The "Leila Revelation"

[SG7]

The sense of entitlement here is rather hilarious I have to admit.

[The Shift]

I think it's pretty obvious that this is written by a man pretending to be a woman. 

I'll admit it all sounded fishy, but how can you possibly tell that a transvestite wrote it?

Well, first off, no friend "B" or "S" would sit there listening to smile and YELL at a woman.
They'd be more likely to share some "Good Vibrations"

The other funny part is that the friends who are hardcore fans have a listening party to dive into the compiled disc, not the sessions or any other rarities/new finds.  If I was pressed for listening time, that compiled disc would probably be my last choice.

I'm sure if these people existed and were hardcore fans they'd be posting their thoughts here.

Hardcore fans gravitate here. It's what we do.

[Shady]

The idea of it being a man posing as a woman is rather creepy..

Where did that idea come from

[Andrew G. Doe]

AGD we get it, you've heard TSS already, no need to shout now    

Never said that. But I know a man who has...

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

AGD we get it, you've heard TSS already, no need to shout now    

Never said that. But I know a man who has...

Well so do I

But he won't tell me anything because he knows its like torture

[SG7]

Yeah, I've heard all of TSS too. 

[Cam Mott]

The idea of it being a man posing as a woman is rather creepy..

Where did that idea come from

April.

[runnersdialzero]

HELLO ?

SUP D00D

[Ron]

HELLO ?

Right, now I've got your attention, listen up, 'cause I'm fed up with repeating this: what "Leila" says is broadly accurate, but if she only listened to CD1 in full, there are some odd omissions in her recollections. Thank you.

This may be the most attention whore thing you've ever done on this board, lol. 

[Andrew G. Doe]

The idea of it being a man posing as a woman is rather creepy..

Where did that idea come from

April.

Whoa, blast from the past !

[LonelyDays]

New Leila Revelation on The Hoffman Board

Wow, what a reception, well, B warned me that fans of the original Smile can be a bit crabby… and he should know  I can't believe how much got posted over the weekend! I only ever post on forums from work, wasn't anyone out enjoying the sunshine this weekend... Anyway, lunch time at work. Time for another post.

So I've been catching up with everything everyone asked since Friday afternoon. I had to show B the questions actually, he's the expert. And yes, there _is_ a reason why he's not posting here directly, but prefers to send stuff through me. But he is a real guy, his name is a bit like a shopping centre in North London. And he won't let me say any more than that! As for S, we could get him in trouble if we said any more about _his_ name, let's just say he's from north of the border. But we had a good laugh about how everyone thought what we were writing had to be BS, because my two friends are called B and S. B just said "tell 'em truth is stranger than fiction, Leila". And he's right!

It also feels like you've all been having a big laugh at how little I know what I'm talking about. Well, I know I probably didn't describe all the song names right and all that stuff, but as I said, I got taken to see smile live a few years ago and I really liked it so I bought the CD. That's the version I know, end of. I never heard any of the 60s stuff until the other night really (B bluetoothed a couple of tracks to my phone once, but I thought they sounded just like the versions from my CD, so I deleted them). After listening to the CD a bit, though, I got more curious and starting asking B questions and he told me about all the stories from when it was recorded, like the stuff with the Fire and Brian Wilson going mad and the Beatles eating carrots in the studios and all that. The thing is, the 60s are like anceint history to me, they're way before my time guys! How am I supposed to know all this stuff?

Anyway, here's what B sent to me to include in this post! I hope you enjoy the info, particularly Mr Pornmower who doesnt seem to think we exist!

Leila x

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

dvakman, regarding H&V Parts I & II: I didn't get to hear that yet. I was more interested in the Sessions discs to start with, and S has H&V I and II on another stream, the one for the two-disc version, so it wasn't immediately available. I keep meaning to go back round S's for another listen, but that won't happen for a few days, as I'm busy with parliamentary work. I have asked S about it over the weekend, though. S says it's basically the old Cantina mix from the twofer, and Part 2 is basically some of the sections mix from Gee onwards. I hope to get more info on that next time I see S.

