The Smiley Smile Message Board

Aeijtzsche might know the answer to this. Was there some kind of echo/delay effect applied to the backing track? If so, how would it have been done?

The album version?  There was tape delay on the drums, yeah. 

How was it done? Keep the fader up a bit on the old analog machines, and you'll get that sound all day long, right?

To me, it sounds like plate reverb.

C-Man

Okay, that's what I'm hearing. It creates a nice effect. I know the bass guitar is doubled, so that creates some slight delay, but is there any tape delay on that as well? It sounds like too much delay for it just being doubled. Also, how could he apply delay to JUST the drums? Would they have been on their own individual track?

I would say that one of the basses on the basic track has a little delay on it as well.  And the Dano in the insert has plenty.


No, the basic track is in mono, so drums, bass, dano, tambourine, and organ were all on the same track.  I'm not exactly sure how Chuck would have routed it, but you'd just patch whatever you needed delay on to the tape delay machine and send that back into the board live.  Just like you'd have an Aux Send today.  So it'd be quite simple to have an individual instrument get the effect...but the neat thing about tracking live in a small room is that the slight leakage into Dennis' drum mics would all be delayed too.  Now, in this case, that's not much since the organ was probably taken direct and the basses would have been pretty isolated.  But it doesn't take much to get a magical sound.