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Author Topic: Brian and a move towards an authentic pop musical vocabulary  (Read 7198 times)
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« Reply #25 on: July 29, 2021, 06:26:56 AM »

.
I think striving for sophistication and a higher intellectual plane in music is a great pursuit, but not if it basically takes the enjoyment of the music out of the sphere of the general public you're trying to connect with, and it requires a lecture from a professor to explain why someone should like the music they're just not feeling.


I find the idea of academizing pop and rock music fundamentally objectionable.
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« Reply #26 on: July 29, 2021, 06:31:27 AM »

.
I think striving for sophistication and a higher intellectual plane in music is a great pursuit, but not if it basically takes the enjoyment of the music out of the sphere of the general public you're trying to connect with, and it requires a lecture from a professor to explain why someone should like the music they're just not feeling.


I find the idea of academizing pop and rock music fundamentally objectionable.

You gotta say why.
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« Reply #27 on: July 29, 2021, 06:54:47 AM »

Pop and rock always seemed to be able to be characterized as music for laypeople to enjoy at face value. In my view, over-intellectualizing pop culture overwrites the care free appeal and joy of it.
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« Reply #28 on: July 29, 2021, 07:01:37 AM »

Pop and rock always seemed to be able to be characterized as music for laypeople to enjoy at face value. In my view, over-intellectualizing pop culture overwrites the care free appeal and joy of it.

How so?
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« Reply #29 on: July 29, 2021, 07:08:33 AM »

Eh, I think it's just that simple but by all means do what works for you. Maybe I'm just not cut out for engaging in that kind of scholarship.
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« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2021, 07:18:59 AM »

Eh, I think it's just that simple but by all means do what works for you. Maybe I'm just not cut out for engaging in that kind of scholarship.

Well, that's just it -- if you're not interested in it, you don't have to engage in it, so why are you against it?  Nobody is forcing anybody to read the American Journal of Musicology.
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« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2021, 07:22:29 AM »


I mean academically speaking, Craig.  When you are expected to cite serious scholarship, and there isn't any serious scholarship on the topic, it's hard to build up an academic paper.  As maggie notes immediately below, there is literally no truly academic work on Brian's music.

This is what I don't understand about academia overall. Someone with an expertise in the field has to be the first to publish, and if it's a topic that has no precedent, someone submitting a paper can and will be the first. I hope it hasn't gotten to the point where a truly new topic being treated in a scholarly and academic manner, elevating it to that level of scholarship in essence, gets rejected because no other academics have previously published on that topic and no citations can be made. It becomes a chicken versus the egg scenario.

I know it's simplistic, but someone had to be the first to publish on the genius of, say, Debussy at a time when no one had done so previously. So can it be with Brian Wilson and the musicology behind his legacy!

Craig, you're absolutely right that academia is ridiculous that way.  And of course, somebody does have to be the first, and it is possible to be the first.  But it just means extra work because there is no path already beaten down; you have to machete everything out yourself.  Because of the self-referential nature of academic scholarship, when you have to go outside it to establish facts, you just have to be really extra circumspect and fastidious.


In any case - thank you for the feedback here, it has given me some things to think about.
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« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2021, 05:31:26 PM »

I can't understand your problem. There are already books on Brian that are academia or lean to academia - the Equinox one and the Philip Lambert one. You could write what you want and to slip in references to these books, and it would look academ-ish enough for everybody. And surely there must be some papers in the Jounal of the Popular Music Studies or wherever.
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« Reply #33 on: July 29, 2021, 06:42:51 PM »

I can't understand your problem. There are already books on Brian that are academia or lean to academia - the Equinox one and the Philip Lambert one. You could write what you want and to slip in references to these books, and it would look academ-ish enough for everybody. And surely there must be some papers in the Jounal of the Popular Music Studies or wherever.

It's not a problem -- it's simply the state of affairs.  Kirk Curnutt is an English prof and that book is not musicology, and while the Lambert book is the closest thing to a musicological study of the Beach Boys, it's not the final word by any means.  There are no good papers on the music of the Beach Boys that I have found in any journal (there are some bad ones, and even a doctoral dissertation that doesn't contribute anything to history.)

And it's very much not about looking "academ-ish" -- it is about contributing to history's understanding of the music that I love, in a meaningful way, and in a way that has staying power.
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« Reply #34 on: July 30, 2021, 04:25:21 AM »

And it's very much not about looking "academ-ish" -- it is about contributing to history's understanding of the music that I love, in a meaningful way, and in a way that has staying power.

That's why I've said "you could write what you want". From my viewpoint, a solid paper or a book devoted to a musical matter is better to be a "pop" one than an "academia" one, but if you prefer the latter, your work should have just enough of recognizable features like references to other such works, and the content which is the most important thing would be of your choice.
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« Reply #35 on: July 30, 2021, 07:48:04 AM »

I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.
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« Reply #36 on: July 30, 2021, 08:31:28 AM »

I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.

Thank you for this -- I'd much rather talk about the idea than the merits of academics.

I think you've hit upon a good point, that in and of itself might be worth exploring, and one could look narrowly at just Brian, or more broadly: A dynamic tension, perhaps, between the stock influences you mentioned, and the genuinely original-leaning impulses of the arranger/producer.  Indeed, the "less apparent lineage" is the one that is interesting to me, and sort of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about developing a vocabulary; you know, where did some of that stuff come from?  And what brought it out?  Clearly, as you say, Brian never really was without that Welkian/Murry Wilsonian impulse, and in some ways never did fully move past it.  But when he transcended that, where was that coming from?

