Some other tracks that may exist that were inexplicably left off the Feel Flows set.  Hope these see the light of day soon:
- Susie Cincinnati (Early version, recorded 12/24/69)

I’m pretty sure c-man and Joshilyn confirmed this existed - or at least did exist. During one thread relating to the recording of this song (maybe on a thread about Brian’s bass credits?), it was confirmed that the credits on 15BO for this song aren’t accurate and combine credits from both versions. The first version has Brian on bass, Carl on guitar, and Al producing the basic track. The second has Al on guitar, Carl producing the basic track, and Dennis Dragon on drums (plus overdubbed rhythm and lead guitars from Carl). Bruce might be playing keyboards, and Captain Daryl Dragon is either on bass on keyboards.

It exists, yeah, two separate tries at it.  The basic session that served as the seed of the final 15 Big Ones release had Al on guitar, Bruce on piano, Daryl on Bass, and Dennis Dragon on Drums.  Essentially, they only used the drums from that session for the final product.

One of the things I've always wanted to hear more of is an individual breakdown of BB (and other bands for that matter) harmony stacks. It's understandably tough to do with the original tapes, because they weren't often recording each voice on a separate track.

It's difficult but generally not impossible.

I'm curious how many BB multitracks have any substantive amount of individual vocal tracks isolated for stacked vocals. They'd obviously have more ability to do that as time went on into the 70s and 80s, but I don't know how often they were still at least grouping *some* singers together on one mic or one track on, say, 80s stuff.

Then there is the fascinating world of using AI to extract parts from recordings. It's of course much tougher to pull individual voices from a stack using that method as opposed to pulling all vocals or an instrument out. But some folks have made some progress. I've heard wonky but still demonstrative attempts to isolated individual voices on stuff like "Eleanor Rigby."

I wonder if it would be even more challenging to do this on some BB stuff since you have three brothers that could sound similar in some cases, not to mention Al who could often sound a lot like Brian.

They never went totally away from recording group vocals to one track, but as early as 65 they started to augment those when they got 8 tracks.  So on California Girls, for example, you still have the big block of group vocal to one track, but you have Brian and Bruce adding their parts to the extra tracks.  They pretty much kept working this way forever, probably until 2012 when unlimited digital tracks ruined everything.

AI will eventually be able to snag artefact-minimal individual parts from group harmonies, and probably even tell you who it is, but that's a while off yet.

Ah yes, the human need to systematize.

Honestly, I think it's pretty much impossible to generalize this.  The fact is that they switched around a whole lot.  They didn't all sing on everything; they swapped around, even from one take to another.  There are a few years where Brian and Mike are often the high and low voices, and of course it's pretty safe to put Mike lowest much of the time (not always).  But as time goes on and we are able to analyze these things better and better, it becomes apparent that there was no set order, and anything we thought we could rely on...we can't.  By 1965, every track is a blank slate, really.

I will admit I didn't buy the Sail On Sailor set.  Why?  Because it seemed that Brian was more or less MIA in this period.  I listened to some of the rare tracks from the set and my reaction was "blah".   Frankly, it's a period of the band that doesn't particularly interest me, just my personal taste I guess.  BUT, I would totally go for a 1976-77 set where Brian was back and recording a bunch of some of the most eccentric music of his career.  Oh yeah.   

He wasn't MIA.  Some days he didn't participate, but he's a presence on the featured LPs.  Plus, if you like eccentric Brian music, what about Mt. Vernon and Fairway?  Rooftop Harry?  Spark in the Dark?

subpar initial recording in some cases

Almost never.

Despite some things like "Pet Sounds" seemingly having been run into the ground in terms of archival releases, I'd still love to hear that stuff pulled apart more. Just hearing the songs with single-tracked instead of double-tracked lead vocals is really interesting. I'm not saying double tracking the leads was a bad idea, but there is a sense of immediacy and intimacy with those single tracked leads that is worth hearing as well.

I think that it's humanity that pulling mixes apart emphasized.  The humanity of those people who put the music together as a production.  Suddenly, you're just hearing a dude singing and not "a production."

Whatever extant 8-track reels from Columbia from that time exist, the trend would be for there to be 1 track that is the mono mix of the basic track (done elsewhere) and then up to 7 tracks of mono vocals.

How those tracks are used varies, but as Donny said, the backing vocals were usually the whole group on one track, which would be doubled, and then key lead vocals or important lines might get their own track.

It's interesting to note that Brian dipped his toe into doing a couple backing tracks on 8-track during this era, Summer Means New Love and Windchimes II went on 8-track.  But by and large the 8-track was used as a vocal layering machine until the group started recording more asynchronously and relying more on overdubbing, when we start to get individual instruments mapped to single tracks.  But even with 48 tracks, the boys still liked to sing around 1 mike together, to one track, when they could get away with it.

Any updates on this project yet?

Yes, things are going very well.

Do we know why Brian used a bass saxophone and baritone sax combination on Do It Again instead of (what had been) his previous standard of tenor and baritone saxes?

Those are two bass saxes playing a line in unison, not a horn section with any sort of harmony.

Also by the time Do It Again rolled around, the Two sax Tenor/Bari pairing was long since superseded by a more flexible approach, with many different sax and wind combos.

While the above is true, I do have a growing compendium of scores.  I could be persuaded to whip up a little flute greatest hits thing.

This project is happening.

Paper!  They were probably dixie cups.

Not plastic!

Hi All;

the link is to a little update video and link to the multitracks comprising my Rhonda recreation.  Thanks.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIZA29VV2DA

It's a Dutch/German name, and double Os are pronounced differently than in English.  One can Anglicise the name, or not.  Bob Moog didn't.

