The Smiley Smile Message Board

or Song for Children

I'm not sure how I am feeling about this mix. It's not doing anything for me. Actually, JMZ's mix is more preferable to my ears.

It doesn't sound much different to any of the bootleg mixes.
And I wonder what happened to that "vintage" clarinet part they used in BWPS.

Maybe it is just different instruments mixed forward and backward.

Of all the "fly-ins" these bug me the most.

And yeah....where are those "headphone bleed throughs"?

Me too - they're so minimal, to the point where it would have made more sense, in my mind, to just leave the track as an instrumental.  It's not like "I'm In Great Shape" or "Barnyard" where they were flying in a lead vocal, or "Fire" where the vocals make a big impact on the overall track.  It's almost distracting, since they come and go so quickly, and are relatively buried in the mix as it is (so as to hide digital artifacts I'm sure).

I made a mix replacing the fly in parts with the audio from the stereo sessions disc, folded down to mono. I like it better as an instrumental as well. The new mix sounds great though, in terms of sound quality/mix.

this song has always been boring to me, still is

I like the fly-in's. Just wished they didn't sound as rushed.

I thought I was going to hate the vocals, but they're subtle enough that they don't bother me. They don't really add to the song, but they may grow on me more as time goes on.

This is the only place in the album where I don't like the use of the flown in vocals. Because they are so sparse I think they could have just left them off. Either way, it doesn't ruin the song which is still a good one without all the vocals.

Another thing I noticed today - they omitted one of the repetitions of the bit from "12th Street Rag" - the version I've always heard (which I've always thought was a vintage Brian mix) used it as a bridge between the 2nd chorus and 3rd chorus, and it doesn't do that anymore.  Between this and the fly-in vocals, this track is definitely one where I'm going to have to "roll my own."

Wow, after all the discussion of the vocals, I finally heard the track (I avoided the samples). I think they're great and subtle and really add to the mystery of Look. No problems here. Sounds like Carl.

Euday Bowman is given credit in the notes for "12th St. Rag". And yes, I miss it in the "album" version.

HOLY. This mix sounds PERFECT. If you have a subwoofer put it on max and crank the volume.

Just occurred to me, any chance Brian was working on this as a B-side to Good Vibrations? Look, as it is, represents the entire SMiLE! experience to me in a simple song form. The wandering/searching key figure, the faint descending flute(?) line,  drums, 12th st. rag... Somehow it all reflects Brian's creativity at the time.

Well, to truly do so, it would need a section of two chords being changed back and forth, especially a I-IV progression... :wink

It is Carl, taken from the '71 "Surf's Up" sessions. I have no problem with the word "Child" being layered in there as it helps to link the song to the opening of "Child Is Father Of The Man".

About a year ago, I was tinkering with the idea of mixing parts of Look and CITFOTM together. I swear on my life. Somebody stole my idea, damn it!  :p  :lol

I'm totally with you, the added vocals makes Look better than without them!

Ok, here's a question. Why didn't they include the "father of the man" vocals, instead of just the word "child"? It would've made more sense that way, I think.

And of course the glockenspiel section in Look at around 0.36 is an obvious nudge to Good Vibrations' 'lalalalala-lalala' at around 3.30 (on CD1).

I think because there isn't a sung melody in the BB vaults that fits the chords right all the way through. It's not just a pitch problem; the melody wouldn't fit at all. Same with flying in the "Rock Rock Roll" vocals into Holidays. Some fan mixes have done this, but that involves completely processing the original recording note for note and changing the melody, which I don't think Mark and Alan were willing to do.

The percussion on Look is very similar to Good Vibrations, especially those organ chords that start at 1:13

Seconded.  If this was a cut and paste job, they really should have taken more care to line the vox up with track.  They are most definitely rushed, and make the "Child" sections feel rushed as a result.

It sounds like someone had a seizure ;(

The fly-ins bothered me a little at first, but I really don't mind them at this point.

Does anyone know if it is in any way possible to isolate the clarinet line in the chorus of "Song for Children" aka Look (the 2004 recording)? Can it be OOPsed or something?

I have always thought that this track was probably one of Brain's "other projects" which he started working on during the Smile sessions- but not necessarily intended for the Smile album. It was reported that he was going off in all sorts of directions and wouldn't focus on delivering Smile because he wanted to create more music before the old music was finished !

He was certainly working on other things.  A lot has been written and said about the "humor" project (which gave us such treasures as "George Fell Into His French Horn", "Brian Fell Into His Piano", "Brian Fell Into His Microphone", "Vegetable Arguments", etc.), and really, who knows what else was going on in his mind at the time.  But I've never doubted that "Look" was intended for some incarnation of SMiLE mainly because of its use of a melody that also is used in the "Good Vibrations" sessions (and on the final mix as well).  On the other hand, was "Good Vibrations" ever meant to be part of SMiLE?  No...so it just all seems to melt together into a body of work that we might as well call "The SMiLE Sessions"...oh, that's what they just did...OK, nevermind...

I tried isolating the clarinet per someone's instructions. It wasn't totally do-able, there's some extra percussion that came through... sounds like a tambourine. Still, I put it into Look which is crossfaded with Wonderful.

I also changed the sequence of Look a little bit and took out the fade at the end so it goes directly into Child. Child is sequenced like BWPS and crossfaded with Surf's Up.

