Wall of Sound today

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Vurki

Guest
It is clear what Wall of Sound was at 60's - many instruments playing the same things in an echo chamber. That massive sound was captured to great recordings such as River Deep - Mountain High. But today - what people and what music follow Spector's footsteps and continue from what he left? You often hear people saying that Xenomania produces that kind of music and that Duffy makes that, but I think that it's really the very new massive electronic dance-pop, most notably RedOne's productions.

Take a listen to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, Enrique Iglesias' I Like It or Nicole Scherzinger's Poison. Isn't that after all very similar to the original Wall of Sound? The general sound is extremely full: all the frequencies have been filled with thick sounds. Production methods are similar too:

1) when Spector put three guys to play same lines with a guitar, a modern porducer puts three oscillators to play the same line and then puts an eight-time unisono after them all.

2) everything's so reverbed that every sound keeps ringing until it hits again. Open hi-hats for example, that hit every quarter in this dance-pop genre, contain so much reverb that it almost sounds like noise between the hits. And I actually think some tracks contain almost pure white noise in backround.

What do you think about this stuff? Anyone else has got similar ideas? And since it's the recording/mixing forum, how would you personally start to make this music? It's difficult, I'm telling you.

E: Enrique Iglesias - I Like It

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

Nicole Scherzinger - Poison
 
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Vurki said:
1) when Spector put three guys to play same lines with a guitar, a modern porducer puts three oscillators to play the same line and then puts an eight-time unisono after them all.
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Think you missed the point and technique .
Three oscillators does not equal three live performances .
 
Foggy said:
Think you missed the point and technique .
Three oscillators does not equal three live performances .
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I'm not saying that electronic music can be the same what they did at 60's. But I'm saying that the key thing, the massive sound, show up as these dance songs. Oscillator producing wave isn't the same as playing guitar but three of them detuned do create the same full sound as three guitars played by people.
 
I don't know. I wouldn't call Spectors results really great. I personally can't listen to such a crappy sound. In fact, Spector stands for pretty much everything I don't like from that era. ;)

This is "sound for the masses" (sounds good on small, cheezy systems), but definitely nothing beautiful IMHO.

In fact, all he did is to leave out one dimension: The depth (not only technically, but also musically). IMHO, he wasn't the most clever guy around (in the artistic sense), lol you checked his Bio?! ;)
 
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moses said:
I don't know. I wouldn't call Spectors results really great. I personally can't listen to such a crappy sound. In fact, Spector stands for pretty much everything I don't like from that era. ;)

This is "sound for the masses" (sounds good on small, cheezy systems), but definitely nothing beautiful IMHO.

In fact, all he did is to leave out one dimension: The depth (not only technically, but also musically). He wasn't the most clever guy around to be honest.
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Cmon man, don't act like your personal taste would be the only one! ;D I love Spector's style and I love RedOne's style. You can't change it. You can only curse me. But please, do it privately :D

Though, all the opinions give me something to think about.
 
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Well, it's definitely my personal opinion. But it is a fact that such dense mixes quickly get boring, have weak dynamic range based "emotions", don't kick anymore after just a few seconds of listening, ect.

The wall of sound is the hamburger of audio engineering. Really, check out Isaac Hayes or Marvin Gaye's work from that time. Or Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, ect. That's a whole different league.

For today, check out Björk, Radiohead, Goldfrapp, Air ect. That's great engineering. All the hyper-marketed plastic pop music stuff you mentioned is definitely not the result of great engineering - it sound seriously ugly IMO (not just artistically, lol).

Reality is, major label productions are usually engineered fast and cheap. You won't find much great work ethic in that "scene", trust me. Especially not today.

BTW, you're in a forum here. You have to accept other people's opinions, no matter if you like them or not. ;)
 
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moses said:
Well, it's definitely my personal opinion. But it is a fact that such dense mixes quickly get boring, have weak dynamic range based "emotions", don't kick anymore after just a few seconds of listening, ect.

The wall of sound is the hamburger of audio engineering. Really, check out Isaac Hayes or Marvin Gaye's work from that time. Or Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, ect. That's a whole different league.