Part of my working answer to that at the moment is that the studio musicians brought it out of him, and that is really a big part of the full premise behind the direction I would take something like a full study.  In fact, I see my project's protagonist as the studio musicians, and Brian as a sort of featured auxiliary character.  Come to think of it, your point about Nitzsche and Berry is useful because I think I need those people in the narrative to provide a certain amount of context.  Nitzsche took arranging classes, and Jan Berry came by his arranging skills in a fairly formal way, even if he was semi-self taught.  My inclusion of those two and their ilk in this conversation links them with Brian in a specific way, viz. I think that when they were arranging their music, they considered themselves to be doing a certain kind of music, writing a chart that was not Jazz, was not Classical, but distinctly "pop" whatever that meant to them at the time.  But Brian was effectively musically illiterate, so he didn't write charts (as such).  I wonder if some of his innovations were borne out of the translation effort from his singing parts at musicians to their perception of it and their attempts to get what he wanted.  So what started as a Welkian thing in Brian's mind ends up getting morphed into something a little more murky, lineage-wise, after essential playing musical telephone games.  But yeah, I do wonder where something so unique as, say, the duet between the pizzicato contrabass and the Fender bass on the verses of Here Today comes from.  Totally unique.

Ultimately, that was a bit of a ramble.  But again I appreciate your engagement, maggie.
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« Reply #37 on: July 30, 2021, 01:26:22 PM »

I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.

Thank you for this -- I'd much rather talk about the idea than the merits of academics.

I think you've hit upon a good point, that in and of itself might be worth exploring, and one could look narrowly at just Brian, or more broadly: A dynamic tension, perhaps, between the stock influences you mentioned, and the genuinely original-leaning impulses of the arranger/producer.  Indeed, the "less apparent lineage" is the one that is interesting to me, and sort of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about developing a vocabulary; you know, where did some of that stuff come from?  And what brought it out?  Clearly, as you say, Brian never really was without that Welkian/Murry Wilsonian impulse, and in some ways never did fully move past it.  But when he transcended that, where was that coming from?

Part of my working answer to that at the moment is that the studio musicians brought it out of him, and that is really a big part of the full premise behind the direction I would take something like a full study.  In fact, I see my project's protagonist as the studio musicians, and Brian as a sort of featured auxiliary character.  Come to think of it, your point about Nitzsche and Berry is useful because I think I need those people in the narrative to provide a certain amount of context.  Nitzsche took arranging classes, and Jan Berry came by his arranging skills in a fairly formal way, even if he was semi-self taught.  My inclusion of those two and their ilk in this conversation links them with Brian in a specific way, viz. I think that when they were arranging their music, they considered themselves to be doing a certain kind of music, writing a chart that was not Jazz, was not Classical, but distinctly "pop" whatever that meant to them at the time.  But Brian was effectively musically illiterate, so he didn't write charts (as such).  I wonder if some of his innovations were borne out of the translation effort from his singing parts at musicians to their perception of it and their attempts to get what he wanted.  So what started as a Welkian thing in Brian's mind ends up getting morphed into something a little more murky, lineage-wise, after essential playing musical telephone games.  But yeah, I do wonder where something so unique as, say, the duet between the pizzicato contrabass and the Fender bass on the verses of Here Today comes from.  Totally unique.

Ultimately, that was a bit of a ramble.  But again I appreciate your engagement, maggie.

Indeed, Joshilyn, I think "game of musical telephone" is a good way to characterize how Brian grouped the instruments available to him in search of certain feels. So he would take combinations and part-writing that Jan and Spector had used for functional purposes (e.g. the dual bass thing) and abstract them from their functional purpose, to see what sounds he could make.

My sense though is that his approach to orchestration was so influential, both because it was so artistically successful but mostly just by virtue of being the producer of the most successful and hit-producing rock & roll band in America, that it's hard to separate Brian as a reflection of his moment from Brian as essentially the creator of a new style. And, as I've suggested, the style came about in an ad-hoc fashion by abstracting pieces of the "Welkian" vocabulary and the functional vocabulary of Jan & Spector, among others.

It's like Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker undoubtedly had a rich basket of influences. But a lot of what followed Charlie Parker involved taking what Parker did and abstracting it from that original context. I kind of think this is what we're dealing with in the "de-jazzing" of pop is other producers taking what Brian abstracted from his Murry context (and from Jan and Spector) and abstracting it even further.

Is it really true that Brian "didn't write charts (as such)", or am I misunderstanding what you mean? I gather that a lot of the parts did come out of improvisations, and that many were simply dictated ("head arrangements"), but I had been under the impression that he did hand out a fair amount of parts on staff paper in his own idiosyncratic hand.
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« Reply #38 on: July 30, 2021, 06:46:42 PM »

I think the danger could be in giving the session musicians too much credit for what Brian Wilson achieved as his final result, or final mix. Whether it be in the arrangement, orchestration, or the overall production, Brian ultimately was the one creating the majority of the notes played and dictating how they were played. If you watch that interview with Danny Hutton describing how Brian got the string players to play a certain way, demonstrating to them how he wanted them to make the notes "cry", that nails his approach and also falls into place with how Van Dyke Parks described Brian's musical approach using the word primitive, but it really was on a very sophisticated mental, intuitive, and emotional level even though he didn't have all the proper terminology.

I've expressed my opinions on Jan Berry here and elsewhere, but I'll just say Jan may have been one of Brian's favorites to watch produce a session, and there was influence and friendship, sure, but Jan's final results never add up to my ears to be the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It's missing that something, that X-Factor which made Brian's songs sparkle with almost a magic sheen where all parts work together to create an amazing whole, and Jan has some great parts but the end result wasn't the same kind of classic record which people are still entranced by over 50 years later. Brian and Jan were using many of the same musicians in sometimes very similar ensemble groupings, but Jan's records didn't grab listeners the way Brian's did and still do.

