The Smiley Smile Message Board

Hey guys,

I just finished my stereo SMiLE mix.  ;D
You can preview the entire mix & DL here: http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2011/11/smile-ad-stereo-mix.html

Tracklist:

1) Our Prayer
2) Heroes And Villains
3) Barnyard
4) I'm In Great Shape
5) I Wanna Be Around - Friday Night
6) Do You Like Worms
7) Cabinessence
8) Wind Chimes
9) Vegetables
10) Child Is The Father Of The Man
11) The Old Master Painter / You Were My Sunshine
12) He Gives Speeches
13) I Love To Say Dada
14) Surf's Up

While I'd like to keep an element of surprise, here are a few tid-bits:

*Barnyard:

- Brian's revised "Stomp The Dirt" lyric restored
- "Ooh"s play throughout the entire track, like the original acetate
- Harmony estimation added in 2nd verse via Melodyne

*I'm In Great Shape:
- Double tracked vocal simulation on Brian's lead

*Cabinessence:
- Carl's single tracked vocal isolated and restored

*He Gives Speeches:
- Harmony estimation added via Melodyne

Granted, there are flaws.
I hope you'll find it to be a creative, well-presented mix.

SMiLE

 :3d

J

Very cool, thanks for posting

DL'ing now

I love what you've done with DYLW, Very interesting

The lead vocal sounds best I've heard.  How did you isolate it?

I really like what you did, except... you cut "Wonderful"? THE INHUMANITY!

Much appreciated, thanks for listening.

I did that by inverting the phase on the instrumental version of RPR, and synching it up to the millisecond with the album version.

Once I got the vocals isolated, I found there was a bit too much high end residue leftover from the track. So, I chopped up the "ess"'s, "t"'s, and any high frequency sounds from the vocal, put them on a seperate track, and cut the high end from the remainder of the vocal significantly. You can kinda still hear the hi-hat from RPR, but the high frequency track gives the illusion that the vocal is high quality.

Wound up doing the same thing with ILTSDD.


Haha, saw that one coming. No Good Vibrations either! Although that's been done in stereo, quite well. I expect to tackle both of them for a revised edition down the line.   :smokin

But in all seriousness, I love the way you produced "He Gives Speeches". That's more like what I'd expect the final Brian '66 mixdown to sound like.

More feedback:

The truncated "I Love to Say Dada" makes it point more efficiently.  "I'm in Great Shape" is wonderful, although I'm not sure about having the backing vocals going  during the verses of "Barnyard". Your "Heroes and Villains" mix is intriguing, and sounds very close to one of the ways Brian might've imagined the track. He probably would've had to recut a section or two to make it flow better, but otherwise, I could see that mix working wonderfully.

Finally, tambourines and a snare drum on the "Surf's Up" coda? Sign me up! Adding some backing vocals to the section of "Child" you use to start of the song? It makes you wonder what the finished version would've sounded like. It would've been so chill.

Good work!

Can't wait to hear it

Is it available in FLAC?

Thanks for the solid review! Yeah, that SMiLE album could've been somethin...


Not yet. I'll work on making that happen asap.

Sorry, but where are the Stomp the Dirt and Na Na Naa's in barnyard from?

H&V piano demo, Brian's second pass at Barnyard.

Honestly (aside from the abrupt intro), I don't think i've ever enjoyed a complete version of Love to Say Dada quite as much as i did this one. Well done  :)

Love the tape slow down and restart at the end of Dada, like the album starts again!

The Child mix is sweet, sweet, sweet.  Incorporating that lost "verse" segment as the intro is great, but then matching the vocal to it as well...pretty awesome.

Love this mix; everything fits nicely, and there are some wonderfully creative touches.

Would it be possible to have a run down of the various parts that made up some of the other tracks, especially Worms & CITFOTM? I can't quite work out where some of the source material came from, what's been extracted from where and any processing that's taken place :).

Love. Love. LOVE IT.

Except, however the use of BWPS vocals, at first it's nice, but then It makes me wish they had real lyrics.

Speaking of which, I'm about done finishing my "worms" lyrics :D

Thanks for listening. Here's a run down of those 2 you mentioned.

