The Mark Linett Thread

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Any tips on recording timpani, Mark?  I'm not getting a sound I like.

[yrplace]

Back the mic way away from the tympani, but then the sound of the room becomes very important. Frankly you might be better off with a good sample.

If it must be a close mic (but not too close like on a snare) try a dynamic and some reverb.

Tymps sound best with a lot of good ambiance like on "Here Today" or in a concert hall with no mic anywhere near them.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

I'll give that I try and back off a bit.  The room they're in is actually pretty decent sounding, an acoustically treated band room at a college, nice and big.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Mark, here's a question that's kind of speculative, but maybe from your intense scrutiny of the discrete multitracks you can make a judgement:

I've been on a real session-tape listening kick for the past week, mostly Beach Boys of course, but also Jan and Dean and some other stuff...and I noticed that a lot of times when a piano plays by itself between takes, it sounds very much off mic.  This is only on certain songs, but it seems to be on a lot.  It's not a close miked sound.  The piano doubling the bassline in You Still Believe in Me is a good example, or the piano on Sloop John B.

Would they be letting other mics pic up the piano and not adding much piano mic?  It's not a reverb sound, it's just kind of a drier room sound.  If you want a specific example, I'll try to find a timing for you from the PS Box.

Also, speaking of YSBIN, I noticed that the track seems to be spread across 4 tracks, is that true?  It sounds like the 4th track is an overdubbed harpsichord, since it's not there on the session tape and is on the stereo backing track.  Also, when I phase out the channel it's the only thing that's really audible.

Thanks for indulging my pointless questions, Mark.

[c-man]

I've noticed that on "Sloop John B." as well, and I think on that song at least, it's a case of Brian blending the piano with the rhythm guitar to create a "third" instrument, if you will, a "piano/guitar" (as he has famously put it).  Neither the guitar nor the piano sound close mic'd, but they blend together in a unique way.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Mark, on "I'm Waiting for the Day" is Brian's lead vocal tripled in places?

[yrplace]

Mark, on "I'm Waiting for the Day" is Brian's lead vocal tripled in places?

I don't think so....... Mark

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Weird, I think I have a tendency to hear more than what's really going on.  There's this one line in IWFTD in particular where the word begins with some kind of plosive and I could almost swear I hear three iterations...

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Here's another somewhat strange question for you, Mark.  Don't feel compelled to answer.

I'm attempting to record "an album" here, I've started to be able to use a local college's selection of instruments which has allowed me to pursue the tonal palette I had in mind, and I've lined up people to play instruments I can't play very well for me, woodwinds, mainly.

Anyway, my equipment is kind of limited, so I'm trying to figure out how to best utilize it for the best final product.  I have this Alesis HD24, but my "consolette" is a 12-input board, with a few stereo effects returns. 

Being of a "somewhat" Beach Boys influenced bent, I tend to have similar instrumentation to 64-66 Beach Boys, and have generally, so far, ended up with about 12-tracks of instruments, give or take.  And then I'll be doing pretty extensive vocals.

So my plan is do submixes, so I can end up doing the final mix with my mixer, meaning I need to end up with up to 12 "stems".

I figure I might as well sort of exorcise my Beach Boys tendencies, so I'm thinking of sort of working as if I'm recording the basic track to a 4-track.  When I'm done with the track instruments, I'll combine that stuff to 3 or 4 open tracks within the available 24.  I'll be adding reverb at that point to the different "busses".

Assuming I want to preserve the original tracks in case I ever come into a larger console, that would leave me with 8-9 tracks for vocals.  If I did a doubled lead, and maybe left the bass vocals seperate, that would leave 4-5 tracks left.  I'd probably have to do the 4 or 5 part backing vocals first and bounce them to single tracks also.

So in the end, I'd be left with 4 stems of the track, 2 leads, 2 bass vocals, and 4 bg tracks.


Does that seem like a reasonable plan to end up with a decent final product, or can you think of a better way to do it?  I want to stay completely OTB, so I'm not going to do any importing into a DAW.

Also, is doing the final mix to DVR an OK idea?  It seems to be pretty high quality, and then I transfer the audio off the DVR onto a CD as a .wav file.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Here's a more concise one, Mark.

