The Smiley Smile Message Board

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmdQ0jc6rQg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmdQ0jc6rQg)

Only a minute long. First in a possible series.

Nice spot! Presumably this was the sort of stuff Brian was growing up with so could well be.

Did you catch my thread on a bit in Stravinski's Song of The Nightingale vs The Old Master Painter cello melt:

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11094.0.html

What d'yer reckon?!

 :o

Never thought Les Paul had music that could be linked to Brian and Smile. This similarity is amazing between the two in that video.

F**k that How High The Moon is a groovy track too. I'd never heard it  - thanks for posting!

Holy Sh*t  :o

Should mention that the overdubbing technology which Brian used extensively in his recordings was pioneered by Les Paul.

Also really like the Sonny & Cher clip from Gold Star that you put up there, Guitarfool!

They're both just going up the scale, Brian could've been independently thought of that without having heard the Les Paul track.

 :) That clip is awesome - Gold Star in action! I give all the credit in the world to whoever posted that clip - I'll come clean and say I got that from someone else so I could make screen shots for a studio blog article, then put it on my own page just for that purpose...forgetting not to make it "public" because it wasn't my own clip...oh well, if more people see it it's all good! I have a full article on that film and the people in it at the link posted in my signature.

It's tough to call an influence like this on Brian or specifically on a certain piece of music. Brian was like a sponge absorbing so much of the music that surrounded him, and in the 1950's Les Paul and Mary Ford were very successful and had a lot of hit records. Plus, and this plus is a big PLUS, they had their own television show, again very successful, where they would come out and play their songs and also it would spotlight some of Les' multitrack work. They'd lipsynch or mime to the recordings, but the point is it was still going straight to American living rooms on a regular basis and was part of pop culture.

It's hard to say what kind of impact that may have had on kids like Brian and other fledgling musicians who would be watching Les Paul and Mary Ford and hearing 8 Les Paul tracks and 6 Mary Ford tracks stacked on the same record, which was magic at the time, and then seeing Les on TV tinkering with a bunch of tape recorders and various equipment.

For direct influence: Let your ears decide - it's hard to deny the two clips in the video don't sound remarkably similar, including tempo and phrasing. But the bigger influence is that which Les Paul had on Brian's future work recording music. Much of it wouldn't have been possible without the work Les Paul did at the time he was doing it. Many of Brian's "pet" sounds in the studio were either invented by or introduced by Les Paul on Les Paul records like "How High The Moon", and that is without a doubt.

So whether or not Brian were to say "I was influenced by Les Paul" on a specific song, it's within the production techniques and sounds developed by Les where the influence is unquestionable.

Something as early and as primitive as a teenage Brian Wilson stacking his own vocals on his reel-to-reel on that "Happy Birthday Four Freshmen" tape would not have been possible without Les Paul's work in developing overdubbing and multitrack recording techniques earlier in the 50's. That technique and sound can be traced directly to what Les Paul did with Mary Ford's vocals on their early hits, because no one had done it nor heard it before Les and Mary.

Very interesting. I was unaware of Les Paul's music until you started this thread so thanks for that. Listening to a greatest hits on Spotify today - that multi track thing is amazing and 'magic' is exactly the word I'd use to describe the sounds captured on How High The Moon. It's a particularly powerful track - especially that ascending bit.

Mary Ford is the boss - Some of the best harmonies on anything ever.

And she can shred! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Df09Sodpk&feature=related

After learning  more about Les Paul, this man should be remembered as a rock innovator, not than just a name on a guitar.

Great stuff!

Les Paul as an inventor and innovator had as much of an influence on modern popular music as nearly anyone else we could mention: It's in the techniques he developed, the equipment he invented and tinkered into workable models, and finally in the kinds of new sounds he was releasing on records, especially in the late 40's and early 50's.

It has to be placed into context with the times: Recording music was gathering a group of musicians in the same room, placing microphones in that room, and recording them. Up to the point when Les Paul started working with Ampex tape machines to develop multitrack recorders, the recording process involved recording directly to disc. Les' first "new sound" hit "Lover" in the late 40's was recorded using dozens of those discs in Les' garage, because every time he made a mistake he'd have to start cutting on another disc. Primitive stuff. The way Les made magnetic tape a workable format for recording and overdubbing (which wasn't even considered viable until Les made hit records using overdubbing techniques) literally changed music, and what he did in his various garages and living rooms became the industry standard.

And that's not even considering his solidbody electric guitar! With recording alone, his work led directly to where we are today.

It's a fascinating story all around...and Les was quite a storyteller, so any histories or interviews you might find with him talking about all these things firsthand are well worth checking out, not to mention the music itself.

I'll post some more as I'm able, there are some great clips to be found! :)

It's really cool to be reading about all the progress Les made for audio recording; I've been digging on les and Mary almost as long as I've been digging the BBs.
heck, my dad used to tell me that he had met and knew them both, from his time as an entertainment writer at the local newspaper here. Makes me practically related to les and mary's ghosts, donchathink?

Hey, cool thread!  So did Les invent multi tracking?

Yes, in a nutshell, with some subtle debates about details along the way. The US government had acquired some of Germany's high-tech audio equipment during World War 2, which included magnetic tape recorders, brand new technology. The technology and details were being shopped around and involved everyone from former US Army Signal Corps officers who had been dissecting the liberated gear, to Ampex who would soon manufacture it for the USA, to Bing Crosby who was involved in funding the research so he could record his radio shows in advance on high quality media without having to travel coast-to-coast. Wire recorders didn't have the quality, and acetates and discs were fragile.

Enter Les Paul...and he's the one who tinkered endlessly with whatever he was obsessed with at the time. His work on those earliest Ampex tape machines is where multitrack recording and overdubbing onto tape had its origins, although he had used direct-to-disc methods before the tape experiments worked out.

They called it "sound on sound" recording, and Capitol billed it as "The New Sound", and that's amazing to consider since most of us have never known music which did not involve overdubbing or multitracking of some kind. It was brand new technology, with its roots in those tape machines from Germany.

And Les also developed tape delay, after having a conversation with a friend in a bar: The friend mentioned adding a moveable playback head on the machine after the record head, and there it was.

(I'll be checking out the Stravinsky comparison very soon too, sounds very interesting!)

So the Nazis invented multitracking...

Oooooooh I feel a pasteover coming on

But seriously, Les is a god in my eyes. The father of modern recording

Didn't he also predict / have something to do with / digital sound?

There may be a misunderstanding: The US military had found and was studying the tape machines themselves, which Germany had been developing. It didn't concern multitracking as much as it was a breakthrough in technology to develop the process and machines to allow recording onto magnetic tape, where the quality would be stable and much improved. But as far as I know, multitracking as a process was not a factor in that development of the recorders.

What inventors and the tinker-ers like Les Paul did was find a way to divide the tape into separate tracks and have machines with recording heads that would allow sound-on-sound recording. That development was pioneered by guys like Les working with Ampex to produce something that could be manufactured and sold commercially. No one had perfected that before. No need for pasting over - it's all history.

And it should be noted too that other pieces of recording gear from Telefunken were developed in Germany during the war: If I'm not mistaken, and corrections are very welcome, the vacuum tube used in microphones like the U47 was originally used by the German navy in WW2. The technology was adapted and further developed after the war, and then came those amazing microphones like the U47.

I hope that clears it up a bit.