BB's Recording/Mixing Question: 1960's Vocal Tracks and Effects

[guitarfool2002]

Question about how the "classic" Beach Boys vocals were mixed, especially on the tracks from 1963 to 1966. It's probably a simple answer but I wanted to ask and get some different opinions and sets of ears on the matter.

Each individual mixdown/balance session could vary, as could the ways all of the tracks actually got to the mixdown stage. But there seems to have been at least a type of a "template" at work, where the standard procedure would kick in and they'd treat vocal tracks pretty much the same.

OK, the question: Assume they had done two lead vocals (as a doubletrack), as well as two group vocals (again, a doubletrack) and were ready to mix and balance with the instrumental track(s) which at this stage I'm assuming had already been mostly reduced to two-track or even a single mono track.

Did they send *all* of those vocal tracks, both lead and group backgrounds, into the same echo chamber as a sub-mix? Which means too, did they just use the same echo chamber levels and characteristics across the board on the vocals as a single group after they had done a sub-mix or a "group mix", or did they treat lead vocals separate from the backgrounds?

I ask because I have a mix project in the works where we agreed it needed a classic sound and vibe in the way echo and reverbs were applied. As the drum groove features two separate drum tracks played in a shuffle (an obvious nod to Good Vibrations, naturally... ), I wanted to see if that classic 1963-64-65 Beach Boys vocal sound and sheen would also work...

...but I wanted to ask, based on either listening to various vocals-only bonus tracks or those who have studied the vaults, exactly how they got that characteristic echo-chamber reverb sound on the vocals. My money is on the assumption that they sub-mixed all the vocal tracks, lead and backing, into one sub-mix, sent *that* as a single track into the chamber, and blended the wet and the dry to taste. Yet sometimes I also think they did leads and backings separate...but that would waste some of their precious track space too, wouldn't it?

Pick any of the classic mid-60's BB's like "Don't Worry Baby" or any where they did a "Stack-O-Vocals" bonus track kind of thing, and you'll hear the effects I'm asking about. I'd also say go back to older examples where new plug-in effects weren't added as happened on recent projects.

Sorry for the usual long-winded way of asking a simple question, but it's hard to explain what I'm trying to figure out!  

[Foster's Freeze]

Very curious to hear the replies. 

[DonnyL]

My guess is they didn't give it too much thought, and did whatever was easiest. They seemed to print the reverbs 'along the way' as they went. Some of the SOT 'Pet Sounds' stuff has very dry vocals, so it seems like they may have waited until the final mix to add it all together. They probably ended up doing it in many different ways. In the case of 'Pet Sounds', vocals were generally not bounced, so they ultimately had individual control over all (7, in some cases) vocal tracks. Based strictly on listening, not all were given the tape delay treatment on certain songs (like 'Here Today' has a prominent delay on the lead, which I don't think I hear on the backgrounds).

In the case of something like 'Don't Worry Baby', since the background vocals are panned in the opposite direction of the leads, you can listen (to the orig. stereo mix only) to see if the reverb is panned with the tracks, or globally in the middle for more clues (my memory tells me that the reverbs are panned with the tracks, which means they were bounced along the way). They would ultimately have been sent to the chamber as a 'group' during each step along the way ... with individual control over each element/mike ... whether or not each individual vocal element was set at the same level or not would come down to guessing. I think Mike got a separate channel on the board, then the backgrounds were all on the same microphone, maybe Brian on his own sometimes too. But these would all be submixed/bussed to the same tape track I believe (the ultimate back vocal track).

[guitarfool2002]

Thanks Donny for another informative post! I deliberately left off "Pet Sounds", especially after some of the previous discussions we've had about how they actually mixed that album...it's like a Rube Goldberg trying to piece some of that together, yet another reason why the album is so fascinating beyond the enjoyment of the music.

I was thinking specifically of the 63-64 vocal mixes, especially where there have been some releases of the "vocals only" or Stack-O-Vocals kind of tracks released. At some point before really digging in to the sounds, I thought the reverb/echo chamber may have been recorded with the track as they tracked each part, but sometimes it also can sound like they put all the vocals together in a sub-mix, as you said summing all of them and sending them out to the chamber then blending.

I'm thinking if they had a configuration of two sets of group vocals and a doubled lead, what if they had done even the lead vocal separate in the process from the group's backing tracks (sub mixed of course), and had them going through what may have been two separate echo sends on two separate occasions, wouldn't that possibly create issues of phasing out and the depth and the sonic character of the reverb getting "lost" at various points in the bouncing process?

I'm just thinking out loud, some of those absolutely glorious sounding reverbs on those 63-64 vocal tracks sound so present, it might suggest they summed all the vocals, balanced, then sent the whole shebang into the same chamber at a more final stage of the balancing/mixing process.

This seems ridiculously obsessive, I know, but part of me also wants to know in order to duplicate it in 2014 as well as perhaps figure out if some of those glorious reverbs/chambers we hear on recent releases came from modern sources rather than what was originally pressed to vinyl at the time. I guess I need to A/B the modern remixes and remasters to the original Capitols to suss that out...

[Andrew G. Doe]

Know this is only one (possibly isolated) example, but the lead & the bvs for "DYWD" were all recorded at the same time, thus the FX were applied to all.

Also, Brian was exceedingly adept (because he had to be, due to technology constraints) at air mixes.

Just my two cents and likely worth exactly that.