When Brian and his engineer friends used tape slap circa Pet Sounds era, were there specially modified mono tape machines used, or was one just commandeered and used for the purpose as needed?

I know how tape delay works, but I'm trying to work out, given the "limitations" of the control rooms of that time, how they would be controlling things like the regeneration.  Was there some mod built in to the tape machine being used as the delay to feed the signal back to the record head for the regen?  Or would they use a separate mixer?  Surely they couldn't afford to use a console input to receive the delay return?

[jbaker]

Mark

Was scanning a kid's section for my daughter yesterday and came across Disney's Beach Party. Has bout 10 Beach Boy covers and dang if it was not produced by Mark Linett and Fred Mollin and has folks called Jeff Foskett and Darien Sahanaja doing background vocals.  (Even Pat Buchanan too, a nice twist for us folks in Tennessee) 

No real questions unless you would like to share anything regarding putting this one together; did not see it listed as a tribute album and would hate to see this one fall through the cracks (unless you would like it fall through the cracks).  Once you get past the Mickey, Minnie and Goofy intros some pretty good things going on.   Even a couple of  visual nods on the cover/insert.   

It will probably not be in my rotation for long, but I cant speak for my 5 year old.  It may be her soundtrack for this summer.
Thanks.

[yrplace]

It was done as a Disney kids album and I hired Jeff and Darian to do some of the Bg vocals which only made sense.

Sadly it was largely ignored by Disney.

BTW see if you can find the Karoke version as it has sing-a-log tracks......

Mark

[Aegir]

I received that as a birthday gift one year. At first I thought Here Comes Summertime was some random Beach Boys song I'd never heard before . I really like the arrangement of When You Wish Upon a Star.

[PhilCohen]

While I'm looking forward to the upcoming Beach Boys "U.S. Singles" CD singles box, and I'm delighted that some previously unreleased edits,mixes and versions are being included, I'm disappointed that you've opted to create an instrumental stereo mix of "Do You Wanna Dance". Yes,I'm aware that the guitar solo(as heard in the original mono mix) was a live during mono mixdown overdub, and is not available for use in a stereo remix. Like many fans, I had assumed that the vocal overdub which doubled Dennis Wilson's lead vocal was also a live during mono mixdown overdub, but an analysis of the sessions at http://www.beachboysarchives.com states that this vocal overdub is on a second stage multitrack. Apparently, that 2nd stage multitrack was overlooked by(or unavailable to) the people who copied & mixed the music for the unofficial "Sea of Tunes" CD's(I've spent over $2200 buying all the "Sea of Tunes" & "Dumb Angel" label releases).

It would seem apparent, that you could create a stereo mix of "Do You Wanna Dance" that would be musically near-identical to the original mono,excepting that you'd have to use the early, rejected guitar solo from Gold Star. After all,you've created several other stereo remixes which had to have slight musical differences to the original mono("God Only Knows","You Still Believe in Me","Wouldn't It Be Nice") due to the absence of certain live-during-mixdown overdubs. Why didn't you create a stereo remix of "Do You Wanna Dance" WITH the vocals? Now,we'll have nothing better for our homemade CD-R "Today/Summer Days" stereo two-fer than the "Sea of Tunes" mix with the single-tracked vocal,and the basic tracks mixed down too low.

By the way, as it stands now, my homemade stereo "Twofer" consists of Do You Wanna Dance(SoT)/Good to My Baby(Sot)/Don't Hurt My Little Sister(SoT)/When I Grow Up(to Be a Man)(SoT)/Help Me Ronda(SoT)                                  Dance Dance Dance(SoT)/Please Let Me Wonder(from "The Warmth of The Sun")/I'm So Young(SoT)/Kiss Me Baby(first stereo remix,From the first pressing of "Endless Harmony Soundtrack")/She Knows Me Too Well(SoT)/                         In The Back of My Mind(SoT)
The Girl From New York city(Sot)/Amusement Parks U.S.A.(Alternate Lyric & vocal,from SoT)/Then I Kissed Her(from "The Warmth of The Sun")/Salt Lake City(from "Hawthorne,Ca")/Girl Don't Tell Me(alternate vocal,from SoT)/
Help Me Rhonda(SoT)/California Girls(first stereo remix,from the first pressing of "Endless Harmony Soundtrack")/Let Him Run Wild(from "The Warmth of The Sun")/You're So Good to Me(from "The Warmth of The Sun")/
Summer Means New Love(from "Pet Sounds" DVD-Audio)/And Your Dreams Come True(from "Hawthorne,Ca.")
Note:the reason that I didn't use either of your stereo remixes of "Dance Dance Dance",is because both of your mixes bury the crucial kick drum beats at 1:16 to 1:17

