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Post by Kapitan on Jan 26, 2022 16:01:02 GMT
What are your favorite arrangements in Beach Boys recordings, and why?
I'd like to explain a little for anyone not really familiar with the meaning of that term. It's not a scary, music-nerd thing, necessarily. (I mean, we can get nerdy about it, but you don't have to.) Historically, the term really meant a reworking of the original composition, but in pop music it even refers to the original recording.
Maybe the easiest way to understand it is with this Beach Boysesque fictional example: the composition of the song is done by Brian Wilson at a piano. He decides how to structure it, what the chords are, what the melody does, maybe even the harmonies. The arrangement is how it is realized: is there a drummer on a trap set, or are there percussionists on timpani and sleigh bells? Is there an electric bass, a standup bass, both? Might he make horn or woodwind parts, and if so, are they doubling some vocal line? Or maybe doing a counter melody? Perhaps they play a version of the melody between vocal lines, as a callback.
These sorts of things go into the original arrangement. And of course covers of songs often rearrange them: someone might do an acoustic guitar-and-voice version of "God Only Knows," which can't help but be a new arrangement, considering the original has all those other instruments and voices. You might also decide to put a different section of the song up-front, or repeat something, or make any other changes. It's the same song, just rearranged.
Hopefully that makes sense to anyone not really familiar with the term.
Now, what's your favorite Beach Boys arrangement--not necessarily just the songs, though it could be that too--and why? My initial thought was going to be to ask that it specifically be something arranged for instrumentalists outside the band (e.g. horns, woodwinds, strings), but that's not necessary. It can just as well be the core band on the typical rock instruments. Whatever you like.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 26, 2022 16:41:34 GMT
I'll kick off with one I love (that might surprise you): "Little Bird."
I think the song is cool, but I think the arrangement is great. The verses are spare and funky, with the prominent bass on the "and" of 2 and 4 and the guitar and/or banjo(?) on each beat, Jim Gordon's drumming very basic and emphasizing the backbeats; but between each verse, it grows with the vocal harmonies, Dennis playing harmonium, and the banjo now playing a more complex line. Just that makes for great dynamic and textural contrast.
I love the drum fill to go into the B-section ("Where's my pretty bird?"), where we also have trumpets introduced. The bass also shifts here to being right on the beat, sitting on the same pitch throughout, right up until a cool descending run to that next verse.
Introducing cellos for a solo of sorts (with the great, semi-dissonant vocal harmonies) is cool, right into that "Child is the Father of the Man" segment (a bassline I've always loved) with the muted trumpets. And in the outro, the simple banjo melody with that same feel in the bassline and a louder harmonium is a cool melding of feelings that led up to now.
The whole arrangement feels of a piece, yet each part does contrast with what comes before and after. By adding and subtracting instruments, it does a nice job changing textures--even in a two-minute song.
Big fan.
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Post by jk on Jan 26, 2022 18:43:43 GMT
Great idea for a thread, Cap'n. It didn't take me long to choose "Don't Talk" as a favourite example. It somehow manages to combine opulence with sparseness -- the arrival of Sid Sharp's quintet of strings carries it into another dimension (it floats off the planet, as Bruce aptly describes the instrumental break in the BBC's Pet Sounds documentary). Love the timps towards the end. The great thing about such BBT topics these days is that JH is around to tell us if we're talking nonsense!
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 26, 2022 18:50:08 GMT
The great thing about such BBT topics these days is that JH is around to tell us if we're talking nonsense! There's no nonsense in people giving their opinions! That said, obviously joshilynhoisington is likely to have some interesting insights on hers or others' choices.
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Post by jk on Jan 26, 2022 20:26:01 GMT
The great thing about such BBT topics these days is that JH is around to tell us if we're talking nonsense! There's no nonsense in people giving their opinions! That said, obviously joshilynhoisington is likely to have some interesting insights on her or others' choices. Don't get me wrong. The nonsense won't be in the opinions but it might be in the facts contained in those opinions.
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Post by joshilynhoisington on Jan 27, 2022 0:39:48 GMT
I'll kick off with one I love (that might surprise you): "Little Bird."
I think the song is cool, but I think the arrangement is great. The verses are spare and funky, with the prominent bass on the "and" of 2 and 4 and the guitar and/or banjo(?) on each beat, Jim Gordon's drumming very basic and emphasizing the backbeats; but between each verse, it grows with the vocal harmonies, Dennis playing harmonium, and the banjo now playing a more complex line. Just that makes for great dynamic and textural contrast.
I love the drum fill to go into the B-section ("Where's my pretty bird?"), where we also have trumpets introduced. The bass also shifts here to being right on the beat, sitting on the same pitch throughout, right up until a cool descending run to that next verse.
Introducing cellos for a solo of sorts (with the great, semi-dissonant vocal harmonies) is cool, right into that "Child is the Father of the Man" segment (a bassline I've always loved) with the muted trumpets. And in the outro, the simple banjo melody with that same feel in the bassline and a louder harmonium is a cool melding of feelings that led up to now.