For today, check out Björk, Radiohead, Goldfrapp, Air ect. That's great engineering. All the hyper-marketed plastic pop music stuff you mentioned is definitely not the result of great engineering - it sound seriously ugly IMO (not just artistically, lol).

Reality is, major label productions are usually engineered fast and cheap. You won't find much great work ethic in that "scene", trust me. Especially not today.

BTW, you're in a forum here. You have to accept other people's opinions, no matter if you like them or not. ;)
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Well yeh, for sure you can say your opinion, I have nothing against that.

I have learnt to like many kind of music. At the beginning of my so-called "career" I only listened to hard rock from 70's, mostly Deep Purple. I still love that music. But I've absorbed a lot of different styles since that, and not just genres, but the general master sounds too - old dynamic rock tracks and super-compressed chart pop. Both have their own interesting qualities.

Have you btw got familiar with the music I claimed to be "modern Wall of Sound"? Not that you would start to like it but just to see what it's like. There are many kind of interesting elements, such as the weird three-to-the-floor beats of RedOne. When you see something interesting, maybe other things start to seem interesting too, such as the sounds.

All the modern pop is very compressed. But you know what - I think it fits to the dance-pop style. But for rock it doesn't IMO fit. A lot of modern rock sounds to me a little tedious, and I think it's a lot because of engineering and mastering. There are rock genres that fit to this modern standard, for example I think Muse's and Kings of Leon's styles work with the strong compression. But some other rock - damn, it needs dynamics! Snares gotto be louder than other sounds!
 
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i agree with Vurki on this one. every genre has their own definition of a mix you cannot compare a pop mix "wall of sound" to a jazz mix or classical music mix. Whereareas compression and tight minimal dynamics might be acceptable in one areas might be totally shun out in another. At the end of the day when comparing a mix be courteos of the style of music because mixing engineers who are employed to mix top records are not employed to use the same approach they used mixing Jazz to Pop.
 
Hey Moses , I read his bio "Wall of Pain" , I think it was called .
Very interesting read indeed .

Gotta agree with Bjork , especially "Play Dead" .
Good old Jah wobble eh :)
 
Hey Vurki,

I actually engineered Ronnie Spector's most recent release. The producer, Bobby, and I sat down and actually talked about the pros and cons of The Wall of Sound approach. Bobby had drawn a lot of influence from Phil, but embellished on it further - rather than having a bunch of instruments playing unison or octave parts, Bob would have a bunch of instruments playing different harmonic parts. It wouldn't be uncommon to have three guitar lines, bass, piano, strings, harp, synths, drums, percussion and all sorts of other stuff going.

We ultimately decided to go for a slightly more open sound, so that everything could be picked out of the mix to some degree - though there might have been a few synths that got swallowed up a bit.

A lot of today's production has some serious layering going on. The general approach however is not merely to "thicken", but really to invent something that sounds like a unique sound. Instead of having multiple performances, I might get a producer in who has played a single midi line and wants to feed it out to three or more vsts or keyboards. Strings is a particularly common one - I remember doing a session where the midi was routed into a Motiff, with the same line triggering Predator and Samplitude. The result was a unique blend of strings that sounded real - but had strange harmonics that made them feel unreal at the same time.
 
I didn't like what Spector did with the beatles "Let it be" album. He did have the excuse of trying to cover up poor musicianship but I did think he could have done better to make the production fit the music.

I've always thought that this was an issue with the wall of sound approach in that you lose the humanity of the music a bit. I think you have to be careful with this and do what is best for the music. Off course sometimes it works good like if you want to emphasise a chorus for example.

I would define layering as when talking about a small part of the mix - say the guitars, and "Wall of sound" as an approach to the whole or most of the backing instruments. I also agree that the layered parts needn't be playing the same thing.

Incidently, want to know how the song "I like it" was thought up? I know that you posted about this subject in the composing section. I actually have no idea but you can guess. I think that someone listened to "All night long" by Lionel Richie. Imagined a different melody to the verse section. (I like it?) Then put it to a modern rythm. Composing can be really easy if you do it this way.

Personally I'm not a big fan of the Wall of sound approach as it lacks definition, but if you are promoting something, making things sound big as opposed to good often wins the argument.

EP
 
WeissSound said:
Hey Vurki,

I actually engineered Ronnie Spector's most recent release.
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*Doffs cap*
Good on you sir .

