The Smiley Smile Message Board

Well it certainly looks that way , and here to stay

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_581oQjCwnE

Thanks for the heads up!

1080p and I still have trouble picking up BB voices in the harmonies as opposed to Jeff's voice.
But I'm sure it must just be my ears.


Looking forward to the single!

Why is Bruce spelt 'BRUSE' on the mixing desk ??

So it's officially on VEVO and the promo says that the song is available now. Where is it available???? ;D

I have to say that this song is incredible. The more I listen to it the more I'm floored that these guys recorded this song 50 years after forming this band. And the lyrics are better than anything we could have asked for. They're simplistic yet they carry a true and original message. The harmonies are stunningly beautiful. I can't wait to hear this song in full.

FYI: Al's solo album is on the front page of iTunes right now in the section 'What's Hot'.

I think I have watched/heard this now about 100 times , I certainly hear Al , Mike and certainly Bruce ( or is it Bruse ) on the tag at the end

Agreed - I hear everyone loud and clear throughout the whole song. Foskett's voice is well mixed in.

Those harmonies in the last 10 seconds of the video are incredible.

Just out of curiosity, who can you pick up 2:12-2:23?

Good spot Rob.

I can only pick out Brian's voice in that bit!

Sounded better inofficial, but that's Ok.

Just speculating, but who knows, perhaps did Brian originally record all BV for Imagination and now they just had to record Jeff + the BB.

Indeed. But it sounds good to my ears regardless.

Think of it this way: Brian wanted a falsetto harmony in there, so just like in the old days he picked someone that could get the job done.

I'm pleasantly surprised.

Pretty neat.

Mike, for one.


Very much doubt this.

Mike certainly comes through clearly near the end as he's singing in the midrange. I'm positive that cool part "Fallin' in love" is Bruce and it's AMAZING! I was commenting on a thread a few weeks back saying how young Bruce's voice still sounds (even his speaking voice) and that they'd do well to make use of that.

Now that the promo video is "official", I bet the single will probably be out this week. Most likely tomorrow.

Nope. Next Tuesday is the plan. They just did this so they would have an official place to get the web traffic.

Who's voice is it after the first chorus before mike starts talking how the song is an accolade?the one singing "that's why god made the radio".  

Sounds like Bruce and Brian at that part. The "That's" at the start of that line definitely sounds like Bruce.

I hear jeff. Maybe Dave as well?

I can pick out everyone except Dave, the only reason for that being I've not heard much of Dave's singing. Loving Mike's mid-range part (on first listen I thought it was Foskett, realised it's not - that might've upset some people).

Can`t watch it in my location.  :(

Any other way to hear it?

I'd say Al...or maybe Brian.

217 views! Boy that vevobeachboys channel is some promotion machine.

Al looks like a corpse. Poor guy.

I love Al but I have to agree.  He hasn't come off all that well in the recent SMiLE interviews or this and I'm not talking about his appearance either.  I don't get wrapped up in stuff like that but he just seems very awkward up there.  Maybe interviews aren't his thing which is more than understandable. 

That's a pretty offensive and disrespectful comment.

For real. The guy is 69 years old....He looks fine to me.

Getting off the topic of looks (who cares anyway?) the harmonies are so beautiful.  Just to have the chance once again to listen in who'd have thunk it?

For me, not an instant favorite but really quite pleasant. Most importantly, it doesn't sound too forced (except maybe for some of the lyrics).

Sounds kind of retro without reverting to the fun-in-the-sun stuff, which is quite an accomplishment considering this is their 50th-anniversary single.

I don't expect this new album to be anywhere near as good as their 60s and 70s output but maybe we'll get another TLOS!

Considering this is the group's first true collaboration in a very long time, we are really off to a great start.

Absolutely.

 I I think it's a good vocal blend, and Thomas has done a good job production wise, i.e it doesn't sound like the Imagination LP to these ears

It is also as far removed from Summer In Paradise as we can get.

If this comes anywhere close to TLOS I think we'll honestly have that classic album that we all wanted The Beach Boys to go out on.  It's a lot to ask for a band cruising towards seventy to be able to match the output of what they were capable of in their twenties but as it's been mentioned many times over there is virtually nothing the group can do in 2012 that can disturb their rich legacy of music from the sixties.