The whole arrangement feels of a piece, yet each part does contrast with what comes before and after. By adding and subtracting instruments, it does a nice job changing textures--even in a two-minute song.
Big fan.
Yes, it's great. The cool thing about Friends is Brian had accumulated a lot more experience with practical applications of musical instruments by then, so he uses them a little more adventurously at times. We might miss that naïve, outsider use of trumpets in the bottom third of the playable compass, for instance, but sometimes it's satisfying to hear trumpets do actual trumpety things, which they do here. But it's not as if it's a total 180 degree turn -- the banjo is not altogether unlike what it does on Cabinessense.
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Post by joshilynhoisington on Jan 27, 2022 0:46:39 GMT
Great idea for a thread, Cap'n. It didn't take me long to choose "Don't Talk" as a favourite example. It somehow manages to combine opulence with sparseness -- the arrival of Sid Sharp's quintet of strings carries it into another dimension (it floats off the planet, as Bruce aptly describes the instrumental break in the BBC's Pet Sounds documentary). Love the timps towards the end. The great thing about such BBT topics these days is that JH is around to tell us if we're talking nonsense! It's an unusual arrangement in the context of Pet Sounds especially -- no horns, no auxiliary little percussion things going on, just that plodding ride cymbal. The only thing providing any kind of forward movement is a frantically tremolo picked 12-string guitar (see: ...for my recreation of this part in isolation) -- otherwise everything is quite sustained and smooth, with the arco string bass, and then the string section bring more animation into the track as it enters. I think all of that serves to highlight the drama of the timpani.
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Post by joshilynhoisington on Jan 27, 2022 0:50:22 GMT
Building off the mention of Little Bird above, I really love the arrangement of the Friends track. String bass only (no Fender), brushed drums, the new fangled clavinet, as usual used in a decidedly different way than it would come to popularly be used (that is to say, as a funky thing), really interesting interaction between the saxes and the harmonica, some nice vibraphone...just a great feeling arrangement that is hard to imagine being rendered any other way.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 27, 2022 14:20:20 GMT
Another one I love is "Time to Get Alone."
First of all, the different keyboard instruments used on different beats in the verses was brilliant. It doesn't jump out at you, it isn't overly obtrusive, but it brings some variety in the sound--even some momentum in that it's changing. (Variety brings the illusion of movement or propulsion, in my opinion.)
Then once we hit the chorus, it almost feels like a shuffle as much as a waltz, with the swinging 8th notes in the drums.
The bridge has that nice horn part and some very BW sleigh bells. And then vibes, and then strings ending in a glissando flourish. Very exciting musically. It all builds for the much grander outro chorus.
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Post by joshilynhoisington on Jan 27, 2022 16:24:07 GMT
Another one I love is "Time to Get Alone."
First of all, the different keyboard instruments used on different beats in the verses was brilliant. It doesn't jump out at you, it isn't overly obtrusive, but it brings some variety in the sound--even some momentum in that it's changing. (Variety brings the illusion of movement or propulsion, in my opinion.)
Then once we hit the chorus, it almost feels like a shuffle as much as a waltz, with the swinging 8th notes in the drums.
The bridge has that nice horn part and some very BW sleigh bells. And then vibes, and then strings ending in a glissando flourish. Very exciting musically. It all builds for the much grander outro chorus.
One of the great arranging strokes in the catalog, I think, is the multi-keyboard effect. It's such an obvious idea to try, but sort of tedious to effect, so I applaud them for giving it a go. One wonders how they selected which timbres to go in which order. Piano, Tack Piano, Harpsichord, Baldwin Organ (Or, possibly electric harpsichord or clavinet...) It would be interesting to hear them in a different order.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 27, 2022 19:25:00 GMT
How about an earlier one, something that does a lot with typical rock instrumentation?
I point to none other than "I Get Around," which I think is one of the greatest rock and roll records of all time.
First, the way they use unison hits during the verse (bass and guitar, then adding guitar in a higher register for it later) adds a lot of punch that wouldn't necessarily be there were they just playing it straight, strumming the chords and such (as they do in the chorus). Adding the claps for the second half of each verse is also fantastic!
But let's not forget the vocal arrangements! The intro is pure heaven, but the chorus is also great, with interesting parts that draw your attention (both the sustained falsetto and the driving "get around round round I get around") so that the more typical, simple background is perfectly sufficient.
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Post by carllove on Jan 27, 2022 19:44:07 GMT
Great idea for a thread, Cap'n. It didn't take me long to choose "Don't Talk" as a favourite example. It somehow manages to combine opulence with sparseness -- the arrival of Sid Sharp's quintet of strings carries it into another dimension (it floats off the planet, as Bruce aptly describes the instrumental break in the BBC's Pet Sounds documentary). Love the timps towards the end. The great thing about such BBT topics these days is that JH is around to tell us if we're talking nonsense! And you two have picked my favorite two! Dang you have good taste!