Tristero, Child Is Father of the Man is like an old mix I heard on a boot years ago, except that it opens with the same piano section as the version from the Sea Of Tunes single-disc SMiLE set. After that, it's not like BWPS at all. It's the piano section with the bass, then the chorus, then the verse, then the second chorus. And the new vocals on the second chorus are all that's different - there's an extra high descending 'Father Of The Man'. There are no verse vocals. And I didn't hear Brian's original mono mix anywhere on the set. I didn't hear the Child sessions the other day, but like Andrew Doe says, you can tell from the timings that the mono mix isn't going to be there. The Brian mono mix of Wind Chimes doesn't seem to have been used either  The mix on Disc 1 (after the Holidays/Whispering winds crossfade, ugh) takes the verses from the second version re-record, but the rest of the track from the chorus onwards is from the first version, as heard on the Sea Of Tunes boots, and like BWPS. The track doesn't fade out after the tinkling piano bridge, like on Brian's mix.

Olsen - there's no cough in DYLW. That's one part you'll have to add back.

Mr Schneider (wer sind _Sie_ den uberhaupt?), I Don't Know is great, sure, but it's short and sounds like it was supposed to be a bridge or an edit fragment for something else to me. Like Lonely Days was, probably

Jeff64 and CelticBob: the piano from the November 66 H&V demo is still in Great Shape and Barnyard, and it's Very obvious when it disappears, which is one of the reasons I don't like it. It's worse on Barnyard than on Shape because there's already some piano on Shape for it to join in with. There's no piano on Barnyard so when it goes, you really notice it afterwards!

Michael Papelian - there are different versions of "Bells and Whistles" on the set, including the early one from the Heroes and Villains sessions, but I didn't hear a Bells and Whistles version of With Me Tonight. In fact there's only one version of With Me Tonight on this set, and I don't know which one it is yet. I didn't hear any toothbrushing sounds on Vega-Tables either…

Buddhat - Great Shape and barnyard are sort of joined via the tape explosion, but it never gets as big and 'explody' as it did on the Cantina mix of H&V and on some of the three takes of Great Shape that made it out on boot, nor is there a crossfade between them. Great shape sort of half goes into a weaker explosion, then fades, and then Barnyard starts.

Jeff64, having briefly scanned through the Wonderful sessions last week, I can say that, yes, the sessions for the Rock With Me Henry version are there (as well as the session for the original harpsichord version) including the sessions for that odd 'mamamama' tag. As far as I could tell, everything was unfinished like it was on boot. The vocal on Rock With Me Henry finishes where it always did, long before the track ends. I don't remember hearing 'I need some water, man', though. And the April piano version of Wonderful is also there, but again incomplete. Just a few backing vocals on one of the verses, like on the boots.

Zodiac - there are no Worms vocals on the Holidays chorus. But I think you knew that already. And to complete the story, there are no 'Ocean Liners' or 'Sandwich Isles' Worms vocals on the verses, either (just the old tape drag vocals, now without the drag), although there is that muffled snippet sung by Brian in the sessions, which might be for the verse, the chorus, or who knows?

Andrew Doe - S was really into the vocal-only montage track - like Leila posted here in one of her short early posts, he thought it was "absolutely inspirational" - and Leila really liked it, too. She wrote about that. I wasn't so taken with it, as I don't like these Stack-O-Vocals things. It's always just like listening to half the proper Wilson arrangement to me, a bit of an abomination. But that's why I didn't mention it. For Mylene, I certainly didn't hear anything that destroyed my mind in there, just lots vocal sections we've heard before, but without the instrumental tracks. FWIW, I heard lots of stuff from Heroes and Villains, Wonderful, Cabin Essence, Worms, Vega-Tables and Wind Chimes.

Tristero - we did also whiz through Heroes and Villains sections on disc 1, which is different to the Good Vibrations box set version. For a start it's all in stereo. The slowing down section at the end of the Western theme, or Prelude to fade, is different, with whistles and bells and collapsing strings again. I think that's a different take spliced in from that session. Also, the track ends differently to the 1993 mix - a run through a piano 'Do A Lot' section I didn't recognise, the dum/whistle/explosion from the Cantina version, and the False Barnyard to fade. Hey, maybe me, S and Leila will make the book? Or maybe we won't, now…  

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=7009667&postcount=467

[Barnshine]

That new post has a lot in it.
Whether it's he/she/them/whatever, they seem to know what they're talking about, and it's the first description we have for what they've done with Wind Chimes.