WonderLook:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t18oo1

Child/SurfsUp:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nqd35j

Although Disc 3 Track 15 starts off with dialogue stating "take 1" it doesn't match the take 1 off of Unsurpassed Masters Vol. 17. What take is it really? Is it take 3, which is missing from UM17 or is it take 5, which fades out on UM17?

Speaking of the Unsurpassed Masters. What take of LOOK do they use in UM16?

Ah! Found it. It's Take 6!!

What evidence is there that any of those tracks were intended for something other than Smile?  And why believe the humor album wasn't Smile?  Why would Smile incorporate humor and health themes if he was planning separate humor and health albums?

wat

So has there been discussion of Look/I Ran as an earlier version of CIFOTM? Is that even feasible?

That was always my guess.  I figured he "finished" "Look" (as the early version of Child) and planned to use PARTS of it with the stuff from the actual "Child" sessions to complete the song.

I don't know if there was discussion, but there are similarities between the two. And the way "Song for Children" turned out on BWPS, it is perfectly possible that the line "Child is father of the man/son" was originally in "Look", like "Plymouth Rock roll over" might originally have been in "Holidays". No proof to that at all though.

Has anyone managed to isolate the vocals from the JMZ mix of Look? Out of all of the fly-ins I've ever heard for this song, JMZ's have worked the best, at least for the beginning ("one, one, wonderful".) He also flew them in very well, quality wise, IMO.

So has anyone isolated those suckers? I'm just not educated enough in the field of audio manipulation to pull off something like that.

The one, one wonderful vocals are on TSS as part of the Smile Vocals montage.  What we really need is for someone to isolate the vocals from the piano CIFOTM which JMZ used in his Look mix.

Not really. If I'm hearing JMZ's fly-ins correctly, they appear to be Mike's(?) "one, one, one..." backing vocals found in the first verse (Bruce's(?) have been digitally removed) played against Brian's "one, one, wonderful" line from the main vocal (with everything time-stretched and pitch-shifted to match, of course.) It's difficult to re-create for an audio-manipulation novice such as myself, mainly due to the vocal extractions involved. The backing vocals are found in the montage, of course, but I can't separate Mike's "one"s from Bruce's. And, obviously, I can't extract Brian's lead from "Wonderful". Errg... Why is everyone so stingy when it comes to sharing their vocal-extractions? We're not all experts! I can't even find a vocal extraction of the mono vocals from "Good Vibrations", which I thought would be easy! "Roll your own" they say... pshhh!  >:(

I have mixed feelings about those fly-ins. While I like the way that they're used in the JMZ mix, I can't help but feel like the song just becomes "Child Is Father Of The Man, Part 1" with them included. I guess that's essentially what "Look" is in a lot of ways, but.... I don't know. I'm on the fence.

Originally planned to be on PET SOUNDS (if on any album), no?

It was worked on during the Pet Sounds sessions. It was held over for the single, and then intended to go on Smile.

This track - as with I'm In Great Shape/Barnyard/etc - sounded just plain WRONG to me at first, but think it was just the shock of the new. To me, this track sounds really nice. It's just a pity this whole middle section of the album is so imcomplete vocals-wise, but if they weren't ever recorded there aint much could be done...

Having heard Christian Love do God Only Knows, I think there is something that could be done... :wink

When do we get to hear the headphone bleeds with the clarinet melody? Or is it just a myth like the sasquatch?

A long, long time ago (Smile Shop Message Board in 2000 or 2001) somebody mentioned that the instrumental session sheet for Child Is Father of The Man clocks out at 2:40, which happens to be, give or take a couple seconds, the running time for Look.

It's hard to mix, though.  Look is in G# I think and Child is in Em (or D/B)?  Not impossible, but difficult.

I dunno..... the slowed down "Chi-chi-child"s sound very silly to me.

You can make bits of the `67 vocal sessions for CIFOTM work in Look without too much pitch shifting. I did it for the chorus and bridge of Look and it sounds reasonable. However, I'd guess that by April of 67 (?), when those vocals were recorded, that the original instrumental sessions from 1966 were already for the bin in Mr Wilson's mind, with him moving toward a simpler arrangement of a number of songs. Hence, even if these vocals had been intended for a new version of Look (or CIFOTM for that matter) then they might have been recorded in a different key. Compare how the Carl version of Surf's Up is in a different key to the Brian one.

Really? To me, I always considered it their most underrated instrumental. Then I discovered it was supposed to have lyrics. Now I consider those missing lyrics to be perhaps the greatest loss of the entire SMiLE Era. It's a great little backing track Brian had...with the right lyrics it could have been a fantastic song.


I just think it's a track he worked on at the time for possible inclusion but very quickly lost interest in and moved on from. The trombone dixie of SMiLE, as others have called it. Shame, because it's actually one of my favorite tracks from the era, even without its lyrics. I think it evokes all the pure carefree joy and growing pains of childhood all in about 2 minutes.


I agree. I think everything recorded from the first H&V session to February was at least briefly considered for SMiLE. The only things we consider SMiLE Era recordings that didn't serve some purpose to the album or related singles are the Jasper Dailey tracks. My take on it, anyway.


Would you be interested in sharing your work?



I also cant stand the fly-ins here. They truly do sound half-assed and I agree that trying to fit that clarinet in would have been a better idea if that was possible.