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Post by jk on Jan 27, 2022 20:02:16 GMT
I fell in love with "Feel Flows" at first hearing. It's still one of my all-time favourite BB tracks, not least because of the (for the Boys) unique freakout at its centre, lots of guitar and flute above the repeating bass figure, with Charles Lloyd's sax occasionally poking its head out of the stew. This is from pp. 85-86 of Abbott's Back to the Beach. Oddly, I could only find this passage in two places on the internet: an article in Rolling Stone (from where I cut and pasted it) and a best-left-alone site reproducing an old post of mine at Smiley that seems to have vanished from there -- does this mean stuff was lost in the breakdown after all? Here's Carl describing how he produced "Feel Flows": ["]I played piano first and then I played organ. I played piano twice, overdubbed it, and used a variable speed oscillator to make the track different speeds so that the piano would be a little bit out of tune, sort of a spread sound, do you understand what I mean? You play the tape at 30 inches per second, and then you may slow it down to about 29 and 3/4 inches per second. It wouldn't be that great actually, I got my cycles mixed up with inches per second. But say at 60 cycles and then 59. So that makes the piano sound like the effect of a 12-string guitar, you know? When the two strings are at the same octave but just a tiny bit out of tune? You know that real ringing sound?
"And then I put the organ on and put it through the Moog at the same time, so that one side of the stereo had the direct organ sound and the other side had the return through the Moog synthesizer. It's sort of like a vibrato, but the frequency changes, there's a tone change like a graphic tone. Do you know what a graphic equalizer is? Well, it just springs out, you can amplify any particular part of a sound spectrum, like from 50 cycles to 10,000 cycles. The Moog did that automatically; there's a component called a sequencer and you can time it to react and go through a series of circuits all connected to a different frequency, and it does that back and forth. And therefore it sounded sort of like a vibrato or a wah wah, sort of both at the same time.
"Then I put on the bass, played the bass guitar. Then I put on the Moog for that part where the piano comes in by itself after the instrumental part, you know? Then we put on the bells, and a guy named Woody Thews [sic] played percussion on it, and I sang it. I put the guitar on about the same time.
"Then I think it was the next day Charles Lloyd came by and we did the flute and saxophone. And I might add, he heard it one time and then started playing, he started recording right away. It was really a thrill for me to have him play on it 'cause he’s a gifted musician. It was really great. And then the next session we did the vocals, the background part, and that was it."
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 28, 2022 13:49:22 GMT
You could really chose most anything from Pet Sounds for this, but one that really deserves credit is "Sloop John B." You can just go back to that segment in the Endless Harmony documentary for the Cliff's Notes version: it's a catchy enough song, a fine folk song, but not necessarily anything to write home about if the musicians are just strumming along with what's mostly just I-IV-V chords.
Brian Wilson's arrangement is glorious. I mean glorious, too: it shimmers, it's like something that belongs in a cathedral, it's holy. The opening twin ostinato parts already shows we're not in vanilla territory. The bass's entry is so prominent and interesting, too! Not just the fuzzy tone, but the part itself, the slide down to the first note, its walking moves before settling into the "real" part. The way instruments join throughout: the guitars, now the bass, now glockenspiel, now hi-hat and drums.
Similarly the voices, first melody, then melody and harmony, then backgrounds for Mike's verse. And those backgrounds, the way they don't do one thing, but change--that's something I love. It's one thing to say "we are doing "ooohs" in the verses; it's another to say we'll start with "dit dits," then "ooohs," and then "ahhs," and then we'll repeat the lyrics back to the melody singer," and so on. I've said in many threads over the years, that's the kind of harmony and background singing I love, something that separates the greats like the Beach Boys, Beatles, and Queen from run-of-the-mill groups.
And I'd be remiss not to mention the a cappella break and the double-time finish. Genius in both cases.
It used to be that people gave "Sloop" a hard time, or at the very least complained that it somehow marred Pet Sounds. I could not disagree more, and am glad that sentiment seems to have faded since my early days of fandom. It's a fine song, but it's a brilliant arrangement and recording.
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Post by jk on Jan 28, 2022 15:30:58 GMT
It used to be that people gave "Sloop" a hard time, or at the very least complained that it somehow marred Pet Sounds. I could not disagree more, and am glad that sentiment seems to have faded since my early days of fandom. It's a fine song, but it's a brilliant arrangement and recording.
Yes. These are the same people who see stories in albums that simply aren't there. I've never bought into the idea that Pet Sounds was a concept album, let alone a story with a beginning and an end. It's simply one of the best collections of some of the best songs ever committed to wax. I love "Sloop", and in my opinion there's no finer tribute to its greatness than * this*, particularly at 6:50. That said, if I had to extol the virtues of just one song on Pet Sounds, that song would be "I'm Waiting For The Day".
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