[Sam_BFC]

So we have a Smile expert called Brent eh.

[The Demon]

Weird.  I wonder why they'd leave off any Brian mono mix, if that's the case.

By the way, great avatar, Lonely Days.

[guitarfool2002]

I'm saying this with a smile, by the way.

I'm not trying to rain on the parade, but wouldn't it be better to just wait a few weeks and hear this material with our own ears rather than trying to debate and discuss the merits of someone anonymously posting teasers and spoilers on a message board, that may or may not be legitimate?

Again, it's everyone's choice but within a few weeks of having our collective wishes come true and being able to own the material, doesn't the Q&A bit start sounding like the kids asking "Are we there yet?" from the back seat of the family station wagon?

November 1st.

[Shady]

A, B, C, Ugh!

I think I'll avoid all his/her reviews altogether 

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

What sort of sicko hates vocals only mixes?

[Chris Brown]

Weird.  I wonder why they'd leave off any Brian mono mix, if that's the case.

By the way, great avatar, Lonely Days.

That's what I'm wondering too.  Acetate sourced or not, any Brian mono mix from that era is invaluable and should have been included somewhere.  I'm especially bummed about the "Child" mix that Andrew has spoken so highly of - I get why you wouldn't want it on disc 1, as it's purely instrumental, but why not elsewhere on the box?  Hopefully this will be answered at some point, as it really doesn't make much sense.

[Heysaboda]

ALL THE CONTENT OF THE FOLLOWING POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED BY Leila  AT THE Hoffman Forums.

... ... or take some more nice wine round to S's flat again to have another listen. It was cool listening to some of these harmonies looking out over the river ... ....

My guess, the Cuyahoga RIver!

 

[Matt Bielewicz]

OK, so HERE'S a weird thing; I finally got around to phase-cancelling the backing from the Cabin Essence chorus, using my own needle-drop of the Mojo single, like I said I would earlier in this thread. Er. That's not the weird thing. Read on to get to that - particularly if you're AGD.

In case this is complete blither to you, it works like this.

The first Cabin Essence chorus contains the instrumental backing track, plus 'Who Ran The Iron Horse' vocals

The second Cabin Essence chorus contains the same instrumental backing track, the 'who ran the iron horse' vocals, AND Dennis Wilson's 'truck driving man' lyrics, very hard to hear and low in the mix. 'Truck driving man' is the one thing that's different between them.

Therefore, if you invert the phase of the first chorus using audio software, and overlay it precisely on the second chorus using software, the instrumental backing and the 'iron horse' vocals will drop out, and you'll be left with Dennis's isolated vocal.

That's the theory. In practice, it hardly ever works, as the two recordings you're overlaying have to be at exactly the same volume, and overlaid on one another down to the accuracy of one sample (a forty-four thousandth of a second for CD-quality audio). That's easier if the audio you're dealing with came off a digital CD to begin with, but it's next to impossible on recordings taken from analogue sources like cassette or vinyl, as tiny fluctuations in the speed mean that the two sections aren't even close to sample-accurate copies. So if you overlay the two sections when they're taken from vinyl, you get a tiny area in the track where the backing tracks are aligned and cancelling, and the vocal is isolated, but the rest of the section is an echoey mess with two versions nearly on top of one another but not quite. If you slowly slide one copy along a few samples at a time on top of the other, you can move the section of isolated vocal 'through' the track, and gradually chop out and edit yourself together a version of the isolated audio. This is very very slow, incredibly dull and repetitive, and at the end, you never want to hear Cabin Essence again, ever.

Nevertheless, someone years ago on the old SMiLE Shop board managed to do it, and completely isolate Dennis's vocals using this method (or one very like it). I think his name was Paul, and if I remember rightly, all copies of the isolated 'Truck Driving Man' rap originate from the heroic, time-consuming work he did to phase-cancel the backing. He did it very, very well, as the result was a completely isolated Dennis vocal with no bits of backing left in it at all. It's a very hard thing to do, that, and I don't think I ever thanked him. So if you're reading this, Paul, thanks. Several years too late, but thanks!

