New album info (as it rolls out...)

[runnersdialzero]

I guess this is where runnersdialzero and i disagree, but i think that in From There To Back Again, as well as Spring Vacation, it's being used as an effect.

Nooow I see what you're saying ^_^ Still not sure if I agree, though, as it's hard to say. One would hope it's going for effect with something so vile sounding in spots of "From There To Back Again", but it's hard to say, especially given their use of it on Brian's voice on the first several tour dates when those songs were likely never written with something like autotune in mind.

And yes, it's about the overall sound produced and how it compromises the entire vocal - not a silly argument in the least, to me. I've said several times that manual pitch correction is fine when used very sparingly and on the notes that really need it, and I think a few others have agreed with that, too. The sound produced with autotune is what makes the whole thing unpleasant (imo). Just as the previously mentioned 80s synth drums were ill-fitting for the Beach Boys, so is autotune.

[monicker]

AHHHHHHHHH. I can't let this go without being addressed because it's the sort of missing the point that elevates it to an art.

The argument isn't that pitch correction software is cheating or that’s it’s misleading or deceiving or indicative of a lack of ability. It’ about THE SOUND that is produced

But that's a different silly argument.

The theremin is a hugely cliched sound -- used in a really crass way in countless junky '50s sci-fi movies.  What the hell does Brian think he's doing, using a bit of it on "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"?

It's all context.  And if you freak out at the first hint of hearing a recognizable sound just cause it was trendy in a different context, you won't be able to keep it in perspective in terms of how it works in this song...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

But, but...some of my favorite music of all time comes from one of those “junky ’50s sci-fi movies” and it features not one but two theremins: Bernard Herrman’s score to The Day The Earth Stood Still. Come on, this is better than, at least, The Beatles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbHpXca7U0

Hey, a lot of those ‘50s sci-fi movies had good music that made use of the theremin. Les Baxter wrote great stuff using the theremin. I bet Brian dug the sh*t out of some Lex Baxter records. He knew where it was at.

I haven’t once heard the Autotune effect put to good use. Of course that could change one day but it’s not going to be with TWGMTR (imo imo imo imo imo imo imo).

I have no idea what i’m arguing anymore. I’m actually not arguing anything. I’m actually a robot. I'm hungry.

Maybe they should have put the FTTBA vocals through a ring modulator?

Or done something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8xgsJYyfOA

[seltaeb1012002]

Anyone else try downloading the torrent leak?

It's bogus, btw. 

[LostArt]

Just out of curiosity, can the enraged pitch correction discussion that's evident on this board be found anywhere else? Or are we the only ones who talk about it.

At one point on the Hoffman board it started heating up, just as it is here, until the mods got sick of the bickering and the same old tired arguments back and forth, and they started deleting posts and pretty much clamped down on the subject because the argument is just so silly, really.  It all boils down to this:

The production decisions have been made by the production team.  The recording is finished.  The songs have been chosen.  The songs have been mixed and likely mastered.  We will hear what the production team wants us to hear.  If you don't like the songs, you don't like the songs.  If you don't like the sound of pitch correction, you don't like the sound of pitch correction.  If you end up paying $12.00 for the disc, and you can't listen to it for whatever reason, then you're out $12.00.  Maybe you can sell the thing and get some of your money back. 

But why argue over something that we have absolutely no control over.  The Beach Boys are releasing a new album very soon.  As with every other album ever made by any artist in any era, you may like it and you may not.  You pays your money and you takes your choice.         

 

[Runaways]

Nooow I see what you're saying ^_^ Still not sure if I agree, though, as it's hard to say. One would hope it's going for effect with something so vile sounding in spots of "From There To Back Again", but it's hard to say, especially given their use of it on Brian's voice on the first several tour dates when those songs were likely never written with something like autotune in mind.

i think you can listen to the clip of Spring Vacation and compare the chorus effect to Mike's auto tuned verses to know.  The chorus could be autotuned and all the voices together make it sound more prominent.  FTTBA definitely just sounds like an effect, Al is not capable of a vocal that would need the amount of "autotune" needed to make that sound heh. 

[onkster]

I will take a break from my dumb, silly offerings and make note that there are now 90-second samples up on iTunes, for those that need to hear an extra minute per song.

[adamghost]

My two cents...

I'm against autotune on general principle, but that's personal taste.  Speaking more broadly, to paraphrase George Martin about multitracking, modern day digital recording is more like movie making than it ever was because by and large the recording is made in the edit and not the performance.  The further you get away from four guys in a room making a sound, the more it's going to sound like it's been made in a box, and whereas in the old days you had to capture some semblance of a live performance at some stage of the process, nowadays it would have to be a difficult and conscious choice for sound engineers that are no longer used to recording that way.

