Very cool, thanks for sharing! I do listen to shoegaze from time to time but didn't know that this was how it was first implemented.
Wall of Sound
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Re: Wall of Sound
#22If you are a Beatles Fun it's fun to listen to the records "Let it Be" and "Let it Be Naked" back to back. Let it be was produced by Phil Spector, and has a lot of the wall of sound trappings such as heavy use of effects, and heavily overdubbed string/chorus/etc parts. Let it be naked is a remixed version of the album Paul McCartney was involved in to remove much of the Spector wall of sound parts. For example listen…
fascinating. Spectors approach at times seems to share a lot in common with the Indian tradition of over-driven vocals in music. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vs20j/e...
That sound shares some things in common with the “motown sound” as well
Re: Wall of Sound
#23Why do we keep deifying this guy? He's a murderer who was clever enough to give his studio techniques a catchy name.
Why the hyperbole? No one is deifying him. It's an encyclopedia article about an influential music technique he developed, not a moral examination or a defence of his crimes.
Re: Wall of Sound
#24If you are a Beatles Fun it's fun to listen to the records "Let it Be" and "Let it Be Naked" back to back. Let it be was produced by Phil Spector, and has a lot of the wall of sound trappings such as heavy use of effects, and heavily overdubbed string/chorus/etc parts. Let it be naked is a remixed version of the album Paul McCartney was involved in to remove much of the Spector wall of sound parts. For example listen…
Very cool!
One feels like I'm sitting in an orchestra pit or at a concert, the other sounds like an intimate private studio
Re: Wall of Sound
#25My favorite anecdote about the Wall of Sound technique is the paralyzing effect "Be My Baby" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSPpbOGnFgk ) had on Brian Wilson, founder of the Beach Boys: > "Be My Baby" had a profound lifelong impact on the Beach Boys' founder Brian Wilson. > When he heard "Be My Baby" for the first time through his car radio, he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and deemed it the grea…
Wow, after reading that legendary endorsement, I listened to it for the first time. I don’t normally think of myself as a philistine, but I’m afraid it didn’t speak to me at all. Maybe you had to be there.
Exactly what you said. The issue is that it influenced everything that came after. So it doesn't sound novel now.
Re: Wall of Sound
#26If you are a Beatles Fun it's fun to listen to the records "Let it Be" and "Let it Be Naked" back to back. Let it be was produced by Phil Spector, and has a lot of the wall of sound trappings such as heavy use of effects, and heavily overdubbed string/chorus/etc parts. Let it be naked is a remixed version of the album Paul McCartney was involved in to remove much of the Spector wall of sound parts. For example listen…
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22produced+by+george+martin...
(I mostly love the Spector sound but it's a famous and funny quip.)
Re: Wall of Sound
#27Why do we keep deifying this guy? He's a murderer who was clever enough to give his studio techniques a catchy name.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
Nobody's deifying. Humans are complicated.
Re: Wall of Sound
#28[deleted]
Re: Wall of Sound
#29My favorite anecdote about the Wall of Sound technique is the paralyzing effect "Be My Baby" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSPpbOGnFgk ) had on Brian Wilson, founder of the Beach Boys: > "Be My Baby" had a profound lifelong impact on the Beach Boys' founder Brian Wilson. > When he heard "Be My Baby" for the first time through his car radio, he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and deemed it the grea…
It's fascinating to learn how Gold Star's echo chamber would change from day-to-day.
Spector was clearly optimizing sessions, mic placements, and possibly even song tempos for the echo chamber.
https://rulefortytwo.com/secret-rock-knowledge/chapter-12/ro...
Re: Wall of Sound
#30Phil Spector records have this heavy, dreamy sound that is, oddly, _exhausting_. Your brain can't pick out the instruments being played (beyond the vocals and some of the lead instruments) so it all folds into each other. You stand there, awash in sound. A key aspect of this sound was the monaural setup: everything was forced through one speaker and there was no stereo separation to separate the incoming instruments.…
For this reason I feel like Phil Spector's early-mid 60's Wall of Sound production holds up a lot better than the late 60's/70's.
By the time you get to George Harrisons All Things Must Pass there's just way too much going on so that you can't listen to all the different pieces of the song at once. Like literally there's too much sound trying to grab your attention in the song that you can't listen to everything that's happening, and like you said it's just exhausting trying to.
It just devolved in to compressing sounds toward the loud side of the spectrum, and we lost all this nuance that pop music used to have.