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Author Topic: American Band movie--a question about it  (Read 47339 times)
guitarfool2002
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« Reply #75 on: July 02, 2011, 10:46:57 PM »

is it possible to ID those as Dynatrack or not just by what's visible?

nope, in fact, that actually looks like a 3M M23 4-track.  you see, you can't tell if the lower portion has 4 additional channels or not.  the 4-track looks the same as the 8-track from above.  and to confuse matters even further, it could be either a regular 4-track or a 2-track with Dynatrak.  no way to tell as far as i am aware; i don't think a dynatrak machine looked any different than a regular M23.

here you go, a 3m m23 4-track:

http://auxsend.net/tapemachines/2011/06/06/3m-m23/


High price tag, but what a neat item to have! I'll bet that machine, as is and 45 years old, works better overall than the Chinese-made Marshall guitar amp I just bought used which does nothing but hum loudly and will soon collect dust... Grin

I can see after what you said how it's impossible to tell which machines are which in the photos, since they both looked alike.
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« Reply #76 on: July 02, 2011, 11:18:48 PM »

yeh, i don't think Western had an 8-track until spring '67, and it was a 3M.  They may have had some Scullys later though.  so the Scully 8 track in those photos was brought in from elsewhere (probably Heider's).
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« Reply #77 on: July 03, 2011, 12:24:23 AM »

I love threads like these.  Grin I'm not knowledgeable enough to contribute, but this is fascinating as all get out.  Grin
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« Reply #78 on: July 03, 2011, 12:48:24 AM »

I'm sure there is an interview with Brian or Chuck where they mentioned synching up two 4 tracks for Good Vibes or other sessions of that period in place of a "real" 8 track.

People have been mis-interpreting some session chat to mean that - in fact what Brian actually says during a "GV" session (first aired on the 1976 US radio special "The Best Summers Of Our Lives") is "we're recording this on two 4-tracks so we only have to do it once", i.e. we're recording the verse section twice, but at the same time. No synching of machines.
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« Reply #79 on: July 03, 2011, 12:50:07 AM »

Damn, I loves me this kind of thing.  w00t!
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« Reply #80 on: July 03, 2011, 01:00:04 AM »

Isn't there even an interview with Mark Linett somewhere where he mentioned "Vegetables" on Smiley as the time they switched everything over to 8 track from 4? I guess this is it from the board archives:

"As for Vegetables and Let the Wind Blow on Hawthorne, the latter had all the tracks on one 8 track, but Vegetables did require editing of the sections together to create a complete multi-track to mix from. By this time everything was being done on 8 track and in this case just one generation, no dubdowns as with some songs like "Time To Get Alone" which did require the syncing of a couple of 8 tracks."

So he's talkin' 8 track Smiley Smile, we're talkin' whenever in late 66 or early 67 that film was shot at Western.

An incredible ride so far...

The 8-track used for some non-Columbia Smile sessions in 1967 was at Armin Steiner's Sound Recorders (3/3/67 and thereafter). Going by the available documentation, except for the first four "Vegetables" sessions (at Sound Recorders & Western), all the non-Smile Smiley Smile sessions were held at Brian's home studio, on a rented 8-track according to Jim Lockert.

gigs & sessions 1967
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« Reply #81 on: July 03, 2011, 01:29:38 AM »



Lightened to show the tape machine...

I have to say I'm friggin' shocked to see that *is* an 8-track recording on that tape.

Watch it from 35 seconds into that film clip, and watch closely the needles jumping on the meters behind Brian's head...there are 8-tracks on that reel of tape at Western.

I'm almost convinced now it's a playback/mix session and they're listening to a mix with vocals, hence the 8 tracks making the meters jump.

Fuckin A...

Thanks for pointing that out, Donny L. Smiley

OK...

So... we got an 8-track in Western, ergo the session has to date April 1967 at the earliest. I don't think it's a mix/playback as Mike, Carl and I'm assuming Dennis (filming) are there.