I'll get back to the session players and ask a question mixed in with an answer: On all of the session tapes we've heard from Brian's work with the Wrecking Crew, and on almost all of the interviews with the musicians of the Wrecking Crew talking about working with Brian, do we ever hear anything suggesting Brian was not in full control and knew exactly what he wanted? He had the arrangements in mind, and would usually sing each part to the musicians, either one by one or section by section, until the ensemble got together on his concept. He sometimes had charts too, or would have one of the musicians act as copyist and transcribe Brian's lines for the other players. Whether it was Steve Douglas for the horns, or Hal, or one of the guitarists who could notate parts...if Brian himself didn't come in with some kind of written charts, he'd be right there singing his parts that were in his head when he entered the studio. It helped that when he sang these parts to them, he was usually pitch-perfect doing so, on every voice of the arrangement.

And if someone suggested a change, he'd listen, and if it worked, he'd adapt it. But the change to the God Only Knows bridge everyone knows about wasn't a change in the parts themselves. It was a musician suggesting they play staccato instead of swinging a legato melodic line. But the line itself was not written by a session musician, it was Brian's line adapted in a different rhythmic feel.

What I'm suggesting is I don't think we have much evidence, surely not on audio tape of the sessions, of Brian not knowing what he wanted and not being the one making decisions on the fly. He came in with these complex lines and sounds and arrangements in his head, and if a tweak suggested by a musician happened to work better, he'd adapt it. But it was not a case of the musicians developing these arrangements for him, as some other producers would work.

If anything the musicians either inspired Brian to up his game, or their skill as musicians allowed him to up his game. We also hear numerous sessions where the parts Brian gave them are challenging enough for the musician to have made mistakes, and needed to practice and rehearse the part so Brian would get both the notes and the feel he wanted in the part. That's the musician playing up to the writer and producer, not the other way around.

I'm just thinking it could be a slippery slope to credit the session musicians too much, especially and specifically in the case of Brian Wilson because he had most if not all of what he wanted to hear in his head before they started recording.

Otherwise, how would he know to contract and book certain instruments ahead of time? If he wanted cor anglais on an arrangement, he'd book a cor anglais player. If he wanted harmonica, he'd book a harmonica player. Etc, etc. And they would play what Brian was envisioning for his arrangement. If a player suggested a change of instrument or technique, that was one thing. But I seriously cannot think of any prominent examples on those Brian-led session tapes where a session player "wrote" an arrangement or part of an arrangement that was totally fresh and new that day in the studio. The musicians were there to play what Brian conceived in his mind, and their skill allowed them to do so, sometimes even out of the normal range of their instrument. But they were not the creative element, nor were they doing the arranging for Brian. 
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Joshilyn Hoisington
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« Reply #39 on: July 30, 2021, 09:05:06 PM »

Is it really true that Brian "didn't write charts (as such)", or am I misunderstanding what you mean? I gather that a lot of the parts did come out of improvisations, and that many were simply dictated ("head arrangements"), but I had been under the impression that he did hand out a fair amount of parts on staff paper in his own idiosyncratic hand.

The answer is murky.  The only person who's ever said, that I can think of, that Brian wrote out parts of any kind is Carol Kaye -- and she's always sort of diplomatically charitable about it.  She said something like "sure, the stems were all on the wrong side, and the clefs would be off, and there were enharmonic problems, and his rhythms were wrong, but by gosh, he wrote a chart!"  Then there's a small group of musicians who have attested to getting chord charts from Brian.  But I think the largest group are those who state that they never got anything written from Brian.  So I suspect the truth lies somewhere in that spectrum.

Now, the murkiness of the truth there directly speaks to some of Craig's comments: 

Quote
But I seriously cannot think of any prominent examples on those Brian-led session tapes where a session player "wrote" an arrangement or part of an arrangement that was totally fresh and new that day in the studio.

The very sad fact is that we have absolutely zero tape of the arranging sessions.  We have a couple instances of tape starting to roll before an arrangement had come together, but the reality is that the engineers never rolled tape until after they'd been working on the arrangement for up to 2 or 3 hours.  So we really can't know how it went, and I'm not sure that we have enough information to speculate.

If I had to speculate, I think that Brian had the harmonic and rhythmic concept for the feel of it, and the melody, and maybe some instruments he felt like he wanted to try that day.

Quote
He came in with these complex lines and sounds and arrangements in his head

No he didn't.  To wit:

"Q: Is that where the source of your inspiration came from, the way you heard it in your head?

Brian: I can’t hear music in my head, but I can hear it over the speakers in the studio. But I can’t hear it ... like some guys can hear it all in their head before they get to the studio. I can’t do that."

(source: https://www.recordonline.com/article/20150710/NEWS/150719930)

And since he can't hear orchestrations in his head, he probably did have to do a lot of work in the studio to get it worked up in a way that pleased him.  I think just the opposite of Craig -- I think we have to be careful not to under-credit the musicians.  The Brian as auteur mythology is very intoxicating but I believe he was more collaborative than we've given him credit for.  I think he probably sang 95% of it, and the musicians filled in the 5% and also probably pushed back a little, and maybe they'd try it as a section, it wouldn't work, and Brian would sing the same part to a different instrument and see how that sounded.

Quote
Otherwise, how would he know to contract and book certain instruments ahead of time? If he wanted cor anglais on an arrangement, he'd book a cor anglais player. If he wanted harmonica, he'd book a harmonica player.