*Do You Like Worms
Verse 1
- Original 1966 backing track.
- BWPS vocals.
Choruses
-Isolated all of the elements from the overdubs found on the SOT set. That section had the most elements to play around with, in terms of mixing.
Verse 2
-Original 1966 backing track.
-BWPS vocals
-1966 backing vocals (TSS set).
Bridge
-Original 1966 backing track.
-Lead vocal isolated from the SOT set.
-1966 backing vocals (TSS set).

*Child Is The Father Of The Man
Intro
-TSS backing track.
-Vocal overdubs isolated from the SOT set.
-"Ahhh" intro from Can't Wait Too Long
-Cello note from verse section flown in before 1st chorus.
Choruses
-TSS backing track.
-Vocals extracted from newly found acetate, heard on TSS.
-Background vocals - "Ahh" intro from Can't Wait Too Long with falsetto "Ahh" isolated from Surf's Up
Verses
-TSS.

I listened to it this evening and I must say it's got me very excited!!. Best Smile mix ever!! Very brave choice of songs too. The Barnyard track hooked me & DYLW is amazing too. Lots of lovely surprises in each tracks. Very creative mixing the phasing is breathtaking. You've made me realize that there's lots of life left within Smile if only we could get people like yourself to play around and make mixes like this. Thank you for IMHO the best fanmix of Smile I've heard :)

It seems my idea of using Can't Wait Too Long vocal flyins has been heard!

That was a wild, incredible and VERY enjoyable ride! The fact that you took the time to shake things up with even the more common, "finished" stuff speaks volumes for the enjoyability factor. I also thought the BW vocals that you lifted from BWPS were some of his better ones on there, and thus, blended more cohesively into the new presentation than I would've imagined. You mixed them very flatteringly, too. Additionally, I thought the use of the Melodyne software for harmonies was ingenious and tastefully done. It really makes one appreciate what can *still* be done with all the pieces and parts if one is willing to "throw the rulebook" out a bit.

I'd be interested in hearing your stereo GV, as well as whatever you might do at some point with some of the other unused tracks (i.e. the aforementioned Wonderful). Another big vote for FLAC, too!

The one thing that I sort of wished you did, though, was fill that missing vocal line from SU, ala the second verse Columbia fly-in that has been done on some other reconstructions over the years. I realize that some purists scoff at the use of it due to its "incorrect" melody line, but I personally still think it sounds better than a big fat hole there -- even if Brian may have originally performed it that way (and on the new '67 version as well). It's just that your mix is so pure and nice (and your sync-ing is definitely better than Linett's, even without the luxury of a multi-track source), that I'd like to make it my "finished" go-to version. Everything else about it is so damned perfect for me. Heck, even if you could find a way to extract Carl's voice from the '71 for that one line, without having a multi-track at your disposal, that would be a great alternative. Either or.

Thus, any chance for some stray, individual reworks and uploads...lol? Purely for selfish reasons. :)

Outstanding! May the well deserved accolades continue .  :woot

Is there any way you can share the CIFOTM isolated chorus vocals from the acetate extract for those of us who want the song without Can't Wait Too Long bits? The choruses sound really really good with what you've done, but it would be nice to have a purist version.

I love it when someone rolls their own and then passes it around! :smokin

Wow, thanks for the great review!


Thanks for the great review! For some reason when I did Surf's Up, I had it in my head that this would be the anti-TSS version. Different synching, no Carl in the 1st section, CITFOTM drums at the end etc. But it's certainly possible that could change for the revised edition!


Hahahaha.. nice. Speaking of..  :smokin

FLAC version coming soon.

I love how you put in the Bicycle Rider part near the end of DYLW, after a few seconds of silence. Nice surprise, and a nice touch.  :) It reminded me of one of Brian's "musical jokes", like the transition from the sublime fade out of Wind Chimes, to the abrupt loud organ of "Gettin' Hungry" from the Smiley Smile album.  8)

Yeah, definitely. When I was finalizing the mix, it occured to me that maybe Brian would've put a chorus where the instrumental tag usually is. It makes sense, song format wise (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus). Not that Brian Wilson limited himself to typical song structure for SMiLE.  ;D

FLAC download now available: http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2011/11/smile-ad-stereo-mix.html

Congratulations man, at its peaks - and those are multiple - this comes very very very close to a finished version of SMiLe in 1967.

I loved it so much, I made a fun little cover for my iTunes.

(http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/4734/smilead.png)

Yooo love that!!!

Here's a semi-complete rundown of the elements I used to make SMiLE A.D. - A Stereo Mix.