April
11 - Smile session: Tones (Part #3) [Western]

June
5 - Smiley Smile session: Vegetables [Western]
6 - Smiley Smile session: Vegetables [Western]
7 - Smiley Smile session: Vegetables [Western]

Question (because I cannot be arsed to get my DVD from downstairs): does the footage show all eight needles peaking, or just four and we're assuming the other four do as well.
I doubt that I could really be of much service here, but here goes. Note that Carl is reading a magazine and looking rather bored. If this were a session for Tones(a song supposedly written by him) I would think that he would be more involved. So I think that could be ruled out.
Slightly off topic here, but what is tones(part 3)? Is it something we haven't heard before?
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« Reply #82 on: July 03, 2011, 03:28:49 AM »

Interesting - the Scully 280 certainly had 8-track capability, and apparently MoTown had one in January 1965 (according to Bob Olhsson it was the very first one, specially commissioned). Thing is, aside from one solitary image, all the 280 8-tracks I've seen have the amps in an 8X1 configuration, not the 4x2 as seen in the footage. Maybe it was too high for the control room of Western 3.

Now... the oft-repeated tale that until Armin Steiner built his console in Sound Recorders spring 1967, Columbia had the only 8-track in LA seems to be unravelling. Question is, if, as now seems possible (I'd still like to date that footage exactly*), there was a Scully 280 8-track in Western in late 1966, why the big secret... unless... remember that reference to Brian bringing his personal 8-track down to Western ? We dismissed it because it also said he brought his own grand down as well, and anyone who's been in Western Three will tell you that to do that, you'd have to take a wall, maybe two, out !  Maybe Brian had rented a 280 8-track: I recall Bruce (I think) stating that he tried recording some Pet Sounds vocals at Laurel Way on a Scully, but it didn't work out. This flying for you, Orville ?  Smiley

* - world peace and a candy bar would be nice too.
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« Reply #83 on: July 03, 2011, 07:05:30 AM »

Interesting - the Scully 280 certainly had 8-track capability, and apparently MoTown had one in January 1965 (according to Bob Olhsson it was the very first one, specially commissioned). Thing is, aside from one solitary image, all the 280 8-tracks I've seen have the amps in an 8X1 configuration, not the 4x2 as seen in the footage. Maybe it was too high for the control room of Western 3.

Now... the oft-repeated tale that until Armin Steiner built his console in Sound Recorders spring 1967, Columbia had the only 8-track in LA seems to be unravelling. Question is, if, as now seems possible (I'd still like to date that footage exactly*), there was a Scully 280 8-track in Western in late 1966, why the big secret... unless... remember that reference to Brian bringing his personal 8-track down to Western ? We dismissed it because it also said he brought his own grand down as well, and anyone who's been in Western Three will tell you that to do that, you'd have to take a wall, maybe two, out !  Maybe Brian had rented a 280 8-track: I recall Bruce (I think) stating that he tried recording some Pet Sounds vocals at Laurel Way on a Scully, but it didn't work out. This flying for you, Orville ?  Smiley

* - world peace and a candy bar would be nice too.

bingo.

don't concern yourself with the arrangement of the 8 channels; I have seen this configuration before, the 12-track Scully decks (yes, 1" tape) have 6 on each side set up like this, and i have seen some very strange scully setups as well.  in any case, the tape transport itself is 1" tape in those photos, and it's a larger (wider) unit than the 4-track/2-track transports (extra metal on each side).

another theory ... United made the announcement that they are going with the 3M 8-track in their april '67 newsletter; i believe this is the source of "Western got 8-track in april '67" as commonly accepted official knowledge.  but i read the newsletter and it says, "After an engineering survey of machines of various manufacture, they have selected 3M company's model C-401" (which i suppose is another name for the M23 w/ Dynatrak ... that's a whole other issue because i've never even heard of a 'C-401' model ... all online references are to the western deck.  i would say it was an M23 w/ Dynarak that was somehow given this model # as a one-off or a mis-print in the newsletter). 

what im getting at is this survey of a variety of machines that is referenced.  perhaps they tested out some other 8-tracks during the months leading up to this while deciding which to purchase ... it would not be unheard of for a Scully sales rep to woo the studio by letting them use a deck for a period of time.  according to my research, western had ampex 300 series decks (mono, 2-track, 3-track, and 4-track) until the 3M 8-track (or 4-track dynatrak if you will), so they never officially had a scully in any case (4 or 8 track). 

