60s BBs Mixdown Process

[SgtTimBob]

I'm interested in hearing from anyone with extensive knowledge on the methods that were used to create the final mixes of those epic 60s records (I'm thinking Today, Summer Days, Pet Sounds, SMiLE). Specifically, I'm wondering if my thinking is right on the combining of the instrumental track with the vocal tracks.

Am I right in thinking that the basic pattern was to create a single uncompressed stereo instrumental track, and then simply mix the vocal tracks down with that. What interests me is the idea that working in this way would mean that instrumental track was locked and could not be altered once the vocals were being added, unless you went back to instrumental session tapes and created a new mix. I'm guessing the final mix involved the instrumental track and several vocal tracks, possibly with a track left open for some minor instrumental overdubs.

If anyone would care to add any insights to this whole process I'd be very interested in hearing them.

[EgoHanger1966]

This goes for Pet Sounds at least - some of Summer Days and SMiLE surely....

In most cases, the basic (instrumental) track was mixed down to one MONO track (not stereo!), of an eight track tape. That left seven tracks for vocals and other overdubs. Not all of them were used, or all of them were used and some were not included on the final mix.

[guitarfool2002]

A few other points to consider: "Mixing" as we know it in 2012 isn't quite the same thing as it was in 64-66, and at that time a lot more of the mixing was actually done either on the studio floor or "on the fly" as the musicians played. I think mixing for a session on Today as we would know it was more a case of balancing levels and getting a good blend, whereas today and even 40 years ago after 8 tracks and beyond became the norm, mixing was much more involved...and perhaps needlessly so in some cases where a specific soundscape wasn't the goal for the song.

A lot of the amazing blends and sounds, both vocally and instrumentally, on records from the mid 60's are due more to knowing how and where to place a microphone and how to set up the instruments and even vocalists around those microphones in order to capture the best blend happening on the studio floor. This is a lost art for many engineers whose  skills are working fast in ProTools. Drum mics? How hard or soft a drummer plays? How the drum heads are tuned? How the drums themselves resonate, which frequencies they produce and how that might affect the full mix?

Does any of that matter when the drums will be replaced, rejiggered, shaped, sampled then altered in the mix, etc? Of course not.

So when you hear a marvelous track like Wouldn't It Be Nice, and the session tapes which let us hear Brian and the engineer(s) telling horn players to "move in closer" to the mic and similar instructions, they were essentially "mixing" the track on the studio floor.

Keeping in mind the dating of all of this is crucial, because "Pet Sounds" may have been the last gasp of this type of semi-live mixing...as the Smile sessions started up, we can hear Brian doing more of what we'd consider mixing in a modern standard, with the way he was overdubbing, layering, then adding effects and altering the EQ on segments like the multiple piano layers on Wind Chimes. That was not the 1964-66 "studio floor" method...but curiously too, there is the "In The Cantina" section where Brian and the engineer have a bit of a back-and-forth over how and where to place the microphone (totally foreign concept in 2012 for most keyboard-based tracking sessions) and on other sessions, doing things like taping the piano strings in order to create an effect which in 2012 many would reach for a plug in or something external rather than make the effect a natural one.

Also, one great element from the pre-66 mixes is the addition of a final track, where Brian would add, say, a guitar solo to Help Me Rhonda at the absolute final stage of the balance/mixdown process, and the person playing it had to get it right. That's why I believe there are missing parts here and there from the 64-65 tracks, but the specifics escape me.

So basically I think the main thing to take away from these tracks is that anyone with a DAW or mix software in 2012 could load up the various multitracks from this era and you could create a respectable mixdown of them by simply adjusting levels, and not needing to add too much in the way of EQ tweaks, effects, compression/limiting, etc. It was a revelation to do this same thing with some Motown tracks from the same era, and have the tracks themselves be recorded in such a way that you would only need to shape the levels a bit, but the heart of the tracks was already there on the studio floor when the band was playing.

Lost art indeed!  

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

So basically I think the main thing to take away from these tracks is that anyone with a DAW or mix software in 2012 could load up the various multitracks from this era and you could create a respectable mixdown of them by simply adjusting levels, and not needing to add too much in the way of EQ tweaks, effects, compression/limiting, etc. It was a revelation to do this same thing with some Motown tracks from the same era, and have the tracks themselves be recorded in such a way that you would only need to shape the levels a bit, but the heart of the tracks was already there on the studio floor when the band was playing.

Still waiting for the day that a 65-66 Beach Boys multitrack leaks or gets released.