Our Prayer:
-TSS mix. Panned mono vocals slightly to the left, and added reverb panned to the right.

Heroes And Villians:
-All sections sourced from TSS.
-Modeled after Brian's 1966 mix.
-"Stand or Fall" isolated to emulate "3 score and 5" placement idea in the '66 mix.
-Bass enhancement in final section

Barnyard:
-Piano demo & Mono Backing track sourced from TSS.
-Main vocal isolated from Bruiteur's mix
-Double tracked vocal isolated from 2nd runthrough
-Harmony made in Melodyne using BW's vocal
-H&V verse harmonies over "Na na na" sections

I'm In Great Shape
-All materials sourced from TSS.
-Double tracked vocal effect made with Melodyne.
-End harmonies from H&V sessions

I Wanna Be Around / Friday Night

-All materials sourced from TSS.
-Stereo delay effect added to Workshop track.

Do You Like Worms

-Backing track sourced from SOT. Found this to be a much better mix than the TSS version. Bass enhanced.
-Verse vocals extracted from BWPS.
-Chorus & Bridge Vocals from TSS vocals mix, and SOT

Cabinessence

-TSS stereo track.
-Verse vocals extracted from TSS Disk 1 mix
-Stereo chorus vocals & "Grand Coulie" vocals from TSS
-"Truck Drivin Man" vocals extracted from 20/20 version
-"Over and Over" until the end extracted from 20/20 version

Wind Chimes

-Modeled after 1993 GV mix, as this is the mix I grew up with and love.
-1st two sections sourced from TSS stereo mix.
-Last section from TSS sessions.
-Hard edits restored

Vegetables

-TSS stereo mix with 1st chorus from the stereo piano/vocals sessions. Added reverb.

Child Is The Father Of The Man

-Backing track edited from TSS sessions
-Intro vocals from SOT & Can't Wait Too Long (intro acapella)
-Chorus vocals from newly found acetate, CWTL, & Surf's Up vocal isolated
-Drums raised and bass enhanced in chorus.
-Added snare drum at the end of every chorus, to match the loop of the acetate vocals
-Piano/Trumpet section shortened

The Old Master Painter / You Were My Sunshine

-Backing track from TSS.
-Vocal extracted from TSS Disk 1 mix.
-These are different takes, so extra effort was put in to make the "sticks" track synch up
-No phasing issues, due to it being different takes. However there is definitely some residue on the vocal track.

He Gives Speeches

-Sourced from SOT
-Intro snare from sessions.
-Reverse reverb added before vocal kicks in.
-Short delay added to vocal
-Even shorter delay added to backing track.
-Harmony made from BW's vocal in Melodyne.

I Love To Say Dada

-Stereo track from TSS.
-Brian's bass vocals (and unfortunately Carl's sped up CCW vocals) extracted from TSS Disk 1.
-BWPS vocal extracted from.. BWPS.
-End harmony from H&V section, slowed down one pitch.

Surf's Up

-1st section backing track from TSS.
-1st section vocals from TSS piano demo.
-Certain lines in 1st verse are now single tracked.
-Synched up the piano even in the section where Brian takes a break.
-2nd section from TSS piano demo. Vocals widened, so you can hear each vocal by itself by panning.
-2nd section Bass extracted from SU 71 and synched up to demo
-End section from SU 71 mix. Added high frequencies to match the demo.
-Drums at the end extracted from CITFOTM chorus. No pitch change, but had to line up every single beat, and do a lot of crossfading.
-Isolated CITFOTM vocals pop up a few times in the tag, subtly.


Hope this helps. If u have any questions, shoot!  :smokin

Love the mix! Whatever happened to "Gee," though?

One quick question-- why did you go with Brian's 2004 vocal on Da Da versus having no main lead vocal on that track?

Thanks!


I'm personally Gee-d out. Wanted to go with something different, but equally effective.


With SMiLE A.D., pretty much anything SMiLE related goes (1966 - 1971, 2003/2004). In this track in paticular, you can tell it's the same guys writing the words and melodies, so I had no problem throwing this into the mix. Not to mention, BW's vocal on IBH is one of my favorite vocals of his later period (and sounds great on a vintage track!).

Same goes for DYLW.
I wanted, and tried (and failed) a CITFOM verse vocal. If anyone has a clean isolation, send it my way!