There will be those reviewers and critics too myopic to appreciate what is truly going on here and I guess some fans will fall in that vein as well.  The thing that will always hit home for me is that my other favorite band (The Beatles) never got and will never get the opportunity to do something like this.  There are also numerous other groups that never had a chance to have one more go around either.  I think with the anniversary, the album and the tour this has the potential to be something extremely special and if nothing else I hope the band has a great summer performing around the world together one more time.  

It reminds me a lot of Keep an Eye on Summer from Imagination.

You can never do better than the closing medley of Abbey Road, though. I think the fact that they did that made any post-group reunion irrelevant. They wrapped it up better than perfectly -- they did it iconically.


I think JT is involved, but I've begun to doubt that he's actually producing the record. Probyn -- and then, most importantly, Al -- have both called him an executive producer.

To me it sounds very much in line with Brian's solo stuff from the last decade, with one BIG difference - those Beach Boy harmonies. It turns a good song into a great one. Looks like we're getting the real deal here.

I'm a bit out of the loop with this BB 50 thing and have to say I have pretty low expectations when it comes to new material however this song is a pleasant surprise. The chords and complexity of the harmonies have Brian written all over them - I'm looking forward to hearing this properly.

Listening again, this is really impressive, even if the production is a little polished for my tastes. Beautiful stuff.

Can't watch it in Germany..  :-\ But I guess I've seen it enough times already via the illegal upload.. Waiting for the CD to arrive now. Any info/guesses on possible bonus tracks on the maxi single CD? DIA rerecording, maybe? Waves of Love?

Seems like Bruce, and he sounds soo great!

How about adding "preview" or something to the thread title

Well, is this really official ? I'd think they wouldn't call it "The Beach Boys - Single Sizzle Reel " if it was

Offensive and disrespectful, indeed.

Plus Al does look great these days. Just look at the clips from the record store the other day. But I guess the original poster does not care.

Why people give Al so much crap is beyond me.

This is hardly a substantial post, but: AL JARDINE ROCKZ.  :rock Deal with it.

Well, it's a jungle out there and some creatures just like flinging crap.

Yeah nasty creatures that like grave robbing....

I don't know how I feel about this song.

I don't know....

Man, still floored by those bits of Bruce vocals.

His vocals are great, his voice is almost used the way  it was in BBs songs in 1965-1966.

It's grown on me since my first listen, but a couple things jump out:

1) It has the same kind of 1950s vibe to it that much of their "sunset years" output has had, IMHO, especially That Lucky Old Sun. I think I know why-- the music of the 1950s was what they were raised on. When you get old, you get sentimental (somebody else said as much on this board recently). However, for me, I don't care for it. I like boundary-pushing rock and roll, which is what attracted me to the BBs in the first place. I understand that the Beach Boys aren't going to be releasing synth-full, weird productions, or dubstep, or rap (again), or whatever. But I would simply prefer a sound more rooted in the rock and roll movement they helped pioneer in the 1960s. Not mimicry, but a continuation. Nevertheless, I can't blame them for making the music they want to make at this point in their lives. God knows they've earned that right.

2) There is A LOT of auto-tune on this track, and it makes me a little nauseous. I was worried after the Do It Again remake, in which Foskett's voice sounded super-treated. His falsetto is again, in the TWGMR promo, very auto-tuned, but this time the backing vocals also seem to have a lot of auto-tune trickery. Way too much. Way too noticeable. I bet it could have been done in a more subtle manner. Then again, I'm not an engineer, or even familiar with auto-tune tech at all. Just my (ever so) humble opinion.

No matter what, I will buy this album the first day it's available and I will listen to it non-stop for at least a month. And I will, doubtless, enjoy every bit of it. Except the auto-tune...

Absolutely could have.

Yes, interesting that folks haven't been talking about this. But the vocal stack is noticeably treated. Each voice in the stack is tuned.

That being said, it's nowhere near as bad as mainstream pop, where a full-on robot effect is expected on any big single, so perhaps we should count our blessings.

Yessirree!

Well, double tracking was the autotune of its day.

And if Brian had had autotune in 1966, you can bet he would have used it to achieve that elusive perfection he heard in his head.

Standard practice now, I'm afraid, especially for 5 aging guys who can't hold a tune like they once could. They've been using it on Brian for years.

Not every form of pitch correction you hear is autotune.

And not every vacuum cleaner is made by Hoover. But it's the word everyone uses.

