The Smiley Smile Message Board

Is there any info on how Brian got that great distinctive "chorusy" piano sound on the Wild Honey album? It's especially prominent on "Darlin" and "Aren't You Glad."

I have also been thinking about how many great keyboard sounds Brian utilized during the '65-'67 period - Pet Sounds alone has so many cool and different organ sounds. During this time, you mostly only heard the standard Hammond, Farfisa, and Vox sounds, but Brian was using the Lowrey, Baldwin and other distinctive organs to great effect (along with many other keyboard sounds) during this time.

It is done by detuning the piano strings.  Each pitch on a piano has a few strings assigned to it, and if you take one or two of the strings in a pitch grouping down a few cents, it sounds chorusy.

I loved the sound Smajda got when he did that with his piano.

Smajda, if you read this, could you please upload your Smiley version of Wonderful again? That was rad.

From now on, can you please only use broken English when speaking of the technical aspects of recordings and the recording process?

I be please to use broke english as describe technology you for.

I love the cheesy organ in Wild Honey and How She Boogalooed it.

I'd like to hear that.

That makes sense because it seems Brian always arrived at his "cool" sounds organically rather than electronically like the Beatles.

What's really amazing to me is that Brian did all these things manually, and it takes me hours to get a similiar sound digititally! :D

Keep in mind the detuned piano is not something he "arrived" at, but is simply a fairly standard-sounding tuning used in Hollywood at the time, and his piano tuner did it manually, not Brian himself.

Close enough, though.

I was just talking in general terms...

Looks like Smajda hasn't joined the new board yet. We can pm him when he does, I'm sure he will eventually.
Or maybe it's on my computer somewhere. I'll look for it.

He's on the Smile Shop board occasionally.

Good point. He rarely posts there, but he did less than a week ago I think.

(edit: pm sent to Smajda.)

There might be more to that keyboard sound on Aren't You Glad than the detuned piano. The detuned is giving it the chorusey sound, yes, but there is something else too. I thought it was uke for a while, but now I'm not sure.

Digital is too constricted, for me at least.  I don't care what digital software you throw at keyboards and other audio things when making music...you can't compete with Moogs loaded with dials, organs in a 60's BW studio or other things during that era.   Keith Emerson tried a million different things with digital to recreate his Moog early 70's sounds...couldn't do it.  Was much easier to rebuild the Moog and run it as he's always run it...like a 1930's patchboard operator at the telephone company.

I read that Brian would hum the pitch of each note in the octave for the piano tuner to follow by.

Yeah, it's such a strange sound.  Palm Muted Ukelele, heavily damped Vibes, piano with string taped...lot's of possibilities.

Oooo, here's the piano thingey I recorded.

http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=2894318

This is amazing! It sounds exactly like Brian playing on the S0T 18 CD! So, Smadja, all you did was find a weird way to tune your piano like Brian had his tuned?

Are you playing a tack piano?

It's really really really really extremely easy to make any piano sound like that.

One each piano for each note, you'll have one two or three strings for a single key.  Most of them are in ones and twos on the first twenty or so keys and from the middle and higher you'll have three strings for each note.  All of them have to be perfectly in tune with eachother in order to sound like a normal piano.  However, say on the note C, you have three strings.  Slightly lower or raise one of those three strings out of tune (you'd usually leave the middle string alone) and you get a sort of warped effect on the note (there's a better term for it); AKA the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey piano sound.  You can make any piano sound like that within five to ten minutes, however I only did the notes in the song so it took like five for me.  It's easy to bring the piano back to normal mode quickly too.

You don't really detune the piano, but you detune the unisons of the individual notes.

That's balogna stuff.

I wonder what made Brian go for that sound? Maybe he thought it sounded more druggy?

It sounds more old-timey. Remember, tack pianos were very much in vogue in 1967, and it was not really because of drugs. On the SMiLE sessions, it was likely part of the western saloon/cantina theme of Heroes & Villains (remember Van Dyke's description of SMiLE as "American quilt work") - and from there it spread to the rest of SMiLE.

In short, I believe detuned pianos having to do with drugs is a red herring. My two cents.

Okay, so did you just detune one of the three strings, or did you do two of them? And what do you do on the lower strings where there's only one string per note? Just keep it in tune or detune it slightly?

A slightly de-tuned piano....?   I have one in my dining room, and I wouldn't dream of recording a single track with it...

I wish Brian had used the Farfisa a bit more. Amazing solo in How She Boogalooed It!
I love that buzzing Farfisa-wheeze combo organ sound. I need to use mine more frequently.