This is quite a good point you make, though, in that by the time the stuff hits the tape, all the hard work of mixing is done.  Evidence of this is on the bootlegs, where a lot of the stuff is just a faders up playback, and it sounds great.

[guitarfool2002]

So basically I think the main thing to take away from these tracks is that anyone with a DAW or mix software in 2012 could load up the various multitracks from this era and you could create a respectable mixdown of them by simply adjusting levels, and not needing to add too much in the way of EQ tweaks, effects, compression/limiting, etc. It was a revelation to do this same thing with some Motown tracks from the same era, and have the tracks themselves be recorded in such a way that you would only need to shape the levels a bit, but the heart of the tracks was already there on the studio floor when the band was playing.

Still waiting for the day that a 65-66 Beach Boys multitrack leaks or gets released.

This is quite a good point you make, though, in that by the time the stuff hits the tape, all the hard work of mixing is done.  Evidence of this is on the bootlegs, where a lot of the stuff is just a faders up playback, and it sounds great.

This is consistently the most amazing part of hearing such sessions and tapes: Those sounds were all there on the floor, and whatever else was added seemed to be icing on the proverbial cake. They could have released just the raw tracks with minimal balancing and no external trickery apart from what happened in the studio and it would still sound good. It is really interesting as well to consider that Brian was cutting records at this time 64-66 when the gap between the "old way" of recording full bands live in the studio was starting to give way to the "new school" of having more tracks and being able to record individual parts and isolate tracks and individual musicians.

Even a track like Good Vibrations, where the reputation has it as a really technical mix and all of that...is there really that much "mixing" as we would use that term today, or does most of the power of that record come from the sounds they captured on the tapes and then edited for maximum impact as a song form? There really isn't that much in the way of external effects or prominent "mixing" moves on that record, at least ones that are crucial to the song itself.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

So basically I think the main thing to take away from these tracks is that anyone with a DAW or mix software in 2012 could load up the various multitracks from this era and you could create a respectable mixdown of them by simply adjusting levels, and not needing to add too much in the way of EQ tweaks, effects, compression/limiting, etc. It was a revelation to do this same thing with some Motown tracks from the same era, and have the tracks themselves be recorded in such a way that you would only need to shape the levels a bit, but the heart of the tracks was already there on the studio floor when the band was playing.

Still waiting for the day that a 65-66 Beach Boys multitrack leaks or gets released.

This is quite a good point you make, though, in that by the time the stuff hits the tape, all the hard work of mixing is done.  Evidence of this is on the bootlegs, where a lot of the stuff is just a faders up playback, and it sounds great.

This is consistently the most amazing part of hearing such sessions and tapes: Those sounds were all there on the floor, and whatever else was added seemed to be icing on the proverbial cake. They could have released just the raw tracks with minimal balancing and no external trickery apart from what happened in the studio and it would still sound good. It is really interesting as well to consider that Brian was cutting records at this time 64-66 when the gap between the "old way" of recording full bands live in the studio was starting to give way to the "new school" of having more tracks and being able to record individual parts and isolate tracks and individual musicians.

Even a track like Good Vibrations, where the reputation has it as a really technical mix and all of that...is there really that much "mixing" as we would use that term today, or does most of the power of that record come from the sounds they captured on the tapes and then edited for maximum impact as a song form? There really isn't that much in the way of external effects or prominent "mixing" moves on that record, at least ones that are crucial to the song itself.

With this in mind, I think it explains a little bit of the mixed reaction to the stereo remixes.  All you really need to do for those is sync up the tracks from the different tapes, if necessary, pan, and that's it, other than maybe mix out talking on the vocal tracks or something.

But the remix people have generally been adding, adding, adding.

[SgtTimBob]

Nice responses, thanks. Yeah it's really evident that the leveling and 'EQ' of the track was done through mic placement and musical instruction; basically using what they had at the time to get a good blend, and I love that. Listening to the SMiLE sessions is a very rewarding and insightful thing to do as well, as it's evident that suddenly there was a lot more overdubbing and layering going on, on certain tracks; although still nothing like as much as is done today.

I've always thought that the major technical component of Good Vibrations was the fact that it was done in sections and edited together, more than anything else. Not only that, but the way he created different feelings captured in different rooms. I think that was the revolutionary thing about it that gave it a certain freshness at the time. Going from that cool organ with the slight reverb coming off Carl's vocal into that dry cello is still mind blowing to this day.