of course, my vote goes for Brian renting one from Heider and bringing it in for a period of time.
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« Reply #84 on: July 03, 2011, 07:06:50 AM »

is it possible to ID those as Dynatrack or not just by what's visible?

nope, in fact, that actually looks like a 3M M23 4-track.  you see, you can't tell if the lower portion has 4 additional channels or not.  the 4-track looks the same as the 8-track from above.  and to confuse matters even further, it could be either a regular 4-track or a 2-track with Dynatrak.  no way to tell as far as i am aware; i don't think a dynatrak machine looked any different than a regular M23.

here you go, a 3m m23 4-track:

http://auxsend.net/tapemachines/2011/06/06/3m-m23/


High price tag, but what a neat item to have! I'll bet that machine, as is and 45 years old, works better overall than the Chinese-made Marshall guitar amp I just bought used which does nothing but hum loudly and will soon collect dust... Grin

I can see after what you said how it's impossible to tell which machines are which in the photos, since they both looked alike.

you better believe it.  i don't fuss with much new stuff ...  i have an ampex 440 myself!
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« Reply #85 on: July 03, 2011, 07:10:25 AM »

I'm sure there is an interview with Brian or Chuck where they mentioned synching up two 4 tracks for Good Vibes or other sessions of that period in place of a "real" 8 track.

People have been mis-interpreting some session chat to mean that - in fact what Brian actually says during a "GV" session (first aired on the 1976 US radio special "The Best Summers Of Our Lives") is "we're recording this on two 4-tracks so we only have to do it once", i.e. we're recording the verse section twice, but at the same time. No synching of machines.

yes, there is no way they were syncing 2 4-tracks in those days.  2 scully 280s would not have matched up perfectly and those machines did not have vari-speed or sync capability.  i think George Martine made a big deal about manually syncing two 4-tracks for "a day in the life", but this was very difficult and certainly out of the ordinary (and those were not scullys).
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« Reply #86 on: July 03, 2011, 07:32:10 AM »

I'm sure there is an interview with Brian or Chuck where they mentioned synching up two 4 tracks for Good Vibes or other sessions of that period in place of a "real" 8 track.

People have been mis-interpreting some session chat to mean that - in fact what Brian actually says during a "GV" session (first aired on the 1976 US radio special "The Best Summers Of Our Lives") is "we're recording this on two 4-tracks so we only have to do it once", i.e. we're recording the verse section twice, but at the same time. No synching of machines.

yes, there is no way they were syncing 2 4-tracks in those days.  2 scully 280s would not have matched up perfectly and those machines did not have vari-speed or sync capability.  i think George Martine made a big deal about manually syncing two 4-tracks for "a day in the life", but this was very difficult and certainly out of the ordinary (and those were not scullys).

I recall reading somewhere, decades ago, that the engineers use one track for some kind of sync pulse, and even then I thought "don't think so", especially as the Abbey Road recorders at the time were, as I recall,  BTR (British Tape Recorders - honestly) 4-tracks, or at best Studer 4-tracks.

Ah, here we go:

"On 10 February 1967 during the recording of "A Day in the Life", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine. Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone, a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.

Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost."

So after all that, they visually and manually synced the two 4-tracks. Not so impressive, then.
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« Reply #87 on: July 03, 2011, 10:59:48 AM »

Western had an 8-track machine as early as October 1966. Frank Sinatra's "That's Life," an 8-track master, was recorded at Western on Oct. 16. Reportedly, the engineers hated the machine and rarely used it, as it often would break down, produced a lot of heat and imparted a near-unacceptable level of noise to the recordings made with it. Also, it cost the client twice as much for a session.

I've often wondered whether they might have had it on premises as early as April. Where were the Pet Sounds songs recorded on 8-track at Columbia mixed down and by whom? I wouldn't think they'd have been done at Columbia, as reportedly Brian got in trouble for touching the board there and I doubt he'd have trusted the mixdowns to an engineer he hadn't known and worked with for some time. And Columbia being such a strict shop, I don't think he could have brought Chuck over from Western to do the mixdowns. So where were they done and by whom? If at Western, they had to have had an 8-track at that time.
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« Reply #88 on: July 03, 2011, 11:47:05 AM »

Western had an 8-track machine as early as October 1966. Frank Sinatra's "That's Life," an 8-track master, was recorded at Western on Oct. 16. Reportedly, the engineers hated the machine and rarely used it, as it often would break down, produced a lot of heat and imparted a near-unacceptable level of noise to the recordings made with it. Also, it cost the client twice as much for a session.