Smadja is a musical prodigy but since he was able to recreate the SS/WH sound on his REAL piano in five minutes, it makes you wonder why Brian and Darian used synthesizers for BWPS.

Just one of the strings I think.  I did it a couple of months ago.  For ones with single strings for the notes, you obviously must keep them in tune.  On that recording I did, listen to the low G#, it's really bad out of tune.

Plus I'm going off of memory, it could've taken me maybe 20 minutes to do that to my piano, but a well trained piano technician could probably do it real quick.

Very cool piano sound Mr. Smajda! Although I'm pretty sure my wife wouldn't appreciate it if I did that to our piano!

I think the thing that confuses people about "detuned" pianos is that, like Mr. Smajda said, there is a big difference between a DETUNED piano (where you leave one string in tune and detune the other two for each key) and OUT-OF-TUNE piano (where the keys are out of tune with other keys on the piano. This is not a very desirable sound!

The nice heavy picked bass adds alot to the piano sound on this record also...

Listen to the Stack-O-Tracks mix of "Here Today."  At the end, it's funny to hear the "tacks" hitting the low strings for all they're worth.

Hi folks. Lovely topic here!

I read Marilyn R. Wilson in the Leaf (I think) book years ago saying that Brian had his piano at home tuned "for his ears" or words to that effect. The Wild Honey sound is fairly consistent there for a couple of years (~'67-68?) right? So it seems that Brian may have wanted it that way all the time.

Today, I read audio engineer Michael Green paraphrasing Brian Wilson, who was remarking in a recent interview that the problem with pop music today is that everyone is using electronic tuners. Green goes on to finger Auto-Tune software as another culprit, and interprets Brian's quote to mean that when everything is in perfect tune, music becomes dead on arrival.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue23/green.htm

Assuming Green's analysis is correct, might Brian also feel that edging tuning right to the brink of "correctness" creates a special excitement, and is therefore desireable?

In a related developement, I read on wikipedia that Brian Wilson is supposed to have perfect pitch, which surprised me. Can anyone verify? Of course, I was even more surprised that Mia Farrow and Yanni are also purported to have perfect pitch!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_absolute_pitch

Thanks folks.

Most of Brian's most detailed work is very carefully done in regards to the pitch and tuning of each instrument. Since Brian was working with so many different kinds of instruments which all operate in different keys, he would've wanted everything in perfect tuning with each other as possible. Of course there's the exception with him tuning things slightly different to achieve a certain affect when blended back together. I mean you have them doing 90 takes of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to make sure the notes are hit absolutely perfectly.

Auto-Tune software isn't the death of music but more likely the underlying thoughts that are used with it. "Fix it in the mix", this philosophy was unknown to Brian Wilson when recording his most famed albums. Listening to the "California Girls" sessions shows the guitar players continually screwing up the intro, if that song were a 2006 production Auto-Tune might hop in to save the day from 800 more takes. That lazyness is most likely the fuel that is causing current pop music to be how it is.

What song(s) do you think he used the Lowrey on?
It sounds like a Farfisa on "Wendy", "Wild Honey", and "How She Boogalooed" it to me.

C-Man

It's interesting, I was just listening to SOT 19 (Wild Honey sessions), and on one of the tracks Brian can be heard saying something like, "This piano is TERRIBLE! I HATE this piano!" Is it possible that the detuned piano sound was completely unintentional, and the Boys were just too lazy to get a better piano (or tune the one they had--which won't make a terrible piano any better...)?

It's not the same piano.  The one he says is terrible isn't even in the tuning we're talking about.  Besides, if he didn't like the detuned piano sound, how do you explain that it's on 4 albums across many songs that were recorded in different places?

Yeah, you're right. I didn't even think about that when I typed that. It's funny to hear him say that. It's also quite funny (because I've been through the same situation myself so many time!) when he complains about one of the harpsichord keys sticking on one of the SMiLE tracks (I think "Wonderful").

It's so humbling to hear the sessions for Beach Boys material. For a band whose product was so perfect in every way, hearing the strifes faced upon making is inspiring.

Has Brian ever let out on a session musician at any time? Obviously he felt more freedom with his brothers and friends to speak to them roughly, but are their any sessions with him losing patience with a musician? I hear him getting a bit annoyed on the California Girls sessions, the intro guitar part being too weak and played badly. That might've been Carl who he was speaking to though.

I'm not sure which ones, but there are some times where he gets impatient with musicians for messing around on their instruments when they are about to begin a take.