Which is fine, you get a different kind of output, but it's not necessarily a bad output.  But what happens every time there's a new technology, inevitably a few people go overboard with it, have some success, and then everyone copies them.  A few years later everybody wakes up from it like a hangover from a binge and realizes they made a lot of aesthetically displeasing choices that, once removed from the styles of the time, don't really hold up.  Exhibit A would be this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Iq8JmmfxY&ob=av2e

Nowadays it would not seem like a good idea to build a whole record around an immense plastic sounding electronic snare drum, but in 1987, everyone was doing it...all an outgrowth of a very clever and compelling sonic experiment by Phil Collins about five years earlier on "Against All Odds" coupled with advances in sampling technology.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.  Anyhoo...

So, with autotune...putting my own Luddite objections aside (though they're not entirely Luddite...I run a small studio and I never use autotune but I will edit the beejeesus out of a vocal, which digital recording makes possible.  Basically same outcome but a much more natural sound to my ears)  I would compare it to CGI in film.  The first time we all saw CGI it was like...wow!  Check that out!  Then people started grasping the possibilities and went wild with it, and in the process perhaps shortcutting more creative ways to achieve the same production goals.  Meanwhile, people who watched a lot of movies started to be able to pick out when it was being used, and it took us out of the moviegoing experience.  After awhile, overuse of CGI started to imply a certain lack of finesse and maybe seemed a bit cheesy. For some.  For others, who didn't really notice, it was fine.

I guess my personal Ludditism is that, in music at least, as technology has advanced and record-making has becoming more and more automated, I feel it's made people lazy and less creative. The music sounds more homogenized and fewer people experiment (outside the realms of what's in the box, that is) or really develop their craft.  You could argue that Brian never would have made PET SOUNDS in '66 if samplers had been around.  Why bother to get all those guys in a room when you can just program it all?  But it would not sound anywhere NEAR the same, and you wouldn't have had the back and forth of the years of expertise of the Wrecking Crew to work with.  That's kind of what I'm talking about.

Just my .02.

[bsten]

You can download the shows as podcasts  

I don't think that's an alternate version, though? What are you hearing differently?

Try and listen to the two versions side by side.
It starts right off with a more prominent keyboard, there's more echo - overall it sounds more "far away"...
It's apparently a Dutch promo, but strangely enough I hear no extra tambourines...

Is there a promo of the whole album, with different versions??? Or is the Dutch (or European) version of the album different?

/B

[onkster]

Excellent, nicely-thought-out post, adamghost.

It's also nice to read a reply that offers an alternate opinion without calling someone else's arguments as dumb, etc.

Guess I'm Dumb!

[ontor pertawst]

yeah, you nailed it, adamghost. That should be stapled to people's foreheads before they start talking about voice processing.

[Wirestone]

Adam Lambert has a new record out -- whatever you think of the man, he can clearly sing.

Samples here: Autotune slathered over nearly every track.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/trespassing/id517333358

Not saying it's right or wrong ... but it might be instructive for folks here to hear the samples. This is mainstream pop in 2012, with someone who can sing.

[I. Spaceman]

Nowadays it would not seem like a good idea to build a whole record around an immense plastic sounding electronic snare drum, but in 1987, everyone was doing it...all an outgrowth of a very clever and compelling sonic experiment by Phil Collins about five years earlier on "Against All Odds" coupled with advances in sampling technology.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.  Anyhoo...

Against All Odds was 1984, Collins had used that sound long before that. He didn't even originate it, it can be heard first on David Bowie's Speed Of Life from the Low album released in 1976.

[Wirestone]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_reverb

[Runaways]

I'm curious how much of these songs were written/recorded in 1998.  Doesn't brian not like re-recording things?  Brian's quote was that TWGMTR was partly written in 98, i imagine most of the songs were like that. 

[bsten]

You can download the shows as podcasts  

Great, thanks!! And even better - you don't need ITunes!!

Go here:

http://www.podcast.de/episode/106928600/120513%2BAVRO%2BSchiffers.fm%2Buur%2B2

Select the show you want, look for Download, then right-click and Save as...
Use your favorite audio editing program and edit out the songs...

/B

[adamghost]

Nowadays it would not seem like a good idea to build a whole record around an immense plastic sounding electronic snare drum, but in 1987, everyone was doing it...all an outgrowth of a very clever and compelling sonic experiment by Phil Collins about five years earlier on "Against All Odds" coupled with advances in sampling technology.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but that's the basic gist.  Anyhoo...

Against All Odds was 1984, Collins had used that sound long before that. He didn't even originate it, it can be heard first on David Bowie's Speed Of Life from the Low album released in 1976.