I think this is actually a really important question.  In my opinion, it was likely very rare where Brian went in with that specific of an instrument in mind.  That's where the versatility of the musicians was useful.  I just had the opportunity to ask Tommy Morgan, by proxy, what Brian's understanding of the harmonica family was when he first started playing for him.  The short answer is that he had no idea.  But Tommy showed him the expanded range possibilities of the big chromatic harmonica, and the bass harmonica, and Brian loved it.  But he didn't go into the first sessions with anything in mind other than "harmonica."  Likewise, when Brian started writing for wind quartets, what a blessing to have Jim Horn, Jay Migliori, Plas Johnson, Steve Douglas, Bill Green, and the others at your service.  You book four of them, and you pretty much have your bases covered -- all the saxes, all the clarinets, flutes, english horn--you didn't have to go in with a set plan.  Sometimes, yes, it's likely that Brian went in wanting one specific timbre, when he hired less versatile specialists.  But I think that's the exception.

But, again -- we actually really don't--and likely can't--know.
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« Reply #40 on: July 30, 2021, 10:25:35 PM »

Just a short reply because I have to get up early  Grin

I think we do need to take a pragmatic approach to the arranging process to consider what the process with Brian was. And it obviously was not the same for every song or session, but the basics of arranging still form a process or template to reference. Narrow it down to the Pet Sounds era:

Do you think Brian when booking the musicians for Wouldn't It Be Nice and God Only Knows went in relatively "cold" without having the sound he was going for in his head, and knowing what he wanted his arrangements to sound like or what sounds would be featured? He wouldn't have booked those exact ensembles if he didn't somehow hear it in his creative mind ahead of time. He wouldn't have crammed all of those specific musicians with some very distinct and unexpected instruments into those rooms without knowing ahead of time what he was going for.

When you sit down to create an arrangement, you have to hear it in your head even partially in order to write for certain instruments, especially if it's from scratch as Brian's were and you're not given a specific lineup of instruments as you would being a hired arranger for the Count Basie band or whatever, when they have a set lineup of players.

The point to consider with Brian too is, especially in 65-66 and into Smile, did he ever use the exact same lineup of players twice? If he did, it was rare. And yes, musician availability was a concern, but while other producer/arrangers like Bacharach or Crewe/Gaudio or even Spector and Jack might stick to the same core group and had a similar sound from song to song on a project, Brian did not. He seemed to tailor the lineup of musicians specifically from song to song. It wasn't like he always had 3 guitars, 2 basses, etc. It changed from song to song.

Otherwise he would have or could have had the same musicians playing Sloop, WIBN, Here Today, and GOK, but he did not. Each was specific, with different instrumentation and a different unique sounding voice that would stand out, whether it was a flute, multiple 12-string guitars, accordions, french horn, etc.

There has to be some kind of game plan in place prior to booking sessions and hiring specific players like that. And that game plan would have included some notion of what this will sound like in your head before pulling all of those elements together and booking the time.


Re: Tommy Morgan. I would suggest the song "Peg O' My Heart" by The Harmonicats as another angle to consider. For one, that song was a massive #1 hit record in 1947 and even into the 50's, and The Harmonicats were on numerous TV shows into the 50's - Those shows being watched by kids in the 50's like the Wilson brothers in Hawthorne, and that song "Peg O' My Heart" was on radios and jukeboxes everywhere, in fact I wouldn't doubt there was a copy in the Wilson home too. Their "schtick" for lack of a better term was that they played the harmonica family including the unusual larger sized ones together like a full band, and it was funny to see the big bass harmonica alongside the smaller harmonica with this group of guys puffing away. You can find old clips of them on YouTube.

Another relevant point with "Peg O' My Heart" is that it is often tagged as the first record to use electronic or "artificial" studio reverb, a studio trick cooked up by Bill Putnam on one of his earliest if not the earliest hits he was involved in recording. The record, and that sound, was a sensation just as Les Paul's "New Sound" of overdubbing and vari-speeding was around that same time, and years later Brian's studio of choice was Bill Putnam's.

Not disagreeing with what Tommy said, but I'd be very surprised if Brian Wilson did not know The Harmonicats and "Peg O' My Heart" and how it featured those large, low bass harmonicas. Because literally that record, and the group, were very ubiquitous in the late 40's and 50's. Just like the group The Three Suns, which featured accordion, and also sold millions when Brian was a kid.

EDIT: Search "The Harmonicats" on YouTube and you'll find not only their music and TV appearances, but also other similar harmonica groups playing the large bass models up to the standard ones, often in a comedy style routine. Harmonica groups seemed to be something of a thing in the 50's, a forgotten thing now, but it goes back to Vaudeville apparently. So it's something kids watching TV in the late 40's and 50's definitely would have seen, including the Wilsons.

And not disagreeing with what Brian said either, but isn't there an interview with Carl or Dennis talking about Brian's production where they said Brian heard everything in his head?
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« Reply #41 on: July 31, 2021, 08:41:33 AM »

Quote
There has to be some kind of game plan in place prior to booking sessions and hiring specific players like that. And that game plan would have included some notion of what this will sound like in your head before pulling all of those elements together and booking the time.

Some kind of game plan, but we really don't know what it was.  

Quote
Do you think Brian when booking the musicians for Wouldn't It Be Nice and God Only Knows went in relatively "cold" without having the sound he was going for in his head, and knowing what he wanted his arrangements to sound like or what sounds would be featured? He wouldn't have booked those exact ensembles if he didn't somehow hear it in his creative mind ahead of time. He wouldn't have crammed all of those specific musicians with some very distinct and unexpected instruments into those rooms without knowing ahead of time what he was going for.