I've often wondered whether they might have had it on premises as early as April. Where were the Pet Sounds songs recorded on 8-track at Columbia mixed down and by whom? I wouldn't think they'd have been done at Columbia, as reportedly Brian got in trouble for touching the board there and I doubt he'd have trusted the mixdowns to an engineer he hadn't known and worked with for some time. And Columbia being such a strict shop, I don't think he could have brought Chuck over from Western to do the mixdowns. So where were they done and by whom? If at Western, they had to have had an 8-track at that time.

I've seen the studio listed as United/Western, and I believe Frank favoured United A because the room was bigger. Phill Sawyer seems to indicate the session was at United. Even so, the fact remains that there was an 8-track (allegedly) across the parking lot and Brian wasn't using it.

As for the story about Brian not being allowed to touch the Columbia board, not sure I completely believe that, for the following reasons:

1 - the only source is Steve Desper, who didn't work for Brian, even informally, until Smile, so wasn't around during Summer Days... and Pet Sounds.

2 - I think that if the biggest producer in town was beginning to use your studio on the sayso of one of your ex-staffers, you wouldn't do something that stupid. Brian first used Columbia in late May 1965, and the last recorded use by him was the first week of April 1967. Does him continually having his hand slapped away for some two years yet continuing to be so humiliated every time he used it sound in any way believable to you ? I'd bet Bruce had a quiet word in someone's ear the first time it happened. If it happened.
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« Reply #89 on: July 03, 2011, 12:04:45 PM »

I know someone who can lip read. I will get them to watch this "firehat" movie and see what they're saying.
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« Reply #90 on: July 03, 2011, 12:15:53 PM »

I know someone who can lip read. I will get them to watch this "firehat" movie and see what they're saying.

"Can you feel the acid yet ?"

"Hey, someone get me a candy bar ?"

"Anyone here know where the off switch is on this damn Scully ?"
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« Reply #91 on: July 03, 2011, 02:08:31 PM »

I know someone who can lip read. I will get them to watch this "firehat" movie and see what they're saying.

"Can you feel the acid yet ?"

"Hey, someone get me a candy bar ?"

"Anyone here know where the off switch is on this damn Scully ?"

 Smiley Probably is what they are saying......

But Brian looks in control of the session, as per. It would be quite interesting to know whathe is saying.

And it could be we already have the audio for the session, and are able to identify it from Brian's control room instructions.
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« Reply #92 on: July 03, 2011, 09:00:19 PM »

I know someone who can lip read. I will get them to watch this "firehat" movie and see what they're saying.

Excellent! You read my mind...Seriously, after July 4th I was going to contact a few lip reading services to see what they'd charge to transcribe the dialogue in the film. If you know someone, I and everyone else would owe you big time if they can pick out what they're saying in the clip. That would be a *huge* benefit in dating this film.

It's a wild way to draw a paycheck but they actually have services for people who have silent home movies and wish to find out what their family members or whoever is saying on the old films. And they do legal work as well, transcriptions and whatnot for court cases. Had it not been for this discussion I'd still think such services were mostly for the hearing-impaired.
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« Reply #93 on: July 03, 2011, 09:13:28 PM »

I'm sure there is an interview with Brian or Chuck where they mentioned synching up two 4 tracks for Good Vibes or other sessions of that period in place of a "real" 8 track.

People have been mis-interpreting some session chat to mean that - in fact what Brian actually says during a "GV" session (first aired on the 1976 US radio special "The Best Summers Of Our Lives") is "we're recording this on two 4-tracks so we only have to do it once", i.e. we're recording the verse section twice, but at the same time. No synching of machines.

yes, there is no way they were syncing 2 4-tracks in those days.  2 scully 280s would not have matched up perfectly and those machines did not have vari-speed or sync capability.  i think George Martine made a big deal about manually syncing two 4-tracks for "a day in the life", but this was very difficult and certainly out of the ordinary (and those were not scullys).

