The Smiley Smile Message Board

I’m not an audio engineer and thought someone on the Board might be able to answer my question:

My understanding is that vocals for much of the SDSN album, including one of my very favorites cuts, “Let Him Run Wild”, were recorded at Columbia Studios using its recently acquired 8-track system.

Does this mean that a multi-track tape may exist containing nothing but 8-tracks of isolated vocals?

When “Let Him Run Wild” was first re-mixed to stereo on the 2007 compilation, “The Warmth of The Sun”, I remember noticing just how gorgeous the background vocals on that song are (approximately 52 seconds into the cut). Unfortunately, they’re still buried deep into the mix and difficult to hear.

I’d love to hear just the isolated background vocals – something the tape I referenced above would allow.

Thank you.     

I’m not sure what’s know the exist in the vaults currently, but the Columbia 8-track recordings from ‘65-‘66 would typically have a mono backing track on 1 track of the tape, with the other 7 tracks reserved for vocals. I don’t think they used every track in most cases, but this gave flexibility they never had before … but it is not like today’s version of “isolated” vocals - they would still have been vocal tracks cut in groups across the individual tape tracks.

Whatever extant 8-track reels from Columbia from that time exist, the trend would be for there to be 1 track that is the mono mix of the basic track (done elsewhere) and then up to 7 tracks of mono vocals.

How those tracks are used varies, but as Donny said, the backing vocals were usually the whole group on one track, which would be doubled, and then key lead vocals or important lines might get their own track.

It's interesting to note that Brian dipped his toe into doing a couple backing tracks on 8-track during this era, Summer Means New Love and Windchimes II went on 8-track.  But by and large the 8-track was used as a vocal layering machine until the group started recording more asynchronously and relying more on overdubbing, when we start to get individual instruments mapped to single tracks.  But even with 48 tracks, the boys still liked to sing around 1 mike together, to one track, when they could get away with it.

Despite some things like "Pet Sounds" seemingly having been run into the ground in terms of archival releases, I'd still love to hear that stuff pulled apart more. Just hearing the songs with single-tracked instead of double-tracked lead vocals is really interesting. I'm not saying double tracking the leads was a bad idea, but there is a sense of immediacy and intimacy with those single tracked leads that is worth hearing as well.

I think that it's humanity that pulling mixes apart emphasized.  The humanity of those people who put the music together as a production.  Suddenly, you're just hearing a dude singing and not "a production."