So since you have responded to every message but mine, i take that to mean you are not okay with sharing the CIFOTM isolated chorus vocals from the acetate?

I isolated them enough for my upcoming mix, are you interested in an okay isolation?

I haven't really had a chance to listen, but out of curiosity, why did you use SOT as the source for Speeches, rather than TSS?

It think it may be stereo, and easier to remix/isolate

Thanks for uploading the FLAC.  I noticed that some of the tracks still seem to have a lossy frequency profile.  Is something in your mix process chopping out the high frequencies before you get to a final 'master' file?

"Speeches" is a strange mix on TSS, and I think the mix may have been made by editing another mix. The background vocals, something very essential to the song, being buried really hurts it on TSS.

Very interesting mix. Nice work. I'll just add a few things that stood out to me.

My favorite parts of any Smile fan mix are the unorthodox creative decisions, where there is less focus on technicals and more just on feel. It's hard to articulate, but sometimes the former has the effect of making it seem like a particular edit was only done for the sake of it. Above a certain threshold, I don't really care about sound quality or intent ("I'm using the draft tracklisting!" "I'm going to do the exact opposite of BWPS!") as long as I can pull myself back and still find it purely musically interesting.

For example, I thought having three extra-vocal choruses in CIFOTM was excessive -- it felt like it was repeated only because it was recently discovered -- but I absolutely loved the introduction, especially the insert of "Can't Wait Too Long". That's something I've never heard before, let alone even considered, and it fits great. One of the very few times I've ever thought, "Gee, I wish the official release had that."

There were other elements of your mix too that, even if I wouldn't have done it that way, were refreshing to hear in a new light. I'm normally not a "He Gives Speeches" fan, but that doubled melody was clever. And even though this could be considered filling something in, I was surprised at how much I liked the 2004 BW fly-ins. Not because they sounded exact, but because I didn't find it hard to reconcile the age difference. Especially on "Dada", it's not hard to tell it's the same guy.

Being the kind of person who is more than content with the official releases, and doesn't usually listen to fan mixes, there were sections of this one that were very eye-opening. Thanks.

I love that there's no GV!

It's possible that some of the sources were in less than lossless quality. I will look into that for the revised edition.


Agreed!


Thanks. Like any fan mix, the whole thing was experimental and I'm 100% sure it can be taken further.

As for CIFOTM, that thought occurred to me. Ultimately I'd love to have a version with the other chorus vocals isolated for the 1st two choruses, as well as BWPS's verse.


Haha, yeah. Big fan of the song, but... GV's been beaten to death. Although, I guess it's pretty safe to say that song was going to be on the original album.

the end of Surf's Up is very similar as to how it was perforemd live right? I recall hearing some 1971-73 live versions where you really hear the SU tag is CIFOTM, very nice ;)

Sonically, this is really fantastic! I'm really impressed with what you did, and I'm really glad that you didn't try to create stereo mixes of things that just can't be done in stereo, making this a true stereo release.

Definitely! Love those early-mid 70's live versions of Surf's Up.


Thanks man, I tried to keep the quality as high as possible throughout.
Right now I'm already working on an upgraded version. Managed to isolate a vocal yesterday that I didn't think was possible.  ;D

Ya know...it totally slipped my mind that Surf's Up got a 5.1 remix for the Endless Harmony DVD! I'd reckon there's probably some decent isolated elements there to be had.

That is, if you didn't tap that "well" already...lol. :)

I second this- it sounds quite cool and gives it a real ending.  The vocals from BWPS also sound very legit on DYLW- good job on blending them in so seamlessly. It will be interesting to see what else you come up with.

Good idea. I've actually been working on isolating Brian's lead on Surf's Up, which I will post as soon as it's done.

In the meantime, here's an in-the-works snippet of the end: http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2011/12/surfs-up-vocals-only-preview.html


Thanks for listening. I think the lo-fi rendering of the BWPS vocals helped match it with the '66 track. Sure helps when the source material is great.

How did you get such a clean rip of the stereo from the vinyl?

High quality FLAC transfer.


BTW, work is already underway for SMiLE AD 2.0. Gonna be some cool surprises in there.   :smokin

Liking that extracted Surf's Up vocal. Is that from the 5.1 mix, or is there some other witchcraft at work here?

Would you be willing to share an acapella mixdown of your 2004 Do You Like Worms vocals?

