Oasis "Wonderwall" - Isolated Drums And Bass

Once again from Oasis' Morning Glory album that sold 20 million copies, we'll have a look at the isolated drum and bass parts from the hit "Wonderwall." Here's what to listen for:

1) It sounds like there's no artificial ambience on the drum track and what you hear is all the room.

2) This is a really great drum track, well played by Alan White, especially the ghost notes on the snare. It's surprisingly busy for a mostly acoustic song, but oh, so very funky.

3) The sound isn't that great. Actually, it sounds like it's just a room mic as there are a lot of cymbals heard here, but it's  not that far from the final sound on the recording.



Here's the bass part for "Wonderwall."
1) It's very surprising how distorted the bass sound is.

2) Bass player, Paul McGuigan, gives a well played and solid performance that changes in intensity in conjunction with acoustic guitar (which we reviewed yesterday). There are very slight tempo flubs at 2:00, 2:22, 2:36, 2:49, and the outro is a bit shaky though.

3) This is a pretty well recorded track but you do hear the compressor snap occasionally on some transients. As with most of the imperfections that I pick out, you never hear it in the track.

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Oasis "Wonderwall" - Isolated Guitar

Once again from Oasis' Morning Glory album we'll have a look at the acoustic guitar part from the hit "Wonderwall." Here's what to listen for.

1) The part is very consistent, both in level (a slight bit of compression) and in sound.

2) Noel Gallagher is a great rhythm player. His tempo is great and he knows how to push a band. Listen to the second verse as his playing grows more intense and the acoustic part is doubled.

3) The playing of this part is great, but you can hear a slight flub at 1:30 and again at 2:20. You can also hear punches at 2:47, 2:56 (this is a bad one), 3:18, and 3:44. You'd never hear these in the track as they get covered by the double.

4) The sound is pretty much in your face with very little ambience (mostly it's just from the room).

5) During the break at 1:50 you can hear his foot taping, which I love to hear since it usually means that the player is really laying in.

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Oasis "Wonderwall" - Isolated Vocal

It's Monday again, so let's get to the song of the week to be analyzed. A big hit for the British band Oasis in 1996, "Wonderwall" proved to be the song that broke them big in America and Australia. The song was supposedly fully recorded in a single 6 to 8 session, and was off the Morning Glory album, which went on to sell a reported 20 million copies! Here are some things to listen for:

1) Quite a good vocal by Liam Gallagher, it's very consistent throughout both performance-wise and level-wise. You don't hear any punches or differences in the vocals, exactly the traits of a good engineering job.

2) The reverb is really long with a modulated tail, which is a trait of a Lexicon 480, and a little delay.

3) There are some breaths left in, probably because the song was recorded on tape and spot-erasing was too chancy, since you could also erase a part of the vocal as well. Today, we'd probably take those out during editing.

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