I'm hoping to upgrade my homemade two-fer with your soon to be released stereo remixes of "She Knows Me Too Well" & "When I Grow Up(To Be a Man)"
Perhaps you'll get another chance to work with "Do You Wanna Dance" on a future project. I hope so.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

That's an interesting way to start posting here...

I for one am glad that DYWD is track only.  Though I'd love to hear the entire mono-only catalog remixed in true stereo one day (even minus straight-to-mono overdubs), it's nice for some variation for one, and two, the SOT bootleg doesn't have a track only mix, just a basic track, then the vocal overdub, then the instrumental overdub, so I'm looking forward to hearing the track with the instrumental OD by itself, particularly Knechtel's great bass-line on the OD.

I'm just really glad we're getting extras at all, if EMI had their way they'd probably just do A and B sides and that would be that.

[PhilCohen]

I'm not meaning to sound negative in my previous, first-ever post. Don't get me wrong:I've enjoyed 99.9% of Mark Linett's work with the music of Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys. While I'm new around here,I post frequently at Steve Hoffman's forums,occasionally at Brian Wilson's forums and I'm an ex-CD compiler,and was an information contributor for the now-defunct "ICE Magazine/Newsletter" for 14 years.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Hey Mark, if you check in, I've got a couple of questions for you to help my research:

During the Desper era, Sunflower and Surf's Up:

Were reverbs printed to tape most of the time?

Were there ever occasions where the drum set was spread out across more than two tracks?  I've seen a lot of the Sunflower track sheets, but not many Surf's Up ones...they all seem to have "Drums L" and "Drums R."

To your ear, in those cases, does it sound like Steve was doing a "one low overhead over the hi-hat side and one over the floor tom plus a kick mic" kind of thing?

And is there any processing on the drum tracks, like snare reverb, compression, etc?

Just interested in your observations.

Also:  How often does it sound to you like the bass guitar is D.I.-ed on Sunflower/Surf's Up?

Thanks.

[c-man]

Regarding processing on the snare drum...how about that killer delayed echo chamber effect on the "Disney Girls" snare?  Brian's house had an echo chamber or two set up.  Like Josh, I'm curious to know if that was printed on tape or just bused back into the board for the stereo mix?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Regarding processing on the snare drum...how about that killer delayed echo chamber effect on the "Disney Girls" snare?  Brian's house had an echo chamber or two set up.  Like Josh, I'm curious to know if that was printed on tape or just bused back into the board for the stereo mix?

That's exactly what I sort of had in mind, the snare on DG.

The implications of what the case is with that are interesting:  If the two-track drum mix does have the slap on it, that means the decisions as to the song's production style were made very early.  Which is neat.

Also of interest, Steve was quite adamant that they only ever used the one chamber - so I kind of wonder how he did reverb; if he ever put reverb on things during live tracking, since it was one chamber, I imagine the individual returns would have some "reverb leakage" on it, so say they were recording a basic session of drums, ukulele, harmonica, bass, and clavinet: if everything was fed to the chamber, the soloed Uke track would have the reverb of everything on it?

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

Forgive me for prattling on here, but I'm bored and have thoughts, a dangerous combination indeed...

I'm not quite sure why the method of recording drums is of such interest to me, but I think it's so fascinating, kind of a symbol of the radical changes happening in recording circa Sunflower.

We go from a group that just three years earlier was still recording the instrumental tracks onto three tracks--and as 16-track took over for Sunflower, the drums started to become conceptually different.

Until then, Drums were just one component of a submix on three-track, or maybe got their own mono track on an 8-track master.

On Pet Sounds, drums were recorded with two mics, one over and one in front.  It was probably the same until 1969?

But then all of a sudden there are 16 tracks, and drums are being recorded in stereo.

I was just reading an interview with Tony Visconti who was recalling the agonizing decision over recording drums during a certain project in the 16 track era, when he had to decide whether to put the kick or the snare on it's own track, and which to include on a stereo submix to tape.  He could afford only three tracks of drums.

