title is "In the Real World" on the back of the case and on the CD itself, in the liner notes, it appears as just "The Real World":

"May Be a Price to Pay"

 A couple weeks ago, I learned the opening brass part and most of the bass part (I haven't figured out all of the subtleties) for "May Be a Price to Pay."  (I was sort of dismayed to find that - if I have it right - the opening brass part has parallel fifths, which are generally frowned upon.)  However, I didn't record what I knew because those two parts don't overlap, and I decided that from now on, I'm not going to bother recording anything unless I know at least two simultaneous parts.  So yester-day, I figured out some more parts.  First I got the brass part in the middle, which is basically the same as some of the guitar and piano parts, and then I got a few more of the guitar and piano parts.  I think the guitar and piano parts during the verses play pairs of notes, of which I have only one, but it's a start.

Of the instrumental section, I know only the bass part, so that's not that interesting in my recording.  I think I flubbed a few notes there too, but when I tried to re-record that part, I was doing even worse than what I was trying to improve upon, so I just left it.  I had problems with matching the rhythm of the opening brass part too.  It's probably pretty obvious, but I used the fake trumpet setting on my keyboard.

Re-Establishment

About two years ago, I started a project in which the goal was to learn every part to every song by the Alan Parsons Project (later I added the side-project Keats too).  I don't think I ever thought I would actually achieve this (and I still don't), but I thought it a worthy objective all the same.

I started this project on tumblr, but recently I've started to feel dissatisfied with it.  I felt I should have a cleaner, more professional-looking platform.  (I found some aspects of tumblr's interface less than ideal too.)  Initially, I went with tumblr only because I could directly post audio files of my own recordings of the songs, as a way to demonstrate that I had in fact learned the parts I said I had.  But I can achieve the same thing just with embedded YouTube videos.

So essentially, I'm jumping ship.  I'm going to continue doing everything I would normally do for this project, just on Blogger rather than on tumblr.  I'll be going back and copying my old posts over to this blog, so I'll have the complete archive, but it'll take a while to transfer everything.

"Dancing on a Highwire"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Yester-day I learned the guitar arpeggios and the bass part for the introduction of "Dancing on a Highwire" (on Ammonia Avenue).  I tried figuring out these guitar arpeggios a few months ago without any luck, so it was good to finally get them.