SO true. And what a nice Supernatural avatar btw ;)

Pitch correction is one thing. Lazily applying a filter over the entire vocal (not just the parts that need work) and setting it to just shy of said "robotic" sound is something entirely different.

Yeah, thanks, that's what I was getting at.

@Jimmie_R: Thanks. Don't fear the reaper!

It's an addictive tool. You open it up with the best of intentions. "I'll just nudge the ones that are really out", you say to yourself. Before you know it, you've gone through the whole damn vocal line, and guess what, you do believe in life after love!

You guys are starting to slip, you waited 3 or 4 days before you started bitching about Autotune. 

AND YOU CALL YOURSELF SNOBS?  On whatever the next song is, hopefully we can start telling everybody how we're better at pro-tools the first day the track leaks. 

(http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs079.ash2/37277_130699796951871_124953230859861_248497_1967211_n.jpg)

It didn't sound as bad on here as it did on "Do It Again," so there is hope. Pitch correction can really change the timbre of a singer's voice, so I am wishing for the bare minimum on this album.

awwwwwwwwwwww.......

it's gosh darn GORGEOUS!!!!!

It is, heysaboda. But I can hear the pitch correction. Can you, Ron? It is tough to ignore (I can't, at least). It pulls me out of the magic. I want unadulterated magic, which the Boys have in spades. And it makes me sad. I'm not criticising. I understand. But it pulls me out of the moment. Double tracking doesn't do that.

I do home recording, and my voice SUCKS. But I can get something serviceable... Listenable... After 40 takes. But I'm still youngish. Might they need help at their age? Sure. I understand. But the pitch correction is too obvious. It needs to be dialed down.

Isn't there a way to find a new blend? A different sound that, while not retro, is still beautiful?

I can hear autotune
Sweet, sweet autotune

Can't rate the autotune on this new stuff yet. I don't think it works to just be a total naysayer. At the same time, not everybody that had disdain for autotune is some stuffy, snobby wannabe music critic.

For me, as I've opined before, autotune is so overused that we've kind of lost the "musical integrity" battle. So my issue is that the autotune just sounds annoying when overused. It can be used relatively lightly and effectively. But listen to the new Wilson Phillips album to hear what happens when you just turn autotune (or its various equivalent software plugins) to 11 and leave the room for the entire song.

It doesn't sound like the new BB stuff is awash in the autotune to that degree at least.

The whole "Brian would have used autotune in '66 if he had it" debate is a perilous one to even get into, but I personally don't think he would have used it, because everybody could sing and autotune changes the tone and timbre of voices; it doesn't just "correct" flat and sharp notes. I don't think he would have wanted all the "Pet Sounds" vocals to sound nearly like a vocoder or Frampton's talk box.

There are levels of pitch correction, some extreme and some not so much. It does not necessarily alter tone or timbre, nor is it always detectable.

For that matter, Brian was eager to explore strange vocal effects in the 60s -- speeding up backing vox for example -- and he did use an early version of pitch correction on BW88. So of course he would have done something with it. Just perhaps in a more creative way.

Not to mention the amount of cut and paste they used in the past... A chorus instead of being sung twice or thrice is recorded just once and copied as many times as needed.

We get it: You're better at singing, and engineering with protools that you illegally downloaded off the internet, than they are.  Really we're just being charitable with them since they're so old.  Of course they suck.  BTW when's your tour? :)

Other things we should bitch about:

Recording the music instead of only doing it live

Amplifying the music, because hell nobody sounds like that.  Fill an entire arena?  Speakers?  WHAT THE f***

Double Tracking

Triple Tracking

Wall of Brian = 50 tracking

Reverb

That damn surf thing they do on the guitars

Sending us digital cd's instead of analog vinyl which was recorded live, 1 take, over and over again.  Anything less is just a bunch of 1's and 0's.

Letting dead people be on the album.  Tisk Tisk.  that's REALLY unnatural.  Dead people can't sing.

Smiling so much on the promo pictures.  Nobody smiles that much. 

All of them wearing brand new clothes in the promo pictures.  Nobody wears clothes 1 time then throws them away except for those women on the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Their insistance on taking pictures of just the 5 or 6 guys they say are in the band, when we know damn good and well there's a 17 piece band and bus drivers to get them everywhere.  How come the bus drivers never get acknowledged?  Brian would be lost 5 minutes after he left the hotel if there were no bus driver!  All of Mike's cars are so old they'd break down on the highway if he pushed his little 'deuce coupe over about 45. 

