The Smiley Smile Message Board

i asked for someone to tab out the sliding guitar intro for trombone dixie a long time ago, but the whole thing stumps me on how you even get a sound like that

it's a 12-string? off the top of my head, i can hear it on let him run wild, TD, that's not me, and california girls's intro.

are there any other songs in general with guitars like that? how do you replicate it?

Whatever it is, you definitely need to play it through a Leslie speaker.

another thing i'd like to know:

what is that percussion that sounds like tongue clicks used in ijwmftt, god only knows, and love to say dada? i think it was suppose to be coca-cola bottles but that doesn't make sense.

The percussion is temple blocks, sometimes plastic orange juice cups.  The guitar is indeed 12-string on most or all of the examples you cited.

the wood blocks?

A lot of the Byrds' stuff has 12-string.

boat akk

I agree.

it doesn't sound anything alike though. i'm guessing it must be being put through a leslie speaker then? obviously there's a lot of reverb and maybe a delay as well.

i don't know enough about guitars to know in those examples, uh... how many strings are being used? that would certainly help my understanding of how they're being played.

Temple Blocks:

(http://static.musiciansfriend.com/derivates/18/001/233/213/DV016_Jpg_Large_449631.jpg)

There is absolutely no Leslie speaker on the guitar sounds that have been enumerated on this thread.  There are a few things contributing to that sound, and I agree, it's a pretty irreplicable sound.

First, these are indeed 12-strings.  Second, there are often more than one playing at the same time.  Third, the signal chain bypasses any sort of guitar amp, and is plugged directly into the channel strip, through what would no doubt be a heavy-duty tube DI box assembled in the tech room at the studio.  It would then be subject to the audio imprint of a tube channel strip, either the UA 610 or some similar deal.  From there, the signal would be sent to a 10 or 12" speaker in a highly reflective, asymmetric room, where it would bounce off the walls in unpredictable ways, only to be recaptured by an RCA ribbon mic at the other end of this chamber.  Only after all that would it hit analog tape.

So if you could run your 12-string through all that, you might get it to sound the same.  ;)

i don't hear any "sliding" guitar on any of those tunes.

apparently a Coke bottle was used on the guitar strings at the end of Let's Go Away For Awhile.

and a Sparkletts water bottle at the beginning of Caroline No, i believe.

it sounds like it slides down to me. like on let him run wild... "do do-do bweooo"

There is "sliding" but it's just normal guitar articulation rather than a true slide guitar played with a slide or bottle or some such.

I love the 12 string intro on Trombone Dixie.  I tried out replicating on my electric twelve string, and I came up with something like this on the top 3 strings

2-2--4-6-----------------------
2-4--6-7-6-2--6-2-7-9-6-2-4
-----------6-3--6-3-8-9-6-3-4

It's not perfect, so I'd appreciate if anyone can make any improvements.  I know there's a tab up for The Little Girl I Once Knew on surfermoon.com and that intro has a similar feel to Trombone Dixie so I figured playing on just 2 strings (4 I guess in the case of a 12 string) would get a similar sound.

I don't know if it's a 12 string going through a Leslie - that'd have a very watery, vibrato heavy guitar sound ("Pet Sounds", "YSGTM"). To me, those guitar parts just sound like a 12 string (maybe fender xii/Carl's Rick) playing through a fender amp with heavy echo/reverb.

Yeah, I agree...if there IS a Leslie effect on these 12-string parts, it's very, very slight - unlike the Leslie applied to the main 6-string lead guitar on the "Pet Sounds" title song, which is much more prominent..

The 12 string electric guitar in Trombone Dixie seems to be the same as in The little girl I once knew. I don´t believe that´s a Leslie, sounds like a chorus effect.