The Smiley Smile Message Board

Hey guys! I spent a while on this cover of "I'll Bet He's Nice" from the album "Love You!" I did the best I could reproducing the moog sound using Arturia and Logic Pro X. I don't smoke nearly enough cigarettes to get the Dennis or Brian singing tone of the 70s but I did it in my own way. Hope you guys enjoy!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTf9JDOOYg

This is amazing! It’s nice to hear such clean vocals over those moogs. Do you have plans to do more covers from the Love You album?

Also, Logic Pro X is my favorite piece of software - you did such a great job recreating that Love You vibe...hope to hear more from you in the future.

Thanks for listening! Those vocal takes are my "roughest" tone I could get without it sounding like a parody haha. If I do another "Love You" track it will probably be the Night Was So Young. I really love Roller Skating Child too!

Whoa, impressive backing track! Vocals are solid, too. I'll be interested to hear "The Night Was So Young" or "Roller Skating Child" if you attempt them. Nice job.

Thanks for listening! Yeah, the backing track is all using the ARTURIA keyboard plugin on Logic Pro X. They have a bunch of Moog Synths and I had to play around with it to get most of the sounds pretty close. I couldn't recreate a good version of the one winey synth that is panned to the right (the one that also is featured in the bridge) , so I chose something that was a little smoother. My voice is definitely better suited for just the Carl bridge of this song, but it was a good challenge to sing something a little more rougher during the verses and choruses. Theres also probably over 40 vocal overdubs for the backing tracks  ;). I'm pretty happy with how the verse harmonies came out, but getting the harmonies at the ending was a tough mother.

I noticed you didn't include the left panned percussion during the tag. It kinda sounds like handclaps, but I'm guessing is electronic. Any idea what that is? It's also panned left throughout "Roller Skating Child".

On the original it might be some sort of synth handclaps mixed with real handclaps, I tried to put mine louder in my mix but I couldn't get it to work with all the harmony and other stuff going on. Brians productions were amazing in all different sounds he could fit in the soundspace without any clashing. I have more and more respect and appreciation for Brian and what he does with each passing day.

Ah, okay, I suspected you included it low in the mix, but then I thought my ears were playing tricks on me. Great mix, by the way. I meant to comment on that in my initial reply.


Definitely. His unique approach to percussion intrigues me. I mean, there's NO drums on "I'll Bet He's Nice" but you don't really notice unless you're listening for it. Much of Love You is just a snare drum or "handclaps". Wild Honey has a similar approach. Then there's a lot of the mid '60s hits, and certainly Pet Sounds and Smile. It's often a minimalist approach, that frees up the soundspace. But, his songs still drive forward.