I'm just sick of all the fakeness.  Not just the autotune.  All of it!

And Ron, we get it, BRI is paying you to not rock the boat. People can have fucking opinions. Don't just dismiss them because you don't agree.

Look, it's not just a matter of having and voicing an opinion. It's a matter of reasonably supporting it.

And for a while now, the autotune thing has become a topic for fans that pretend to know better than the Beach Boys. It got tiresome.

I do agree!  I just think more of it sucks than you do.  Don't diss me because you don't agree with my opinion, dude.

More stuff I noticed watching the 'video'.  Brian's singing about changing the channel on the radio, but a dead chick is doing it.  Again with the dead people.  

Nobody's playing instruments.  David is supposed to be a guitar virtuoso but when he picks up his guitar out of the case, he doesn't even plug it in.  I bought an electric guitar at a pawn shop, so I'm a musician, and I can tell you: Musicians have to plug in electric guitars.  Also it's clear from the picture that the snaps are on the wrong side of his case, mine, and the other one at the pawn shop open the OTHER WAY.  

When the music starts, nobody's standing at the microphones.  Also all the microphones are old.  No way that new technology can't make brand new microphones that sound good.  Also none of the headphones are Beats by Dre.  Everybody knows Beats By Dre are the best headphones... but this is a recording studio that doesn't have them?  Pfft.

Brian's wearing makeup.  That's unnatural.  

We're expected to think Brian produced it, but in reality he can't even keep a tempo anymore, at the end when he waves his hand he's off.  On my bootleg protools it'd be about half a measure off.  Depending on how I set it.    I don't have the manual, so I'm not sure what you call that little setting.  

Don't even get me started on the logo.  It's a weird color.  When I paintshop logos for my facebook page, I stay away from pastels because I think they're girly.  The Beach Boys used a pastel, therefore I could have done better.  My favorite font is Helvetica.

Their tour is all weird too.  Some of the dates they're playing don't make any sense.  They're not playing bowling green kentucky, and everybody knows you get lucky in bowling green everytime.  I heard that in a Glen Campbell song once, so it must be true.  

:)

Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised.
Okay, it's obviously autotuned or pitch-corrected, but not as badly as Wilson Phillips on their latest, and these guys are a lot older.
Even with the pitch correction, the song has some warmth to it, and those harmonies are beautiful. And the lyrics...I was afraid they'd do some beach thing with lyrics that were entirely inappropriate for their age, but they went for a radio nostalgia thing that's so nice and really authentic.

I'm not a huge fan of Jeff's voice, but he doesn't overpower the thing.
Whoever arranged the harmonies (was it Brian?) did a really nice job. No phoning it in there.

I'm lost.  Elaborate please?

I'm not condemning the use of pitch correction. I would use it if I could. Of course they use it. They'd be crazy not to take advantage of technology to improve their product. Didn't mean to piss off Ron, or those who behave like rational human beings but disagree with me.

(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/10/30/article-1081882-0435FE090000044D-578_468x377.jpg)

Meaning I think the car driving along the coast. Karen Lamm from the 'Its Ok' program. (1976?)

In addition to "You Only Live Twice" this song also reminds me of this Paul Steel track...

http://paulsteel.bandcamp.com/track/i-will-make-you-disappear

Hate to be a downer, but this song does nothing for me.  Too bad.

The song sounds like it could be kinda cool... I just wish the recording had some personality. I don't know who produced it but it sounds like the safest, most boring production to me. I always guessed/feared it would sound like this but hoped that maybe it would sound cooler.

Who produced it?

Sounds like it would not have been out of place on "Imagination" - an album that I am guilty of liking. Yes, Brian, there is one guy out here that enjoyed that album, Joe Thomas be damned! I wasn't expected edgy, alternative music from a middle aged Brian Wilson, and I'm not expecting it now.

This Paul Steel song always reminds me of the BBs 'Your Summer Dream'. I think the first few bars of melody are identical. By the way, this is a great album for Beach Boys fans, if you haven't heard it yet.