Incredible. Just like in the Help Me Rhonda video, there is something so satisfying about seeing the instruments come in and out, and getting that visual information. Especially, for me, seeing that "snare" hit on the tambourine, which is such a cool sound, and which I don't think I could ever have identified myself! The guitars sound almost uncannily right, too!

Thank you.  I've been thinking about what that hit could be for 20 years....Hope I got it right.

I think I've said it before, but the visual stuff is so important to me -- I honestly don't really enjoy the process of filming and editing myself doing all that, but in the end it's really vital to continue to show the human physicality behind these records.

Thanks!

Yeah, my guiding principles for mixing, that's a good question.  For the moment, I'll admit that I don't really have a unifying concept.  For the productions that really rely on certain mono combinations for the right feeling, I have mixed the tracks using the same 3-track bussing scheme that the original used.  I may do some more out-there stereo mixes in the future.  But for these, I send the signals to Left, Center, or Right busses, matching how they were routed originally.  But I don't really try to level match or get the individual bus balances to match the original closely, I just do the mixing by ear without close comparison to the original track.  Sometimes, if I can't get something to sound great, I'll intentionally mix it a bit lower than I otherwise would.

Now, when we get to some of the simpler or slightly less involved tracks, I plan to open things up more.  For instance, on something like "The Girl From New York City," that track was cut to mono, and I'll mix it to stereo as if they'd spread it out to three-track at the time.

Likewise, for Amusement Parks, we are missing the 3-track master of the track, so I will spread that out to three-track stereo as well.

For the self-contained tracks, where it's just the boys, I'm planning to do sort of full stereo mixes without any real recourse to vintage mixes, because those tracks were cut to mono then built up with overdubs, so I think it will be interesting to move some of that stuff around a bit and let people hear it.

Pet Sounds may be a whole different thing, because it has already been digested on a microscopic level with official releases.  I may do really dramatic "remixes" and feature more isolated stuff.  We'll see!  It all depends on how much time I have to work on it!

Thanks for a good question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apOnGw3g3tw

Hey pals.  At the link above you'll find a new video where I attempt to make a visually interesting thing to watch while you hear my painstakingly researched recreation of Let Him Run Wild on all original, real instruments.  Hope you like it.  Always love to hear somebody say something about these.

That would be really disappointing if some tapes fell victim to improper storage.  Popular music has a LONG way to go when it comes to thinking of their assets and intellectual property as archival treasures to be preserved carefully.  I am glad that there's been some digitization, in any case.  Would be really wonderful to hear some nice quality transfers of some J&D backing tracks, really would!  Really important to be able to understand the different ways that different people put together tracks.

Obviously, probably no way to know for sure, barring a fortuitous mention on hypothetical session tape, but it would be, as I said, an odd choice to put Jimmy on Fender over Lyle, when Jimmy was sort of a reluctant electric guy and Lyle was happy to play Fender.

Thanks Mark.

Thanks, yeah that makes sense.  I'm just hoping against hope that I can get my hands on some surviving arrangements.  I was just listening to the isolated horns and woodwinds from the Turtle's "So Happy Together" and that's just such a masterclass in middle-brow pop arranging.  I hope some of those are still around from any number of artists.

Mark, I have one general question and then one specific question.

Generally speaking, what state is the J&D tape vault in as far as original multitracks?  I'm really interested in how different producers and engineers used tape in the 3- and 4-track era.  Did Jan do reduction mixes to mono and then add overdubs on a second tape like Brian would?  Like, on Anaheim, etc, I'm assuming he cut the basic to three track, did a reduction and then did the vocal and percussion overdubs onto that?  Has there ever been any talk of synch-up remixes?  It would just be thrilling to hear some more track-only mixes.

And specifically speaking about the AFM for Anaheim -- does it specifically assign Fender duties to Jimmy Bond and Upright to Lyle, or is the usual "not label the instruments" deal?  I'm curious because that would be a really interesting choice on Jan's part, since Jimmy was much less of a Fender guy than Lyle.

Thanks as always, Mark.

Thanks, Mark -- always great to hear you talk about this stuff.

I'm curious -- to your knowledge, were all officially arranged arrangements filed with the union, as Jan's were?  Did the local 47 keep that stuff?  It would be of inestimable value to my research if more arrangements from that time were preserved.

Really looking forward to be able to afford a few more of these downloads, and for more and more to get published.  Thanks for your work, Mark, very heartily.

Yeah, for a lot of legal proceedings, there is a requirement of providing notice, which meant something in the old days but seems kind of silly now, because there's no way you can realistically give the entire relevant population notice that you are doing something.  Things like name changes, certain business deals, etc, have to be put out there, with the idea that, if you're changing your name to avoid paying a debt or something, you won't get away with it because your lender will see it.  Likewise, if you are starting a business entity of some sort, in theory it behooves the public to know that somebody is running a business out of a certain address and that the business is comprised of specific people, again, so you can't form a company to, say, hide assets.

But like I said, it's not realistic to think that there's a way to communicate this to everybody who might need to know, so the requirement is basically that you publish it "somewhere" - nowadays there's usually a regional legal newsletter that goes out with all this stuff way in back, just to satisfy this requirement of "notice."

So in this case, Brian and Gary and Al set up a business as "Rachel and the Revolvers" and there's probably a legal requirement that to do so, they had to publish their names and addresses.

That's great, Mark, just about everything I was most hoping for is on that list.  Primarily "Pasadena" and "I Found a Girl"

Thanks for your work on this Mark!

How many of these are you planning to put out, Mark?