Again we really can't know how he went in.  For GOK I think we can deduce that he wanted a string quartet, accordions, and a horn going in, because that's pretty much all the people he booked play.

But let's look at everybody else:

Jim Gordon and Hal Blaine - drummers and percussionists.  Could play anything from drums to mallets to vibroslaps.
Carol Kaye, Ray Pohlman - either of them could play any kind of guitar or electric bass.
Lyle Ritz - Fender, contrabass, or Uke
Bill Green, Jim Horn, Jay Migliori - you book these three players, you have access to the entire woodwind family.  I doubt Brian took the trouble to look up where a baritone sax's lowest note is, so if he needed a saxaphone note lower than that, Jim Horn would've had his bass.  If he'd wanted a bass flute quartet, those guys would've had that in their trunks.
Len Hartman is an interesting one.  He was primarily a double-reed guy.  That's certainly where he buttered his bread, and that's where Brian had used him before.  Maybe he started on the track playing english horn.  Maybe it didn't work.  So maybe Brian asks him to switch to flute.  Then he decides he needs a bass clarinet as well.  Fortunately, as a hollywood reedman, Len can do all of that.
Knechtel and Randi cover pianos, organs, electric pianos, harpsichords, clavichords, clavinets, you name it.

The point is, Brian didn't have to have a firm idea going in.  These guys were like a living MIDI file.  If you don't like the sound bank, change it.


Quote
Not disagreeing with what Tommy said, but I'd be very surprised if Brian Wilson did not know The Harmonicats and "Peg O' My Heart" and how it featured those large, low bass harmonicas. Because literally that record, and the group, were very ubiquitous in the late 40's and 50's. Just like the group The Three Suns, which featured accordion, and also sold millions when Brian was a kid.

Well, I have no doubt that Brian had some inkling that there were different kinds of harmonicas.  I just don't think he had a keen organological interest in the categories.  That's why he could hire Tommy with the idea that he wanted harmonica, but not initially know the delineations between the different harmonicas capabilities.  Similarly to what I said above, I don't think he concerned himself where the bass sax has to take over from the bari.  I think that he probably would learn something at one session and then want to try it later.  Maybe he wanted a bass clarinet note lower than the standard bass, and someone tipped him off about the contra-range clarinets, and that's how he ended up with one on a version of Good Vibrations.  But heck, maybe Bill Green always had a Contra Alto Clarinet in his trunk.

Quote
And not disagreeing with what Brian said either, but isn't there an interview with Carl or Dennis talking about Brian's production where they said Brian heard everything in his head?

I think they thought he did.  And I think Brian does hear parts in his head, but in a vocal idiom.  I think he has to parcel the voices out to the instruments and hear them back to really know what he's getting.



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« Reply #42 on: July 31, 2021, 12:07:30 PM »

I agree with what you're saying. No doubt there was on the job training with Brian, and other producers too, in terms of what specific instruments could or couldn't do. Then there are the famous examples, coincidentally both happening in 1966, like "For No One" and "God Only Knows", where Paul and Brian respectively had a phrase in mind that was outside the normal range of the horns they had on the session. In Paul's case, they had a literal virtuoso in Alan Civil who could produce a note outside the range to play Paul's phrase, and in Brian's case the French Horn player did an overtone technique outside the normal range in order to deliver the phrase. For Paul, at least, he had no idea what the normal range was, but he had a master horn player who could deliver, and for Brian he had a specific phrase in mind and a virtuoso horn player as well who could adapt and produce the note. Id say the same about the accordions on WIBN and the "bellows shake" technique...Brian had the right musicians on the session who could deliver.

That's obviously a key component to the greatness of the records, where the players on hand delivered something that most normal players, even highly-skilled players, perhaps would not have been able to do quite as well. And those sounds - trademark sonic hooks in both cases - would not have happened quite the same without those musicians. Surely if those songs were recorded by the core Beatles or the core Beach Boys, the records themselves would have been vastly different, perhaps still great songs and records in their own way, but they would not have that same sonic magic.

For me it goes back to the person who conceived those phrases and in Brian's case, knew enough of what sounds he wanted to contract a French Horn player instead of another brass player. And I think that's where Brian the arranger at least had a sonic template in his mind before going in to record. And of course things change during a session, whether it be the stop on a Hammond organ, or the type of guitar being played, or bowed bass versus picked bass. But the concept for the arrangement had to be at least in place before the session got underway in a lot of Brian's more ambitious and complex arrangements, in my opinion.

If he threw all of those orchestrations, arrangements, and sounds together on the fly, on the studio floor, completely cold...then the guy is even more of a genius than we knew already!  Smiley

I just don't think the hired musicians had as much of a hand in the actual arrangements as Brian did, except for as you said suggesting using another instrument in their bag of tricks to get where Brian wanted the part to go.

Of all the LA players who I've seen discussed and have seen interviewed, I would have to say across the board it was Glen Campbell who had an almost scary knack of being able to "compose" guitar parts himself that became hooks, without being able to sight-read and usually just by seeing a chord chart. Not that others like Hal didn't do the same thing, but Glen's ability to write parts on the spot gets mentioned most often I'd say.
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« Reply #43 on: August 07, 2021, 07:49:50 PM »

Fascinating thread!

I don't have much to add but a couple of things came to mind when reading it...

- the fact that the music/media discussed is still "relevant" and available in its original recording/performance; Guitarfool touched on this a little, but it's an interesting discussion in its own right. It has certainly made it easier for recent generations to cling to their pasts, or for new generations to access it.