He ended up giving the kick it's own track, by the way.

Perhaps the reason I find the Sunflower/Surf's Up drums so interesting is because of their ambiguity.

Any later and the miking schemes become obvious.  When cymbals are hard panned, toms are close and hard panned, etc.

But most of the stereo drums on Sunflower and Surf's Up are fairly subtle.  Even pretty mono-sounding.

Of course, there are tracks like Suzie C. where the toms seem pretty distinct, so perhaps they were close miked there.

But I just don't know, and the more I do know, the more I feel like I was there, which I like.

Everything else is pretty straightforward.  Like, electric guitar, you pretty much put a mic on a speaker, you know?  But with drums there are so many variables.

I wish Steve had taken precise notes for every track!

To useless knowledge!

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

One more question, Mark, then I'll leave you to answer or not or whatever and leave you alone for at least a few weeks:

In listening to some tracks from the time period we're (I'm?) discussing, it sounds like the bass drum is not always necessarily distributed evenly between the stereo spread.  Is that correct?

For example, in Disney Girls, the everything seems to be central, except for the floor tom hits.  In other words, If I had to guess it sounds like, if Steve put the drums on two tracks as per the usual MO, "Drums L" would be the overhead over the snare/hi-hat plus the kick, and then "Drums R" would be pretty much only the floor tom.

This seems to be true for many tracks.  Good Time is another one where it almost seems to be one track of "drum set" and another that's mainly floor tom.

Then, on that bootleg of "It's About Time" that's surfaced, that's only the drums and congas, it sounds like the kick is  more present on the floor tom side.l

What I've done when using a more minimal method recording drums to only two tracks, say with two overheads and a kick mic, is pan the left overhead left, the right overhead right, and leave the kick dead center.

But on Sunflower and Surf's Up, it seems to be more of a C-R deal than a L-C-R deal.

[DonnyL]

Regarding processing on the snare drum...how about that killer delayed echo chamber effect on the "Disney Girls" snare?  Brian's house had an echo chamber or two set up.  Like Josh, I'm curious to know if that was printed on tape or just bused back into the board for the stereo mix?

That's exactly what I sort of had in mind, the snare on DG.

The implications of what the case is with that are interesting:  If the two-track drum mix does have the slap on it, that means the decisions as to the song's production style were made very early.  Which is neat.

Also of interest, Steve was quite adamant that they only ever used the one chamber - so I kind of wonder how he did reverb; if he ever put reverb on things during live tracking, since it was one chamber, I imagine the individual returns would have some "reverb leakage" on it, so say they were recording a basic session of drums, ukulele, harmonica, bass, and clavinet: if everything was fed to the chamber, the soloed Uke track would have the reverb of everything on it?

this is an interesting topic ...

there are many ways that they could have done this, for instance, consider the following scenario:

let's say thay wanted a specific kind of reverb/delay on a specific instrument (like the drums on "Disney Girls" for instance) but did not want this to affect the other instruments.  they could have recorded the echo (with tape, chamber, or a combination of the 2) with the drums (or even on a separate track), and left the others out of the loop by feeding just the drum track to the chamber. then they would be able to add the reverb to everything else as needed during mixdown.  they would only have "reverb leakage" if they sent many difference tracks to the chamber at once, or if there was leakage on the mics to begin with.  the limitations would be they would only be able to choose one instrument (since there was only one chamber) during the basic tracking.  if they were overdubbing, they could do this to the instruments individually as much as they wanted to. 

another possible scenario could be using several tape decks for the delays simultaneously (not sure how many they were using at a time), and then sending individual instruments to individual tape decks.  a standard open reel tape deck can be used as a delay unit without a board or modifications easily by sending the signal to the deck, switching the deck to the "monitor" position, and then taking an output from the deck back into the main board.  you can control the delay time by switching the tape speed (7.5 or 15 ips etc).  you can even rig it up to loop back into itself, creating an actual reverb (as opposed to delay), though it doesn't sound like this was done in this case.  so, the drums on "disney girls" etc could have been printed with the delay (either on the same 2 tracks as the drums or on a separate track for control during mixdown), then sent along with the other instruments to the chamber during mixdown, allowing the delay to only affect the drums.  they might have even recorded the drums dry on several different tracks, then sent individual parts to the delay or the chamber, recorded them back (delay only) on separate tracks, then made a drum sub mix to 2 track, with all of the effects printed.  the possibilities are almost endless ... i think maybe Desper is the only one that would know for sure.

maybe they only had one chamber, but did they use any other electronic reverb devices (such as a spring unit, etc)?