I recall reading somewhere, decades ago, that the engineers use one track for some kind of sync pulse, and even then I thought "don't think so", especially as the Abbey Road recorders at the time were, as I recall,  BTR (British Tape Recorders - honestly) 4-tracks, or at best Studer 4-tracks.

Ah, here we go:

"On 10 February 1967 during the recording of "A Day in the Life", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine. Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone, a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.

Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost."

So after all that, they visually and manually synced the two 4-tracks. Not so impressive, then.

Yes, that is another Beatles story which got inflated through the years beyond what actually happened. The above account is what Geoff Emerick said as well: The tone recorded onto one track of the second machine (Studer) was only to control and match the speed of the two motors. It had nothing to do with synching the machines.

I have also seen an account which said George Martin "went ballistic" or something of the sort when they were unable to sync the orchestral overdub to the other tracks. It's still audible just after the wordless vocals post-bridge, and just before the final verse. The orchestra is out of time with the rest of the track. This really upset George Martin! But it goes to show that a "mistake" like that gets lost and forgotten in the brilliance of a great song and great performance.
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« Reply #94 on: July 03, 2011, 09:54:22 PM »

I've often wondered whether they might have had it on premises as early as April. Where were the Pet Sounds songs recorded on 8-track at Columbia mixed down and by whom? I wouldn't think they'd have been done at Columbia, as reportedly Brian got in trouble for touching the board there and I doubt he'd have trusted the mixdowns to an engineer he hadn't known and worked with for some time. And Columbia being such a strict shop, I don't think he could have brought Chuck over from Western to do the mixdowns. So where were they done and by whom? If at Western, they had to have had an 8-track at that time.

Very interesting, I'd like to break this down even further.

1. Start with the assumed fact at the end of the process: Chuck Britz and Brian mixed Pet Sounds at Western.

2. According to Mark Linett, at the time of Pet Sounds, Columbia had the only 8-track machine in town.

3. Let's assume Brian would take his four-track reel containing the instrumental tracks from Western or Gold Star over to Columbia, they'd transfer the instrumental mixdown to one track on Columbia's eight track, and Brian would add his vocals and vocal overdubs on the open tracks.

So we have a 8-track tape now in Brian's possession from Columbia, with instrumentals and vocals. Even taking into account any bouncing of tracks and sub-mixes and all of it, the question becomes:

Exactly what tapes were Brian and Chuck Britz working with when they mixed Pet Sounds at Western? If, according to Mark, Columbia had the only 8 track in town, how would Brian do as much as a playback at Western if there was no machine there to do it?

This is before Wally Heider had his for-hire 8-track machine being demoed in use at those Sinatra sessions in fall 1966, and as Beach Head suggested in his post, something is missing from this story. How did they play an 8 track reel of tape if they were not mixing at the only studio which had an 8 track machine?

There is a simple answer for this, I know, but I'm just not getting it... Smiley

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« Reply #95 on: July 03, 2011, 10:16:23 PM »

So we have a 8-track tape now in Brian's possession from Columbia, with instrumentals and vocals. Even taking into account any bouncing of tracks and sub-mixes and all of it, the question becomes:

Exactly what tapes were Brian and Chuck Britz working with when they mixed Pet Sounds at Western? If, according to Mark, Columbia had the only 8 track in town, how would Brian do as much as a playback at Western if there was no machine there to do it?

This is before Wally Heider had his for-hire 8-track machine being demoed in use at those Sinatra sessions in fall 1966, and as Beach Head suggested in his post, something is missing from this story. How did they play an 8 track reel of tape if they were not mixing at the only studio which had an 8 track machine?

Hey, take the problem back almost an entire year -- to June 1965! The final masters for 9 of the cuts on Summer Days (... And Summer Nights!!) were on 8-track tapes from Columbia! It's always been accepted lore that Brian & Chuck Britz mixed that album at Western. How? There probably wasn't another 8-track machine in all of L.A. at the time!
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« Reply #96 on: July 03, 2011, 10:23:22 PM »

I can only think of two possible solutions to the dilemma:

(1) Before leaving Columbia, Brian mixed the 8-tracks down to some kind of 4-track submasters, then had Chuck do the final mixes from those at Western. However, I've never heard anybody who's dealt with BB master tapes indicate that such submasters existed.