- further to the above, the impact of the internet can't be overlooked (or maybe it's just the same continuum of impact as print, radio, and TV). That said, I feel like culture has largely stagnated since the late 90s/early-2000s (except for technology) - consider how images of people in previous decades are very obvious of being of an era but it's less pronounced now. There are still new trends but there's more old stuff, too (This is my own observation, no academic credentials, sorry! This could also be a product of my own aging and general checking out of modern culture)

- on the instrumentation, the electro-theremin is an example of wanting a specific sound/instrument (just to contrast with MIDI session musicians)


Sorry to ramble off topic; hopefully these thoughts spark something useful for you, Joshilyn!

Edit: meant to add that the big seismic cultural shift in 66/67/68 could be some demarcation (the change to a more casual society - again, part of a greater continuum)
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« Reply #44 on: August 08, 2021, 07:29:08 AM »

Fascinating thread!

I don't have much to add but a couple of things came to mind when reading it...

- the fact that the music/media discussed is still "relevant" and available in its original recording/performance; Guitarfool touched on this a little, but it's an interesting discussion in its own right. It has certainly made it easier for recent generations to cling to their pasts, or for new generations to access it.

- further to the above, the impact of the internet can't be overlooked (or maybe it's just the same continuum of impact as print, radio, and TV). That said, I feel like culture has largely stagnated since the late 90s/early-2000s (except for technology) - consider how images of people in previous decades are very obvious of being of an era but it's less pronounced now. There are still new trends but there's more old stuff, too (This is my own observation, no academic credentials, sorry! This could also be a product of my own aging and general checking out of modern culture)


- on the instrumentation, the electro-theremin is an example of wanting a specific sound/instrument (just to contrast with MIDI session musicians)


Sorry to ramble off topic; hopefully these thoughts spark something useful for you, Joshilyn!

Edit: meant to add that the big seismic cultural shift in 66/67/68 could be some demarcation (the change to a more casual society - again, part of a greater continuum)

Fantastic post! It could lead to several offshoot discussions which I'd love to have separate from the topic, because they're points I think of and see play out on almost a daily basis.

The points in bold , specifically the second one:

Things overall have stagnated since that exact time you pinpointed, I agree 110%. And minus technology and advances there, in terms of creative arts and how that art influences popular culture, where is the innovation? Who are the innovators? Where or what are the characteristic styles and trends that influenced other areas of popular culture?

I have one out of many things to try. Back in the late 80's, there was a 70's revival of sorts. What was deemed unhip, uncool, and even off-limits less than a decade earlier became a "thing". "Hey Ladies" by the Beastie Boys, with the disco Saturday Night Fever tribute, Lenny Kravitz doing a slow-burn southern-soul groove for his breakthrough hit and wearing 70's psychedelic fashions, DJ's remixing 70's disco grooves and sounds, etc etc etc.

So...at that time, and even now, you might have a school thing or a party theme to "dress like the 70's". And you could easily do it.

You can tell an engineer in the studio that you want this song to sound like 1967, and they'd know what to do. You could ask a set designer to do a 1950's living room, and they could do it. You could ask an art gallery to provide designs for a 1980's theme event, and they could do it. You could have a fashion designer create a line based on men's fashion of the 40's Noir era, and they could do it.

You could create a YouTube video on anything as a retro/throwback to any given era like that, and get a decent result.

So factor in that first 70's retro trend was about a decade removed from the original trends in the 70's.

Now, in 2021...could you plug ANY of those requests into the years from 2000-2020 and be able to depict that era faithfully enough to pass muster?

I say no - There is simply nothing innovative or unique enough in the past 20 years to capture and use in that way. 2005 fashion, music, art, design...it could just as easily be 2020 minus again the technology.

Is anyone having "dress like the 2000's day"? Hell no, because it looks the same more or less now as it did then.

You can watch any of the endless "Law And Order" repeats from American TV from 15 years ago and it looks pretty much like it does now in 2021, minus the changes in computers and cel phones. The fashion is the same, the language is the same, the music hasn't changed much. Even the hair styles haven't changed!

Yet, if in 2000 you were to watch a TV program from 1985, the differences in all those areas would be immediate from the first 30 seconds of the show.

That tells me there is little to no true innovation in those areas and the notion of creative arts as a cross-cultural influence is and has been lessened to the point of being insignificant.

What would a stereotypical snapshot of 2007 look like? A younger person playing a video game or tapping on a smartphone? Wearing what clothes? With what kind of hair style? Listening to what? Doing what else besides clutching a smartphone constantly?

I don't know. But it doesn't seem that much different of a generalization 15 years ago from today as it looks in the present moment. And that is sad. I think too much has stagnated, despite being given more technology to connect with others and innovate as anyone ever had previous to the current day.
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« Reply #45 on: August 08, 2021, 09:32:14 AM »

This is indeed a fascinating thread, and much of it is beyond what's left of my pay grade, but I do have one thought that might juxtapose what Joshilyn appears to be after, the context GF is providing, and the macro-historical overview that Mitchell provided...

...as part of the project to capture the fleeting collision of a "pop music vocabulary" with experimental composition (song fragments or sections combined for the sake of the added power or resonance as a result of their juxtaposition), compare the arranging and recording approaches that evolved from early '65 into the SMiLE sessions with the production approach taken in the 1980s when Brian was "called out" by Lenny Waronker to return to such a compositional/production approach with "Rio Grande." What are the differences and similarities that exist in 1987-88 with respect to (re)creating a type of compositional approach that had been set aside (or, possibly, sublimated into the songwriting process itself, where "tags" produced the functional equivalent/analogue to the more externalized "modular" mode that came to dominate the SMiLE material)? What did Brian utilize to respond to Lenny's "challenge"? Was it a conscious anachronism back to a moment when the moment of breakthrough into a "blossom world" of "experimental pop mosaic" was actually a leap into the void due to the changes in rock music that turned something revolutionary into something passé in a matter of months? For context, recall that this is the point in time when Spector crashes and burns, and the time that Shadow Morton abandons the symphonic angst of the Shangri-Las for Janis Ian and the Vanilla Fudge.