... this would indeed let us know how much of the sound of the track was pre-planned and how many decisions were made during mixdown.  based on the quality of the recordings, my hunch is that a lot of it was planned out ahead of time.

PS i am very interested in these answers as well ... the 67-71 Beach Boys era is the benchmark of recorded sound in my opinion.

Donny

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

they might have even recorded the drums dry on several different tracks, then sent individual parts to the delay or the chamber, recorded them back (delay only) on separate tracks, then made a drum sub mix to 2 track, with all of the effects printed.  the possibilities are almost endless ... i think maybe Desper is the only one that would know for sure.

maybe they only had one chamber, but did they use any other electronic reverb devices (such as a spring unit, etc)?

... this would indeed let us know how much of the sound of the track was pre-planned and how many decisions were made during mixdown.  based on the quality of the recordings, my hunch is that a lot of it was planned out ahead of time.

Alan (Boyd) looked into whether there were ever instances of drum submix bounces ever done on the albums in question for me and couldn't find any evidence that that was ever done.  That doesn't meen it couldn't have happened...but it wasn't documented, or has any early tape generation shown up.  And like I said, every tracklist I've seen from Sunflower (which is just about every track) just has the two tracks of drums, or even mono.  All that is just to say, I don't think they ever did anything all that elaborate.

Steve told me that they never used EMT or Spring reverb.  They did, of course, have tape delay available to them via the Phillips machine used for, among other things, the Do it Again intro drums, and to double the live vocals.  And probably they had some tape machines around to do standard tape delay which I'm sure the DG snare is, tape-delayed.

But you're very right, the pre-planning involved in laying out some of these tracks must have been inspiring.  Bruce, by all accounts, was particularly meticulous in getting it all in order before they rolled tape.

Stephen, if you ever check in on this thread, your book just wasn't technical enough for me!  Also, I'm available to co-write your ultra-technical textbook that you don't know about.

When are you going to write your tell-all, Mark?  I know you've got stories to tell.

[DonnyL]

do you know what make and model of Phillips machine they used?  was it a consumer deck with RCA ins/outs or a pro deck?

i've been recording in a beach boys (circa mid-late 60s) inspired setup and have been slowly accumulating equipment, including a Scully 280 4 track.  I recently picked up a vintage shure 545 mic and it sounds incredible.

so if no drum sub-mixes were done (a good idea as it would have used an extra generation of tape), this means that the 1 and 2-track mixes were mixed "live" or prior to recording.  do any of the multi-tracks have separate echo tracks?  if so, then there a possibility that the echos were done after recording but prior to mixdown.   i don't fully understand the capabilities of the boards that they were using, but there are ways on vintage boards to rig it up for several different sends/returns, depending on how many busses it had.

[Joshilyn Hoisington]

do you know what make and model of Phillips machine they used?  was it a consumer deck with RCA ins/outs or a pro deck?

i've been recording in a beach boys (circa mid-late 60s) inspired setup and have been slowly accumulating equipment, including a Scully 280 4 track.  I recently picked up a vintage shure 545 mic and it sounds incredible.

so if no drum sub-mixes were done (a good idea as it would have used an extra generation of tape), this means that the 1 and 2-track mixes were mixed "live" or prior to recording.  do any of the multi-tracks have separate echo tracks?  if so, then there a possibility that the echos were done after recording but prior to mixdown.   i don't fully understand the capabilities of the boards that they were using, but there are ways on vintage boards to rig it up for several different sends/returns, depending on how many busses it had.

Hmm...I'm fairly sure the Phillips units were custom made.  They were pretty neat, though, I think there was something like 6-8 tape speeds and 5 adjustable repro heads.

I have a modern 545 which I'm quite a fan of.  Sounds slightly better than a 57.

As far as I can tell, they didn't start giving reverbs or echos their own tracks until they went to 24-track.  There's plenty of that kind of stuff notated for Love You, POB, etc.