Brian's hearing loss and how he produced in stereo

[Spaghettiows]

Newbie here, so apologies if this particular topic has come up before.  Anyhow, I am aware that Brian's almost total deafness in one ear was one of the major reasons he preferred to record in mono, but I found some of the stereo songs that he was involved with had some very fascinating stereo effects.

I'm pretty sure that Brian was very involved in the development of the songs on "Love You", and I was listening to "Johnny Carson". (great song!) I was really floored by the back and forth effect during the bridge -  "It's (nice) to (have) you (on) the (show) tonight" - which made me wonder how Brian would have came up with such an in-your-face stereo effect with his hearing loss. 

Was this actually the result of the input of somebody else?  That whole passage in "Johnny Carson"  just screams of something that Brian must have came up with, but maybe I am wrong.  Did (and does) Brian have at least some ability to sense sound in stereo when he hears it?  If he was sitting in a room with the speakers widely separated, could he sense the general direction of the differences in sound coming out of each channel?  Or perhaps it has to be a very obvious stereo pan for him to be able to recognize it.  Anyway, I was pretty much blown away by that part of the song and wondered how somebody with Brian's level of hearing impairment could have ever thought it up.

 

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Carl is the de facto producer of Love You, I would say.

[Spaghettiows]

Carl is the de facto producer of Love You, I would say.

Okay, but in the early years, if something was released in true stereo, how did Brian oversee the stereo mixes? 

[thatjacob]

Carl is the de facto producer of Love You, I would say.

Okay, but in the early years, if something was released in true stereo, how did Brian oversee the stereo mixes? 

Probably in the same way that people check their mixes:
Listen once facing the speakers then listen once turned around.

[willy]

Did not Chuck Britz oversee the earlier stereo mixes?

[DonnyL]

Brian produced/produces in mono -- always. Others mixed and/or co-produced for a stereo final. Brian approves it, listening to the stereo mix with one ear. perhaps he fades from speaker to speaker, etc, or sums to mono ... but he cannot properly comprehend a stereo image.

[DonnyL]

Carl is the de facto producer of Love You, I would say.

Okay, but in the early years, if something was released in true stereo, how did Brian oversee the stereo mixes? 

in the early days, the mono mixes were considered the finals. BW did not necessarily have anything to do with the stereo mixes, which were done by Chuck Britz or staff engineers, etc. This is partially why albums from 65-67 did not have a stereo mix at all -- because Brian couldn't approve it properly.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Did not Chuck Britz oversee the earlier stereo mixes?

Right.  And the story is out there that he would often not bother to monitor in stereo at all, he would just flip the switches, check it in mono, and off to the masterer it would go.  These people did not care about stereo at all until later.

[Spaghettiows]

Thanks to all for the info!

[Ron]

Guys:

   Does anybody remember ever hearing, or reading, about the engineers involved with the 'boys attempting to make a special console or something to that effect, to assist Brian in 'hearing' Stereo Mixes?  I read somewhere years ago about something to that effect.  Basically it was some kind of filter that combined the two stereo halves together in some fashion. 

[DonnyL]

Guys:

   Does anybody remember ever hearing, or reading, about the engineers involved with the 'boys attempting to make a special console or something to that effect, to assist Brian in 'hearing' Stereo Mixes?  I read somewhere years ago about something to that effect.  Basically it was some kind of filter that combined the two stereo halves together in some fashion. 

yes, Desper talked about it ... I think it's somewhere in his thread.

[Stephen W. Desper]

Guys:

   Does anybody remember ever hearing, or reading, about the engineers involved with the 'boys attempting to make a special console or something to that effect, to assist Brian in 'hearing' Stereo Mixes?  I read somewhere years ago about something to that effect.  Basically it was some kind of filter that combined the two stereo halves together in some fashion. 

COMMENT:  I was going over some of the older posts and came across your question, which I can answer.

One of the main reasons I was hired into The Beach Boy organization was to take them from mono production to stereo production, as the industry was moving in that direction.

Carl and I had several discussions on this subject with emphasis on how to move into stereo production while still keeping Brian interested. One evening Carl, Brian and I had a discussion in his living room in which Carl lovingly told Brian that The Beach Boys must start embracing stereophonic sound in their recordings -- and there was no way out of it.

Brian and I talked in frank terms about his hearing loss and he explained to me what he can and cannot hear in his "bad" ear. Basically he has an 85% loss or extremely diminished hearing in his right ear. Mostly all the mid to top frequencies are gone, which leaves little value to the ear for music. Since this was an early childhood loss, his concept of stereo is missing.

I explained to Brian how the ear works, how we perceive binaural sound, what happens in the brain to make us hear the three cornerstones of normal hearing, dimension, direction, and depth -- the three D's -- or 3D hearing. How this differs from what Brian hears and how stereo recording techniques differ from monophonic recording techniques. It was an intense evening.