So, anyway, if he did it years back, why am I re-doing it now? Well, dear old 'B', the mate of the so-called 'Leila Heynsham', claimed on the Hoffman board (amongst all the other stuff) that there were new vocals in the box set mix of Cabin Essence on the Truck Driving Man section, and, crucially, that they were also in the Mojo single version.

I didn't get this, and said so up-thread. I couldn't hear any new vocals in that bit on the Mojo single (nor could AGD, as he also confirmed with his characteristic, er, brevity and succinctness up-thread), so that suggested the whole 'Leila revelation' was suspect. But if it was a hoax, why give yourself such an easy way of being found out?

So, being a glutton for punishment, I had a go at phase-cancelling the Cabin Essence choruses from the Mojo single, to see if there was anything new there at all, low in the mix like Dennis's vocal. And I was amazed to hear that there IS something else there...

Cancelling from a needle-drop of a vinyl record (ie a non-sample-accurate analogue source) is never going to work well, for the reasons described above. When the SMiLE Sessions finally comes out, we might be able to do a much better job with the uncompressed audio off the CD. But for now, the vinyl single is the only physical source we have for the 'new' Cabin Essence, which means I got pretty cruddy results. It took me hours to get just the start of the chorus done, but as I worked, I could hear a weird, unearthly vocal in there before the Truck Driving Man bit starts. At first I thought it was some kind of Indian chant... but then I realised that it was Mike's vocal from the tag to the song: 'Have you seen the grand coolie...'. What it's doing over THIS part of the song, I have no idea. It's in totally the wrong place, the melody doesn't fit with the chorus, and it's completely out of time. It's also low in the mix, at least as low as the Truck Driving Man rap. And of course, as AGD said, under normal (ie non-phase-cancelled) listening conditions, it's utterly inaudible.

Don't take my word for it, have a listen; download the following WAV file, which is all I managed to make of it in three hours tonight. You really have to listen on headphones to make anything out at all.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1164003/CabinCancel.wav

So you know what you're listening to, let me explain. I've put the original chorus in the left channel, and the partially cancelled audio in the right. It all sounds pretty rough, because of the problems with cancelling from non-phase-accurate vinyl. As the chorus starts in the left channel, you can hear Mike faintly sing 'Have you seen the grand coolie...?' in the right, and then he's all but swamped by the start of Dennis's Truck Driving Man rap: 'Truck Driving Man, do what you can, high-tail your load off the road...' and that's as far as I got!

So whatever else is true - there IS an extra vocal in the Truck Driving Man section on the recent Mojo single version of Cabin Essence. It's not in the right place, and it can't have been on the old versions of Cabin Essence on the 20/20 twofer CDs (otherwise no-one would ever have been able to obtain Dennis's rap isolated without also getting Mike's Grand Coolie vocals all over it), and overall, it's probably an error. But it's there. When my SMiLE Session set CDs arrive, I should be able to do a much better version of this, much more quickly, because the audio should be sample-accurate.

Well, it keeps me off the streets...  

MattB

[37!ws]

Is it supposed to be eight seconds long and cut off well before the "grand coolie" vocals kick in???

[Matt Bielewicz]

That's as far as I got in three hours of cancelling! (yes, it is THAT slow!)

Like I say, when the set comes out, I'll do a better version, and cover the whole chorus...

[37!ws]

Mis-read your post.....my fault! Now, need another listen!

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Oh god... not already IT SOUNDS FINE!

[37!ws]

Wow, Mattb...I agree, it must be an error, given the slow pace of the vocal and how right at the end of the clip you can hear the word "have" in a low B-flat that really clashes against the F-major key of the rest of the song.

My guess: on the same tape, some of the tracks are the "Who Ran The Iron Horse" part, other tracks are "Grand Coulie" and are meant to be edited together later -- much like that version of "Vegetables" with the overlapping verse vocals...