Thanks for sharing your thoughts in your post, Matt. I find most of your points well-expressed and agreeable.

It could also be that the instruments are still on separate tracks, but that a 'deconstructed' intro like the one created during the mix for the original mono record just doesn't sound so good in stereo. Sometimes when you do that, it sounds OK in mono and you get away with it, but muting the tracks in stereo sounds too obviously like... you muted the tracks to create that intro. You can sometimes hear that you've muted a track more obviously in stereo. So perhaps they changed it for the stereo mix and left everything playing for that reason...?

And this seems to be the most "acceptable" reason to me if the change was indeed deliberate.

But if it wasn't intentional, it seems like neglect/an oversight in the remix process. And it seems like the faded out piano in the intro was possible to execute because that piano part *is* correctly muted when the cycle of the song repeats after the chorus/before the second verse on the new mix (well... actually the piano fades back in on the second beat of the first measure of the second verse in the mono mix but it starts on the first beat in the new stereo mix).

I realize I'm one person with their own subjective opinion on the internet and am no authority on the matter. I have the maturity of a ten year old when it comes to dealing with differing music mixing decisions—even when the piano came in on the stereo mix of the Smiley Smiley version of Wonderful irked me lol.

Aren't I glad that these new mixes exist? Yes!

[/pedantry]

Hello Mr. Desper,

I just wanted to say thanks for the amazing work you did with the Beach Boys. I got into them around 2004 and the first time I heard "All I Wanna Do", I was taken to another dimension of music that I've never returned from. It has remained my favorite recording of all time throughout all of the experiences I've had over the last decade of my musical journeys, and I'm sure it has just as much to do with your touch on the engineering as it does the song's composition. Your work on that song has given me an ethereal ideal that has permanently influenced my approach to recording music.

I also discovered your extra notes about the recording on your website and thoroughly enjoyed the effort you put into your commentary. Thanks again.

I don't believe I've logged onto this message board in literally over ten years...

and I've come all the way back so I could find this thread and ask if anyone else is bothered that the piano in this stereo mix doesn't fade for the last measure of the intro like it does in the mono mix.

I'll post again in 2028. Be good, everyone; glad you're all well.

Guitar solo from Paul McCartney's Too Many People, especially the 2nd part at the end.  Hands down my favorite guitar solo to play and the coolest sounding one ever.

Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon from The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has a really awesome sound on the guitar.

Of course the guitar parts from I Know There's an Answer.

All Day and All of the Night.

There are others...

Oh yeah, I forgot.  The Earthbound game music freakin' samples Beatles music.  How cool is that?  It even has a little melody that sounds like "Good Morning Good Morning" for when you wake up after sleeping in a hotel in the game.  You even ride a Yellow Submarine,  there're tons of Beatles references everywhere in that game.

My favorite soundtracks include...

Sonic 3 and Knuckles
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy Tactics
Earthbound (please play this SNES game if you haven't.  The music makes 90% of the game for me actually)
Megaman II definitely had some awesome music in it.

Final Fantasy IV had one of the best songs ever, the town music.  It's like 50 seconds long but it's seriously one of my favorite pieces of music.

Peruse this page if you want midi sized files that play the song ripped from the game itself.  They even infinitely loop if you want them to!
http://www.zophar.net/music.html

I love doing crap like that.  I made some weird "bad on purpose"  music (music is a relative term in this case) five years ago or so with my friends called Marty Tingles.  On one of the CDs, for about four tracks, the music would get quieter from track to track, making the person turn up their radio listening.  Then the most obnoxious sound would bring it back up to normal volume.  We also did stuff like that within a song.  Awesome!

Both, more so the latter.

Okay, so did you just detune one of the three strings, or did you do two of them? And what do you do on the lower strings where there's only one string per note? Just keep it in tune or detune it slightly?

Just one of the strings I think.  I did it a couple of months ago.  For ones with single strings for the notes, you obviously must keep them in tune.  On that recording I did, listen to the low G#, it's really bad out of tune.

Plus I'm going off of memory, it could've taken me maybe 20 minutes to do that to my piano, but a well trained piano technician could probably do it real quick.

I like it a lot.  I could probably have that constantly playing in the background in my house and I wouldn't care.  Space out music!

Though my friends would probably think I'm a bit odd.

I read that Brian would hum the pitch of each note in the octave for the piano tuner to follow by.

That's balogna stuff.

It's really really really really extremely easy to make any piano sound like that.

One each piano for each note, you'll have one two or three strings for a single key.  Most of them are in ones and twos on the first twenty or so keys and from the middle and higher you'll have three strings for each note.  All of them have to be perfectly in tune with eachother in order to sound like a normal piano.  However, say on the note C, you have three strings.  Slightly lower or raise one of those three strings out of tune (you'd usually leave the middle string alone) and you get a sort of warped effect on the note (there's a better term for it); AKA the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey piano sound.  You can make any piano sound like that within five to ten minutes, however I only did the notes in the song so it took like five for me.  It's easy to bring the piano back to normal mode quickly too.

You don't really detune the piano, but you detune the unisons of the individual notes.

Oooo, here's the piano thingey I recorded.

http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=2894318