For the nay sayers of the sound :

watch
 
Oh yeah, for sure layering and thick sound generally don't mean just putting many instruments to play the same thing. It was just an example of how it can be executed.

Since I'm just a beginner, I'm not experienced in mixing wall of sound music, but I can imagine it's a challenge.

Weiss, I listened to Best Christmas Ever. Synths??? I liked that EP indeed... but didn't find synths, not much Wall Of Sound either. So what am I understanding wrong here? :P

Emmapeel9, I'm actually not familiar at all with the original Wall Of Sound, since I'm a young guy who is mainly interested in modern music. However I want to get to know to that stuff better, so I tried to find tracks from Let It Be from Youtube. But it seems like there are many versions of the songs... like some with Spector's orchestrations and some with not. What should I be listening to? Wikipedia says the album Let It Be is completely produced by Spector but I can't get that album for me right now, so I'd like to find some separate songs from Youtube etc.

Btw now when I'm thinking the composition of I Like It, your guess actually does make things a little clearer to me. So much to learn :)

Generally, what would you guys suggest me to get familiar with? What original Wall Of Sound music? What albums, singles etc.? Are there other important names than Phil?

---------- Post added at 12:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 PM ----------
Foggy said:
*Doffs cap*
Good on you sir .

For the nay sayers of the sound :

watch
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I had never heard of Bernard Butler before, and when searching from internet, he doesn't seem to get a lot of credit when it comes to wall of sound music. I'm wondering if it really is only Phil who has done important achievements in that field? I really don't know about this.
 
I wasn't being facetious then Vurki .
I noticed that the wiki had some examples of other records that fit the bill .

Bernard Butler , was the guitarist from Suede .
After the band he works as a songwriter and producer for many artists .
I wouldn't have thought he always goes for the wall of sound , but then again I haven't listened to much of his stuff .
 
Listen to "The long and winding road" "Let it be" and "Across the universe" by the beatles, from the "Let it be" album.

The album did well but I didn't think the production suited the music. Mcartney was indeed unhappy with some of the treatment of the songs and re-produced the album a few years ago - "Let it be" naked.

EP
 
Vurki said:
Weiss, I listened to Best Christmas Ever. Synths??? I liked that EP indeed... but didn't find synths, not much Wall Of Sound either. So what am I understanding wrong here? :P
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No, I may have not been clear. Bobby (the producer) and I consciously decided NOT to go for the wall-of-sound approach. Which is why you don't hear it. We wanted put music behind Ronnie that would showcase her personality. It's a "cleaner" sounding record, and much more open sounding record than her previous work. Engineering wise the vocals are very up in the mix, with lots of space around them.

Synth wise, there are some synthesizers in there - but most of it is real deal organic instruments. Bob usually has very complex instrumentation, but on this record we decided not to do that.

The origin of Wall-of-Sound is within early rock. It was traditionally a way to make mono playback sound massive.

"Let It Be" as produced by Phil Spector was done with disregard to Paul McCartney. He did not want a Wall-of-Sound production. Which is why the alternate version is extremely sparse - that is the way Paul had intended it.
 
I listen to music mostly via Spotify, the Scandinavian music player that contains millions of tracks, but it hasn't got any Beatles. Youtube doesn't contain it either. I went to library, but Let It Be was lended. I took everything there was that had something to do with Spector: a Beatles collection, Ramones' End Of The Century and George Harrison's The Concert for Banglades. Which means that... I didn't got Wall of Sound almost at all! Miserable. I better just go back another time.

Foggy: yeah I was just kidding.

Emmapeel9: I have managed to listen to Spector produced Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road. I liked at least the latter a lot, but I'm not saying that Spector did good job with the album - I'm not familiar with this thing. When I get to listen to the album, I'll see how it makes me feel!

WeissSound: my bad, I got a little wrong picture. Have you engineered true Wall of Sound recordings? Even though you were happy with this more clear and light recording style, have you generally liked Wall of Sound?
 
LOL, are you kidding?!

Not sure if I understood you properly, but are you actually saying that you don't know a sh!t about HOW "wall of sound" sounds?!

That would definitely be a serious "post of the year" candidate. ;)
 
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