Would love to hear your take on Holidays... considering that we now know the lyrics are vintage! (even if we can't be sure that the melody is as well)

+ 1 (and In Blue Hawaï if it's not too much to ask)

It'd be really cool if you managed to isolate and fly in the vocals and clarinet from BWPS onto TSS's Look.

I love your mix of He Gives Speeches!!  ;D How did you get Brian's vocal to sound "double tracked"?

Most likely chorus but I'm not too sure

Thanks man. That's a short delay on HGS.

On the 1st two lines of "I'm In Great Shape" I tried to simulate a double tracked lead by copying the track, and changing the pitch & timing on some notes of the copied track.

Here is a new CIFOTM mix inspired by seltaeb's SMILE AD Stereo Mix. I think it sounds pretty cool. Please have a  listen if you like this sort of thing.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52684612/12_CIFTM_120211.mp3

Some great ideas here, especially at the beginning

Sorry to repost, but I'm intrigued how you managed to isolate those Surf's Up vox. I'm working on my own mix, but don't currently have the tools and knowledge to extract individual vocals. Teach me, oh master!

Coming in late on this, but I just wanted to make sure I join in on the praise this mix has been receiving.  Very well done!

This link might interest you...

http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2792176/9058692/

Wow this is fantastic! It's going straight on my ipod!  :)

Hey guys,

I just posted a clip of the stereo remix of "Wonderful" that I'm still working on.

http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/

Let me know what you think

-J

Interesting, but what's wrong with the vocal? 

Whatcha mean?

Any download method available other than a torrent? They're beyond my technobumbling I'm afraid!

It sounds glitchy...  Did you do some digital timing manipulation on it? 

Yes, soniclovenoize. Thanks for your feedback!

(http://i2.bebo.com/023/8/mediuml/2007/07/18/21/4428327318a5015693358ml.jpg)

LOL.

So far it sounds promising! Keep it up :D

Would love to hear this but my downloader won't work with the filesonic link - is there any way you could post it to megaupload or rapidshare or mediafire or something?

 :-\

Thanks for your mix and the stereo previews! Just curious, which versions did you use for the stereo Wonderful? Did you extract all instruments and voices from the mono mix, or only the lead vocal and the instruments from the Wonderful sessions track on TSS? I ask that because the take of Wonderful included on TSS is actually a different take than the take used in the mono mix...Anyway, it sounds really good!

Mediafire link now posted. Enjoy! http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2011/11/smile-ad-stereo-mix.html


Thanks! I think it's pretty cool. First verse took forever lol. I hope to get around to completing it one of these days.


No problem, thanks for listening!

It probably would be possible isolate the instrumental. With that said, I'm not sure if that's a project I wanna undertake. We're talkin double the amount of time of just isolating the vocal (and that takes a lot of time!). Plus the artifacts would be heavier on the overall mix. There would definitely be some extra phasing issues.

So, being that the alternate take of the Wonderful backing track is pretty similar to the master take, I chose to work with that. The only issue is that it's a bit faster than the master take, therefore some time-stretching is required on the vocal. I could have went with time-stretching the instrumental, but in my experience it's better to work with the vocal.

Speaking of, I wonder why we didn't get the master instrumental take on TSS. I could be nuts, but it sounds like the mix on Disk 1 has slightly worse quality than a lot of the other tracks. I wonder if they went with an older mix and blended the backing vocals in (which they clearly had the multitracks for).

Btw, at some point I'll make a "pack" of all the stuff I've isolated. Maybe for something like "Do You Like Worms", I'll bounce down the wav files individually so you can remix it in your audio program. That one is practically like playing with the original multitracks!

That DYLW multitrack project sounds great!

I don't know why we didn't get the master take, but I noticed and it's been mentioned before that that's the case for some more tracks, also Wind Chimes and The Elements: Fire (not all the takes that are used in the mono mix are included).

Lovely, thanks.

No problem.

So is this stereo Wonderful going to make its debut with SMiLE A.D. 2 or will you release it before then? I'm really eager to hear the completed studio mix! It's been a dream of mine for a long time to hear Wonderful this way, thanks for working to realize it  :3d

The full version of Wonderful will make its debut on SMiLE A.D. 2.0

In the meantime you can preview H&V from the 2.0 edition: http://beachboyssmilead.blogspot.com/2011/12/smile-ad-20-preview-heroes-villains-66.html

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