A lot of sea-change in that 1966-68 time period: was not "Cabinessence" simply received as an brilliant but unfathomable artifact from an already (irrevocably) lost era when it surfaced in '69 on 20/20? And given their recognition of the rate of change that was continuing to occur, can we see the effort to rescue "Surf's Up" undertaken by Carl and Jack Rieley as part of a way to reclaim that past in a way that could create a wormhole through which the band could wriggle to some kind of viable future? While I understand that we are after a more direct musical analysis of how Brian got to his unique compositional/arrangement synthesis, I think it's important to note how shockingly fragile any/all of that was in terms of mass commercial success. When Brian made "Good Vibrations," I don't think it was clear to anyone that it would be the first and last of its kind...but it most certainly was, wasn't it?
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« Reply #46 on: August 08, 2021, 02:36:26 PM »


Is anyone having "dress like the 2000's day"? Hell no, because it looks the same more or less now as it did then.

You can watch any of the endless "Law And Order" repeats from American TV from 15 years ago and it looks pretty much like it does now in 2021, minus the changes in computers and cel phones. The fashion is the same, the language is the same, the music hasn't changed much. Even the hair styles haven't changed!

Yet, if in 2000 you were to watch a TV program from 1985, the differences in all those areas would be immediate from the first 30 seconds of the show.

That tells me there is little to no true innovation in those areas and the notion of creative arts as a cross-cultural influence is and has been lessened to the point of being insignificant.

What would a stereotypical snapshot of 2007 look like? A younger person playing a video game or tapping on a smartphone? Wearing what clothes? With what kind of hair style? Listening to what? Doing what else besides clutching a smartphone constantly?

I don't know. But it doesn't seem that much different of a generalization 15 years ago from today as it looks in the present moment. And that is sad. I think too much has stagnated, despite being given more technology to connect with others and innovate as anyone ever had previous to the current day.

I'm sorry to keep picking on you, but *man*, you could *not* be more wrong. Fashion is drastically different now than it was in 2005. Even just in business wear, the lapels, ties, jacket and skirt cuts, and waist positions are all hugely different. Have you looked at some photos of what girls and women were wearing in 2004? It's practically a different planet compared to today, at least where I live. High waists, "athleisure", different cuts of dresses, rompers...it's literally as different as the '60s were from the '80s. My students in 2021 dress drastically different from the students I had in 2015, let alone 2005 (when I was a student myself)!

And the absolute same thing is true of pop music. Hip-hop in 2005 didn't sound anything like hip-hop in 2017. The entire rhythmic and sonic signature changed.

And yes, there absolutely are teenage girls doing 2000s nostalgia stuff today (low waists, fake lower back tats, navel chains, big earrings, chunky highlights) for fun.

You're doing that thing again, just like you were doing upthread about the current state of jazz, where you're generalizing based on what I would charitably call limited knowledge of the present. I don't particularly like the dominant popular culture of 2021 but its insane to claim it's remotely similar to 2005.
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« Reply #47 on: August 08, 2021, 08:03:54 PM »

I was glad Guitarfool had agreed with me (I'm currently watching a show from 2007 that doesn't seem to be particularly 'dated' - though the attitudes and behaviours are), but your assertive rejection of my suggestion has me rethinking things a little (and I certainly defer to someone who actually interacts with people, especially students, as they are less set in their ways). The rise of social media and smartphones has created a new "innovative" space that has informed the general culture in ways I'm definitely less aware, if not completely oblivious. Good point on athleisure, too. It will be interesting to see how future generations view the superficial cultural touchstones of the present and recent past.

Don was trying to tie the discussion back to the premise of the thread... What I was thinking along the same lines is that throwbacks (be it fashion or music) are inherently creative dead-ends and it's increasingly harder to overcome the weight of our cultural consciousness (I'm definitely just making stuff up at this point). Something something postmodernism.
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« Reply #48 on: August 08, 2021, 09:50:36 PM »

I feel like this thread got way off on a tangent and it was partly/mainly my fault, getting into the weeds of the value of academic study of popular music, and we haven't really been discussing Joshilyn's premise.

I think the issue I have with the idea is twofold:

1> It was presented as a "return" to certain kinds of song form or orchestration but actually it's always seemed to me that those elements were vestigial survivals in Brian's art rather than something he "added in" as he matured: just listen to how the strings are arranged on "The Surfer Moon," it's pure Lawrence Welk, and that's where Brian's arranging started from (although I know he had help on those pieces). When Brian became more "authentic" about expressing his individuality in orchestrations, that lineage is much less apparent, except when he's doing style pastiche like the bossa arrangement of "Busy Doin' Nothin'". And indeed, although pieces like "Summer Means New Love" and "In the Back of My Mind" use more or less conventional section arrangements (albeit interesting ones), the strings after 1965 are used much more idiosyncratically, less as a "section." Even Pet Sounds reserves string section arrangements for isolated episodes that sound influenced by Max Steiner more than they do anything from jazz/pop per se, even though there are lots of string parts throughout. This increases with Smile and Brian doesn't really get back into using strings as a "section" until things like "Our Sweet Love."

Similar things could probably be said about the use of horns.

