Bad Company "Feel Like Makin Love" Isolated Electric Guitar

I always like Bad Company records for their simplicity. There weren't a lot of overdubs so the tracks weren't hid behind any layers, and then there was Paul Rodgers incomparable vocals (and he still sings at least as well today). Here's an example of that simplicity on the isolated guitar tracks from Feel Like Making Love played by Mick Ralphs. Yes, there are doublings and overdubs, but not that many and they're well conceived. The guitars don't come in until about 12 seconds because the acoustic guitar starts the tune.

1) The clean guitars during the verse both have the same sound (using the rear pickup of probably a Les Paul) and are doubled very tightly with one playing the first position and the another in the 2nd position. One of the guitars is slightly out of tune - who knows if it's intentional to widen the track or just a sign of the times before guitar tuners.

2) The doubled distorted guitars in the chorus are so typically Les Paul/Marshall from that time period. The double actually works better with the big guitars than the clean rhythm.

3) The chorus guitars are played very on top of the beat and push the chorus as a result. You can feel the chorus itself speed up a bit like most did back in the days before click tracks, but the guitar is still on top of the beat. It does relax a bit with each chorus of the song.

4) The guitar solo at 2;42 is interesting. It's 3 moderately clean guitars playing harmony (so much for the simplicity, I guess). What does make them sound simple is that they feel like a single player could've played it in one pass, even if that's not the case.

5) There's a little stumbling of the double in the outchorus at 3;42, almost like he was caught off guard on the first pass and then tried to duplicate in (but couldn't) on the second. It happens again at 4;52 except one guitar plays the part correctly.

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The Making Of The Beach Boy's "Sloop John B"

Here's a spectacular video that highlights the making of The Beach Boy's 1965 hit "Sloop John B." This was never one of my favorite Beach Boy's song but I have a newfound appreciation for both it's instrumental and vocal intricacies after watching this very well-done video.

As always, BB producer Brian Wilson has a number of doublings and counter-lines going in the background of the music and the vocals, and we can hear them all here. Even if you're not a BB fan, it's worth watch to see just how intricate music could be made even 45 years ago, back in the days when 4 track ruled.

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Nirvana's "In Bloom" Dissection By Butch Vig

Here's a dissection of a big song Nirvana's massive Nevermind record called "In Bloom" by producer Butch Vig. I believe it's from their Behind The Music or VH1 Classics programs, but I like it because you hear about it from Butch's perspective.

The great unsung mixer Andy Wallace mixed the record, and reportedly the band hated it because he made it too polished, but to me it's a big reason for the band's initial success. Yes, they had some great songs and great tracks, but at the point of impact when a band just breaks, they can't be too raw or they'll be inaccessible. Regardless, this clip is short and is a lot of fun.

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Heart's "Barracuda" Isolated Vocals

Here's an interesting mostly isolated vocal track from Heart's 1977 hit and album radio favorite "Barracuda." The track sounds like it was isolated via phase cancellation since there are elements of other tracks that jump in and out as the song goes along, but that's okay since they're actually helpful in hearing some of the other parts. Here are some things to listen for.

1) Listen to the majesty of Ann Wilson's voice. One of the best voices in rock.

2) As with most songs done in the analog age, there are a lot of lip smacks and breaths (thanks to the hard compression) that couldn't easily be cleaned up in those days.

3) It sounds like there's an 8th note delay with a fair amount of regeneration on the vocal that's timed to the track and printed. The reason why I think it's printed is that you can hear a punch at about 12 seconds where the delay cuts off and then back in again.

4) The production on this song is state-of-the-art not only for those days, but now as well. Listen to electric rhythm guitar and acoustic guitar during the guitar solo at around 2:00. They're really tightly played with each other where it almost sounds like they were fixed by moving sliding them in a DAW, which of course wasn't available for about another 20 years. Also, the layering of the outro is great.

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The Injustice Of The Beatle's Engineers

I had the pleasure of lunch today with engineer/producer Ken Scott, who in addition to being one of The Beatle's engineers, went on to produce some of the greatest albums ever for David Bowie, Supertramp, Missing Persons, Marivishnu Orchestra, Dixie Dregs, Jeff Beck and many others.

As we dined, Day Tripper came on the background music system and Ken began telling the stories about being there that so many of us Beatle's fans just can't get enough of (you'll read these stories in his upcoming book that I'm helping him write).

During the course of our conversation, he mentioned that none of The Beatles engineers ever received a gold record or any official recognition of any kind for their contributions to some of the greatest recordings in music history. Imagine that - over a billion records sold and Ken, Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick, Phil McDonald, Glyn Johns et al never got an official award???!!!

The reason was that they didn't give awards to engineers in the days when the records were made, which is fair enough, but what about the diamond-selling reissues like "1" (the top selling album in the last decade)? And if the engineers who did the remastering of The Beatles catalog got awards, why shouldn't the original crew who made it all possible get them as well?

I think it's high time that we all say thanks to these great engineers, and the industry gets it together to recognize them for their groundbreaking achievements. After a billion sales (yes, billion with a "b"), they so richly deserve it.

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The Making Of "Strawberry Fields" Part 2

Here's Part 2 of The Making Of Strawberry Fields. It doesn't go into a lot of things I'd like to hear about like the double drum track on the record, but it does cover a few things that may be of interest to those of you into recording who weren't around back then.