Against all odds, Brian Wilson not only survived far longer than anyone would have expected, but will also live to be 138. In his final year, he will cover the Misfits' "We Are 138" as "I Am 138", and then die after screaming the last "eight". He will also look and speak like the guy seven seconds into this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGogGbYaLU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGogGbYaLU)

I hear ' Midnight Cowboy'. - 'That's Why God ..made     That's Why God ..made'

"you only live twice" = "your summer dream"

Brian Douglas Wilson

What would make it sound cooler?

Beats?

More autotune?

 :lol

That girly's favourite font is Legal Tender

I don’t think this is accurate at all. At least for me, I don’t pretend to know more than the BB’s. I know autotune is used; and so do they (I would hope and presume). The issue at hand is whether it should be used, and that boils down to the same subjective analysis that goes into saying whether one likes a song or not, or likes the production, and so on.

If one likes something and somebody else doesn’t, there is not “knowing better.” It’s 100% opinion. As I’ve said in a few threads, I’ve given up the “it loses musical integrity to use autotune” argument. At this point, it’s just an aesthetic thing, like not liking something because they put too much reverb on it. So in *some* cases, autotune results in a sound I don’t like. That’s all.

Now, on the other hand, if what we’re talking about is debating whether autotune is even being used, that’s where an impasse is going to be hit. We can’t judge much other than one full song and another partial one when it comes to new BB recordings. But if we’re going to debate whether, say, “Do It Again” even has autotune (or something of a similar nature in terms of digital plug-ins), then there’s nowhere to take the debate. It’s like someone contending some sort of well-known lip-sync artist is not lip-syncing because you can’t prove it unless the singer admits it or you can have access to the actual recording they are lip-syncing to. Of course we can’t prove with 100% certainty if autotune is used on any given recording unless the artist or producer admits it or we were personally in the studio. But the hallmarks of its use are very obvious.

You ain't just whistlin' Dixie (Autotuned, of course)! :)

More Jeff Foskett.

Exactly. People have been slathering pitch correction and autotune on vocals for so long now that many singers sing in a style conducive to autotune - perfectly hitting every note - even without the pitch correction.

Vocal pitch correction annoys me because I don't like all the humanity being squashed out of a vocal performance, especially with one of the great vocal groups of all time. I have never used pitch correction on my own vocals, and sometimes people assume that I do, which can get a bit annoying - but mainly, I don't like the way it changes the timbre of a voice. In the end, it is a tool like anything else.

The upshot is that the pitch correction on TWGMTR is tasteful, as it has been on Brian's solo albums. "Do It Again 2011" had me worried because of the large amount of pitch correction, specifically on Mike's vocal, but TWGMTR isn't too bad in the autotune department.

Boy, you really must enjoy your GIOMH album. ;D

What's your location, Germany? There's an add-on for Firefox called ProxTube which should make it work.

Autotune is the work of the devil and, frankly, offensive and painful to my ears. When used with vocal harmony it sounds like so many car horns.

Case closed.

When it's overused. When the vibrato of the voice is straightened for that robot effect, yes, it's horrible.

When it's used to nudge the pitch on a few bum notes of an otherwise perfect take, then it's invaluable.

I'll bet there's a lot of times you don't even know it's there.

Ha. Touché! I have to say, the pitch correction on on BWRG in particular was done tastefully. The amount of correction that would need to be done with GIOMH would be way beyond anything we've seen before (although I'm sure they used it at points on that album, given how unengaged Brian was).

Part of the problem with autotuning harmonies is that there is an ineffable amount of flat and sharp singing that must go into harmonies in order to make them fit - sort of like tuning a piano (but less extreme), where if you do it mathematically perfectly, it won't sound right. Someone more knowledgable than me can expand on this with technical details.

From a technical standpoint, I'd say you about nailed it.

FWIW, I do a lot of harmonies here at my studio, for and by myself and for and with others, and never, ever use pitch correction.  Every time I've heard it used, you lose something.  It's just flat.  The richness of BBs harmony has more to do with perfect delivery and blend than with perfect pitch.

Well said.  There's a section in Charles Granta's book on Pet Sounds where he interviews Ross Barbour, one of the founding Four Freshman, and David Wright, a barbershop vocal arranger, and they both discuss this.  Since I happen to have it in front of me, a few quotes:

"You can't get beautiful overtones if you sing the notes a piano plays; you've got to tweak the vocal notes, making them a bit sharp or flat in certain places." 

"Good vocals are much more in tune than the keyboard...a good vocal ensemble finds that finer tuning."