Yes, hence the "it's more complicated than that" disclaimer.  I wasn't trying to do a detailed aural deconstruction of the history of gated reverb or of the advancement of digital technology.  "Against All Odds" was the first time I'd ever personally heard it...because it was the first time that sound was heard in a mass-media context (although "In The Air Tonight" had a bit of the same thing going on..but not the same effect as it wasn't the featured instrument on the record).  As a radio listener at the time, it was a very dramatic change in how hit records sounded.  The point isn't that Collins was the first to use gated reverb, it's that after that record, EVERYBODY started using it, and placing it front and center a la "Odds".  The snare sound took up a much more prominent place in the mixes, crowding out much of the other sonic information.  Then people sampled that sound, and boom...'twas everywhere for a few years.

[onkster]

If some of the basic tracks are from '98, that might explain how the album got put together so quickly.

I don't mind, really. I can't see how the 90s and the 10s are all that different in style in regards to this type of music.

[Wirestone]

I'm curious how much of these songs were written/recorded in 1998.  Doesn't brian not like re-recording things?  Brian's quote was that TWGMTR was partly written in 98, i imagine most of the songs were like that.  

Private Life and Bill and Sue seems to have originated in 2009. According to BW interviews, Shelter likewise seems of recent vintage, as does Think About the Days. TWGMTR comes from '98-'99, although Brian and Joe finished it last year. Given the writing credits, it's a good bet that It's About Time comes from that period, too. Hard to know definitively about the rest of them.

Brian has said two different things -- he's said most of it came from 98, but he's also said it comes from fragments and melodies that he had been playing around since then. So I would guess that a full album of stuff from 98 wasn't ready -- no doubt they had some completed songs, but they likely had some unfinished demos and fragments, too. Brian added a handful of new tunes, worked with Joe to finish up the demos and fragments, and when they combined that with the old stuff, they had an album. Again, just my guess.

If some of the basic tracks are from '98, that might explain how the album got put together so quickly.

I don't mind, really. I can't see how the 90s and the 10s are all that different in style in regards to this type of music.

I've talked about this quite a bit. The album didn't really come together all that quickly. Brian was working with Joe throughout last year, which is more than enough time to record tracks. And the Beach Boys had some four months in the studio to record vocals, so I doubt they were that pressed for time. (That's not to say that tracks from 98 couldn't have been used, of course, just that the album was well underway before the BBs reunion was announced or the guys recorded anything on it.)

[Runaways]

Adam Lambert has a new record out -- whatever you think of the man, he can clearly sing.

Samples here: Autotune slathered over nearly every track.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/trespassing/id517333358

Not saying it's right or wrong ... but it might be instructive for folks here to hear the samples. This is mainstream pop in 2012, with someone who can sing.

yeah i recently got the latest Fun. album, they're the guys who sing that "WE AARE YOOOUNG SO LET'S SET THE WORLD ON FIIIRE" song, really good pop writer/singer.  His voice is fantastic, but on this album he decided to use autotune as a stylistic choice on SOME songs to pretty good result.  autotune in the b-pain way.

[onkster]

Has anybody ever compiled a chart of how long each BB album took to record? That'd be at least marginally interesting, for comparison purposes.

[Wirestone]

Has anybody ever compiled a chart of how long each BB album took to record? That'd be at least marginally interesting, for comparison purposes.

http://www.esquarterly.com/bellagio/gigs.html

Includes sessions along with shows.

[bsten]

You can download the shows as podcasts  

Great, thanks!! And even better - you don't need ITunes!!

Go here:

http://www.podcast.de/episode/106928600/120513%2BAVRO%2BSchiffers.fm%2Buur%2B2

Select the show you want, look for Download, then right-click and Save as...
Use your favorite audio editing program and edit out the songs...

/B

I just compared the Itunes sample of Spring vacation with the "Dutch" version,
and the "Dutch" version is (just like TWGMTR) slightly different - the lead vocal is "further back" - it has a,
what should I say, softer approach, more enjoyable to listen to...

Is there another version of the album out there or is it the radio station using effects???

/ B

[ArchStanton]

I haven't listened to the samples- I'm trying to hold out.  But my God I am so excited for this album.  I've only been a nut for the Beach Boys for 7 or 8 years, so to be able to take in a brand new Beach Boys album is unbelievable to me.  Pointless post I know, but just wanted to share!

[Runaways]

Tim Chipping ‏@timchipping
Obsessing over the last 3 songs on the new Beach Boys album again. Unbelievably great. An actual miracle.

BBC writer heheheheh. 

[RubberSoul13]

OK- does anyone know if this is a mistake or anything?

On Amazon, it says the vinyl doesn't release until July 3rd, where as we all know the CD and download are avaliale June 5th.

http://www.amazon.com/Thats-Why-God-Made-Radio/dp/B007U1FEQW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337391225&sr=8-1

Is this true?