(2) The accepted story of Chuck Britz doing all the final mixes for Brian during that era is simply wrong. And for at least two of the group's most important albums, Summer Days and Pet Sounds, Brian had some unheralded staff engineer at Columbia doing many of the final mixdowns. Could we really have gotten the facts so wrong all these years?
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« Reply #97 on: July 03, 2011, 11:04:12 PM »

I can only think of two possible solutions to the dilemma:

(1) Before leaving Columbia, Brian mixed the 8-tracks down to some kind of 4-track submasters, then had Chuck do the final mixes from those at Western. However, I've never heard anybody who's dealt with BB master tapes indicate that such submasters existed.

(2) The accepted story of Chuck Britz doing all the final mixes for Brian during that era is simply wrong. And for at least two of the group's most important albums, Summer Days and Pet Sounds, Brian had some unheralded staff engineer at Columbia doing many of the final mixdowns. Could we really have gotten the facts so wrong all these years?


Maybe it's not a case of getting the facts wrong, but rather not getting the full story when maybe a less complex version of what really happened made more interesting reading in liner notes and band histories. I've heard of the bouncing of tracks done at Western during Good Vibrations to free up tracks on the 4-track tapes, but it seems like adding so much more work, cost, and time to have to reduce 8 track mixes at Columbia for every session Brian was there...and did they reduce to a 4 track tape after recording on 8 just for Brian to take to Western? I doubt that mainly because it doesn't seem logical, but who knows.

My mind is still blown from seeing that the tape machine is an 8 track in this firehat video - after years of thinking there was no 8 track then at Western.  Shocked
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« Reply #98 on: July 03, 2011, 11:09:20 PM »

One more observation: If you watch American Band there is maybe 10-15 seconds of footage which this clip we're discussing does not have.

Among them:

Two shots of Mike pretending to smoke and dancing, wearing the same firehat as everyone else, and it looks like Western's backdrop.

One shot of Carl sitting in front of the Scully rack units that looks like it came from a lower-quality 8mm film.

A final shot of the studio door being closed on Brian, as he's standing behind the board in the control room still wearing the firehat.

I wasn't able to find any new details in those clips, but it's odd that this version of that film which I thought was the most complete and clear I had ever seen is actually missing a few pretty cool shots. For whatever reason.

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« Reply #99 on: July 04, 2011, 12:32:43 AM »

I've often wondered whether they might have had it on premises as early as April. Where were the Pet Sounds songs recorded on 8-track at Columbia mixed down and by whom? I wouldn't think they'd have been done at Columbia, as reportedly Brian got in trouble for touching the board there and I doubt he'd have trusted the mixdowns to an engineer he hadn't known and worked with for some time. And Columbia being such a strict shop, I don't think he could have brought Chuck over from Western to do the mixdowns. So where were they done and by whom? If at Western, they had to have had an 8-track at that time.

Very interesting, I'd like to break this down even further.

1. Start with the assumed fact at the end of the process: Chuck Britz and Brian mixed Pet Sounds at Western.

2. According to Mark Linett, at the time of Pet Sounds, Columbia had the only 8-track machine in town.

3. Let's assume Brian would take his four-track reel containing the instrumental tracks from Western or Gold Star over to Columbia, they'd transfer the instrumental mixdown to one track on Columbia's eight track, and Brian would add his vocals and vocal overdubs on the open tracks.

So we have a 8-track tape now in Brian's possession from Columbia, with instrumentals and vocals. Even taking into account any bouncing of tracks and sub-mixes and all of it, the question becomes:

Exactly what tapes were Brian and Chuck Britz working with when they mixed Pet Sounds at Western? If, according to Mark, Columbia had the only 8 track in town, how would Brian do as much as a playback at Western if there was no machine there to do it?

This is before Wally Heider had his for-hire 8-track machine being demoed in use at those Sinatra sessions in fall 1966, and as Beach Head suggested in his post, something is missing from this story. How did they play an 8 track reel of tape if they were not mixing at the only studio which had an 8 track machine?

There is a simple answer for this, I know, but I'm just not getting it... Smiley

Sometimes the simplest, most obvious explanation is the answer - they mixed at Columbia, not Western. Is there any hard evidence they mixed Pet Sounds at Western ?
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