What we did not want to happen was for Brian to feel he was ill-equipped to continue his recording career, but rather how he should proceed and what to expect. Some examples discussed were how a color-blind person who could make wonderful black & white movies would handle the job of making a color movie. How do you explain the concept to red to a person that only sees B&W?  This is a challenge.

Carl was very compassionate with his brother and took much time to explain terms in ways Brian understood. We even discussed how I might be taking on the role equivalent to that of a vocal coach in the days of transition from the silent movies to the talkies. Some successful actors in the silent era had awful voices that needed coaching to work when sound came in. We discussed many things. It was serious.

One important thing I did learn was that for Brian listening to stereo or even mono in the control room was giving him a "double sound" or blurred image. This double image, would drive him crazy and he was having much trouble understanding how we could even hear anything sensible when all he was hearing was a dual sound.

You see, normally in the studio to hear MONO the left and right signals are combined together so that the same signal comes from both stereo speakers. For the Binaural listener, this makes, what is called, a phantom image or an image that seems to be coming from a point midway between the two speakers -- like you hear a singer from the "center" in stereo. But for Brian, even combining the two stereo signals into one, if presented to him over both stereo speakers would give a double image if he was slightly off-center from the two speakers. This is because one speaker's sound would arrive at his good ear sooner than the other speaker's sound. Brian's hearing from his one good left ear was so keen that he could hear the millisecond delay caused by standing slightly off-center. For folks with normal hearing this is not a problem, but the way we perceive direction. But Brian does not perceive direction that way. So it was decided that any critical playback for Brian would be done by combining the left and right signals together electrically, and then playing them over only one speaker. This is actually real mono and is the way mono should be heard. 

Brian liked to be up close to the speaker and turn his head so that he found his "sweet spot" that gave him the sound he wanted from the monitor speaker. I've tried it with one ear closed off. It is really a very good way of listening to mono and to mono compatibility. So we always listened that way in the control room when Brian was around, and if recording in stereo, did it blind or by guess or by watching the meters, and then checked it when Brian was gone.

At mixdown time I put an Altec 604e monitor speaker (Brian’s favorite) in the studio for him to hear single speaker mono while we monitored in stereo in the control room. It was really uncanny how Brian would point out things he was hearing in mono that would make our stereo mix that much better. It sounds strange, but I learned so much from Brian about stereo through his mono listening. He is a great producer.

Today I think Brian has come to learn how to cope with his double-sounding problem, but still leaves it up to his engineer to get the stereo right . . . and Mark Linett is quite good at that. As for me, all of the Beach Boys just left any stereo decisions up to me and I think we did a good many wonderful stereo recordings together. In fact they gave me so much latitude that I took their stereo productions way beyond the standards of the day. I would say we were at the cutting edge of virtual surround sound before any of the major studios were even thinking about it.

Hope this answers your question.

Good Listening, ~Stephen W. Desper

[ontor pertawst]

Fascinating, in depth response. Thanks so much for taking the time to describe that night -- intense is right! What a portrait you paint of Carl... I love describing it as akin to the transition to talkies or color...

[AM Radio]

Stephen,

Thank you for your fascinating insight into what is a very personal thing for Brian.  I have a much greater appreciation for the mono mixes Brian produced through the Beach Boys years. 

This leads to another question, if you may know.  Does Brian still create mono masters for his solo works and/or perhaps TWGMTR and would there ever be a chance of them being released someday?

[Stephen W. Desper]

Stephen,

Thank you for your fascinating insight into what is a very personal thing for Brian.  I have a much greater appreciation for the mono mixes Brian produced through the Beach Boys years. 

This leads to another question, if you may know.  Does Brian still create mono masters for his solo works and/or perhaps TWGMTR and would there ever be a chance of them being released someday?

    COMMENT:  I don't know, but I doubt it. There is no need for a mono mix anymore unless a 45 single is in the wind.

You might go over the the Mark Linett thread and ask that question.   ~swd

[Mr. Cohen]

Wrong thread.

[37!ws]

in the early days, the mono mixes were considered the finals. BW did not necessarily have anything to do with the stereo mixes, which were done by Chuck Britz or staff engineers, etc. This is partially why albums from 65-67 did not have a stereo mix at all -- because Brian couldn't approve it properly.

Well...I think it's more than that, or else the 1963 and 1964 albums wouldn't have had a stereo mix...

Honestly, from 1965 to 1967, Brian oversaw nearly all the recordings, and they were much more elaborate than the fairly basic band recordings that were done in '63 and '64, and much more room for mistake, ergo much longer time recording the music. My theory is that one of the REAL reasons there was no stereo mix even done was that there simply wasn't time between the time the mono mix was done. Heck, Recorded "live" at a...Beach Boys' Party! was recorded in September 1965 and it was in stores in early November -- that....doesn't really allow much time for much mixing AT ALL. And if there were time for a stereo mix, certainly there would have been enough time for Brian to mix Pet Sounds on a proper mixing console, no?