1) Part 2 talks a lot about the use of the Mellotron (seen on the left), a keyboard instrument that used a tape of an orchestra or orchestral instrument under each key. We never think about it today because terrific orchestral samples abound, but back then a Mellotron was cutting-edge technology.

2) I love Sir George Martin's explanation of the outro of the song about how there were 11 people playing and it drifted out of time and Ringo eventually pulled it all back in. They just faded the track down until the rhythm straightened out, then faded it back up again. They were called geniuses for being so creative as a result. There's a good lesson here - from adversity comes creativity.

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The Making Of "Strawberry Fields" Part 1

Continuing with The Beatles track dissections from last week, here's part 1 of a great look at how the song Strawberry Fields came together. This is part of an excellent documentary done by the BBC. What I like best about this is:

1) to hear slivers of John Lennon's early demos of the song.

2) Producer Sir George Martin's explanation of how two versions of the song were cut together even though they were in different keys with different tempos.

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"She's Leaving Home" Dissected Track

Back to The Beatles and a great track dissection, this time with "She's Leaving Home" from the Sgt. Pepper album. This is a fairly simple track in that it's just orchestra and vocals, but there's a lot more to the recording, as you'll hear.

1) The orchestra was recorded beautifully, but as the commentator points out, a lot has to do with the fact that the studio was based around 1inch 4 track tape machines. This means that the signal to noise ratio was better than most other machines because of the tape width used. As a result, these 4 tracks sounded much better than the 24 track tape machines that we revere so much these days.

2) Paul's vocal performance is great. It sounds like a complete performance without any punches (I don't hear any), but there's no way to be sure.

3) John's vocal was printed with reverb, which is what needed to be done in order to print both vocals on the same track. That's the way it used to be in recording once upon a time. You had to make a decision while you where recording instead of waiting until the mix.

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James Jamerson Isolated Bass

Yesterday I talked about how Paul McCartney was, in my opinion, the most innovative bass player in rock besides James Jamerson. It wouldn't be fair not to listen to Jamerson after listening to Paul, so here are a number of Motown hits featuring Jamerson's signature bass playing. Of course, Jamerson was one of the mainstays of the Motown house band known as the Funk Brothers.

Here are a couple of his greatest parts including Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On, and The Four Tops' Bernadette.

1) On What's Goin' On, listen to how Jamerson builds the intensity of the track as it goes on. You can just  feel him pushing the track as his line gets more and more complex and he digs in harder.

2) Jamerson's bass has a distorted edge to it. He supposedly went direct while recording and used an Ampeg B-15 when playing live, but the tone on this song sure sounds like a B-15 to me.

3) Bernadette may be Jamerson's masterpiece. He's playing a fairly busy part yet it's always in the pocket and always seems effortless.

) Bernadette is also a really good example of how a Motown track is put together when you hear all the instruments fall in with the bass.

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Paul McCartney Bass Lines

Paul McCartney has never gotten nearly enough credit for his innovations as a bass player. I personally believe that he's the most influential bass player of the rock age besides Motown's James Jamerson.

Like Jamerson, McCartney playing evolved into mini-melodies, being part hook and part counterpoint to the rest of the instruments in the band. As a result, the band always sounds full even with a minimum of overdubs.

I believe this was because the bass became an overdub that happened in the late stages of Beatle tracks, instead of being recorded the traditional way during tracking of the basics. This allowed Paul the freedom to come up with a line that fit better with the final track.

Here's an interesting video that showcases McCartney at his best (except for the last track). Have a listen to A Little Help From My Friends, Come Together, and Band On The Run.

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"Come Together" Track Dissection

Here's a great track dissection from a BBC documentary on The Beatles that features Come Together from their Abbey Road album. It does a pretty good job of describing how the song was put together track-wise, although I wish we could've heard more of each track.

A few things I noticed:
1) Listen how out of tune George's guitar is.

2) I always thought that the electric piano was a Wurlitzer and played by Billy Preston (it's a Rhodes played by Paul). Just goes to show what I know.

3) The missing guitar lick is very cool but I can see why they didn't include it in the final mix. Sometimes the space is more powerful than anything that fills it. I think it might've stepped on the vocal as well.

4) Listen to the harmony vocal in the verse. After hearing a number of Beatle's vocal tracks and dissecting how they put their harmonies together, I'm always amazed that Paul usually takes the lowest part, considering his great vocal range. George is frequently the one on the top vocal (although not on this track).

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"Lady Madonna" Backing Track Take 3

After all the response to last week's post of a partial take of "Day Tripper," this will be Beatle's week on The Big Picture. Today we'll start with take #3 of "Lady Madonna."

This is the take that ended up being the master, but it's mostly Paul on piano and vocal and Ringo playing brushes.

According the Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, a number of tracks were added at another session later that evening including Paul's bass, John and George on fuzz guitar (through the same amp no less), Ringo's drums and another vocal by Paul.

The song was finished a few days later with John and Paul backing vocals and a sax section.

1) Paul is a really good rock piano player. Even though a second piano was supposedly recorded later, you have to wonder exactly what was added since this track is very solid already. If anything, I suspect that the part between the bridges might've been fixed, since he plays it a bit differently from the main part.

2) Notice the handclaps in the background at about 1;37. According to Lewisohn, there were more added  at a later date.

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