2> The vestigial survival of what we might call the "Welkian" arranging elements in Brian's early orchestrations are very specific and personal to his background, and I don't think Jan Berry's background or Spector's background or Jack Nitzsche's background were comparable. Spector and Berry were both mainly concerned with "functional" orchestration, i.e. with generating sonic effects on the radio. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course, like the Latin elements Spector liked to use.) Brian learned how to do that from both of them, but his use of orchestration for style purposes (rather than functional purposes) was based on his own personal context, i.e. his dad.

Thank you for this -- I'd much rather talk about the idea than the merits of academics.

I think you've hit upon a good point, that in and of itself might be worth exploring, and one could look narrowly at just Brian, or more broadly: A dynamic tension, perhaps, between the stock influences you mentioned, and the genuinely original-leaning impulses of the arranger/producer.  Indeed, the "less apparent lineage" is the one that is interesting to me, and sort of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about developing a vocabulary; you know, where did some of that stuff come from?  And what brought it out?  Clearly, as you say, Brian never really was without that Welkian/Murry Wilsonian impulse, and in some ways never did fully move past it.  But when he transcended that, where was that coming from?

Part of my working answer to that at the moment is that the studio musicians brought it out of him, and that is really a big part of the full premise behind the direction I would take something like a full study.  In fact, I see my project's protagonist as the studio musicians, and Brian as a sort of featured auxiliary character.  Come to think of it, your point about Nitzsche and Berry is useful because I think I need those people in the narrative to provide a certain amount of context.  Nitzsche took arranging classes, and Jan Berry came by his arranging skills in a fairly formal way, even if he was semi-self taught.  My inclusion of those two and their ilk in this conversation links them with Brian in a specific way, viz. I think that when they were arranging their music, they considered themselves to be doing a certain kind of music, writing a chart that was not Jazz, was not Classical, but distinctly "pop" whatever that meant to them at the time.  But Brian was effectively musically illiterate, so he didn't write charts (as such).  I wonder if some of his innovations were borne out of the translation effort from his singing parts at musicians to their perception of it and their attempts to get what he wanted.  So what started as a Welkian thing in Brian's mind ends up getting morphed into something a little more murky, lineage-wise, after essential playing musical telephone games.  But yeah, I do wonder where something so unique as, say, the duet between the pizzicato contrabass and the Fender bass on the verses of Here Today comes from.  Totally unique.

Ultimately, that was a bit of a ramble.  But again I appreciate your engagement, maggie.

My opinion (which might be over simplistic and/or controversial) on what separated Brian Wilson from the sort of “stock” arrangements or production values of the time are:

1. Spirituality. This might not be something easy to study in an academic sense, but it is hard to deny this was a major driving force in his work 1965-67. Loosely related would be the sort of mysticism that would mark a lot of the work of the era immediately following.

2. Full integration of strings from a production standpoint. Even more that Spector, Brian did not add “string arrangements” on top of whatever the underlying bed was. The strings were fully and completely integrated into the song, arrangement, and most of all the production. There are almost no other examples of this from the period. It’s Brian’s version of the wall of sound, but even Spector used strings as icing floating over the track, and Brian never did. They were the meat and potatoes. Contemporary reviews of Pet Sounds would say things like “out of tune prettiness” or sickly etc.

3. Artistry. Brian Wilson was an absolute artist. His art was completed sound. His peers were Jan Berry and Phil Spector, neither of whom were artists in this way IMO.

Curt Boettcher is a good call out. I think he’s probably the closest to Brian, but I think that’s probably more of a Brian influence kind of situation.

I think the style  you’re referring to continued on in TV show soundtracks and certain kinds of movies until around 1971. One element that will probably go unnoticed is: that style could not continue beyond the 8-track era, from a technical standpoint IMO.
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« Reply #49 on: August 09, 2021, 05:30:42 PM »

My opinion (which might be over simplistic and/or controversial) on what separated Brian Wilson from the sort of “stock” arrangements or production values of the time are:

1. Spirituality. This might not be something easy to study in an academic sense, but it is hard to deny this was a major driving force in his work 1965-67. Loosely related would be the sort of mysticism that would mark a lot of the work of the era immediately following.

2. Full integration of strings from a production standpoint. Even more that Spector, Brian did not add “string arrangements” on top of whatever the underlying bed was. The strings were fully and completely integrated into the song, arrangement, and most of all the production. There are almost no other examples of this from the period. It’s Brian’s version of the wall of sound, but even Spector used strings as icing floating over the track, and Brian never did. They were the meat and potatoes. Contemporary reviews of Pet Sounds would say things like “out of tune prettiness” or sickly etc.

3. Artistry. Brian Wilson was an absolute artist. His art was completed sound. His peers were Jan Berry and Phil Spector, neither of whom were artists in this way IMO.

Curt Boettcher is a good call out. I think he’s probably the closest to Brian, but I think that’s probably more of a Brian influence kind of situation.

I think the style  you’re referring to continued on in TV show soundtracks and certain kinds of movies until around 1971. One element that will probably go unnoticed is: that style could not continue beyond the 8-track era, from a technical standpoint IMO.

It is tricky to try to attribute spirituality to music without resort to lyrical stuff, but I agree that it does make a difference.  Very hard to measure that, and very hard to analyze.  I've tried to do it with church music, as have others; it takes real skill to put together a cogent argument.

I think you're mostly correct about the string business.  I would expand this to other instrument families, too.  Basically all the non-rock instruments were fully integrated in the arrangements.  Never afterthoughts.  You can hear the difference when they hired outside people to do arrange the strings later, your Vans McCoy and even your Daryls Dragon.  There are small marks where you can see the stitching.  But at the height of Brian's arranging skills, everything was fully part of it.
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