The Smiley Smile Message Board

Who mixed the Summer Days (and Summer Nights) album?

Some guy called... Wilson, I think it was.

Murry? I have aural evidence that he directed the 'Help Me Rhonda' sessions, after all.

Al You're Flatting.

 :-D Yes I am mr. Murry sir. I should sshhyncopate more, I know...

Brian and Chuck Britz.

Where and how?  Britz recorded the instrumental tracks at Western Recorders, then Brian (with, I think, Ralph Balantin engineering) added the vocals at Columbia Studios.  So the final pre-mix song masters were on 8-track, right?  But Western didn't have an 8-track at the time, so it seems unlikely that Brian and Britz would have been able to mix as they had for previous albums.

If the final mixes were done at Columbia, how could Britz (a Western employee) have been involved?  We've heard stories (from Bruce Johnston) about how Columbia was a "tight" company/union operation; if you weren't a union member and company employee, you couldn't touch the board -- which means Brian couldn't have done the mixdown at Columbia either.

So who did it?  Or did they go through a convoluted process, like having Ralph Balantin mix the 8-track masters back down to 3-track, then have Brian and Britz do the final mixes at Western?  That would seem kind of anal, but it's one possibility I've heard mentioned.

The same kind of situation would have existed for Pet Sounds, too.  The final song masters would have been on 8-track, but Western didn't have an 8-track machine, so the final mixes couldn't have been done there.  So where were they done and who manned the board?

That was always the impression I had

So, for both Summer Days and Pet Sounds, at one time there existed an 8-track master tape (with the instrumental backing on one track and vocals on the other seven tracks), a 3-track sub-master (with the instrumental backing on one track and vocals mixed down to two tracks), and a final mono mixdown?  Sounds crazy.  Wouldn't it have been easier just to make the final mono mix directly from the 8-track master?  It certainly would have improved the sonics, as the final mix would be one less generation away from the actual recording.

I would imagine that Brian mixed the mono master directly from the multi-track master - this is, after all, why the "GV" vocal multitrack is AWOL. No-one saw it after he mixed the single master.

Chuck certainly mixed the stereo versions of the albums for Capitol, but that was before Brian used 8-track (or even 4-track, if I recall correctly).

Who was the engineer at Columbia then who would have overseen the eight track mixdown with Brian?

I believe that would still be Chuck. Boy genuises making millions of dollars for a company, can sometimes have union rules "relaxed" by said company... ;)

Bruce has stated that Brian wasn't allowed to work the board at Columbia because of company and union rules.  So I can't imagine that they would have allowed an employee (Britz) of a competitor (Western) to work the board either.  Which leads back to my basic question: If Summer Days and Pet Sounds were mixed at Columbia directly from the 8-track master, who actually worked the board and did the mixing?  I have no problem believing Brian supervised, but based on what Bruce has said, I doubt very much that either he or Britz did the actual board work.

I would have to say it was a Columbia Studios engineer (like Balantin - perhaps the tape boxes for the 1/4" mixdowns have the name or initials of the engineer) under the direction of Brian.  Brian may not have been allowed to "touch" the board, but as the producer, he certainly could have directed the engineer on what to do.  Brian has stated he "dubbed down" the "Good Vibrations" multi-track to mono, so I assume that's what he meant...standing in the control room, telling the engineer what moves to make.  Plus, as has often been said, the "definitive" version of "Pet Sounds" is the mono master because it's Brian's own mix (or a Brian-directed mix).