Wall of Sound | Hacker News Reader

Wall of Sound

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69 pointsPaulHoule50 comments

My 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 greatest record he had ever heard. Carlin describes the song as having become "a spiritual touchstone" for Wilson, while music historian Luis Sanchez states that it formed an enduring part of Wilson's mythology, being the Spector record that "etched itself the deepest into Brian's mind ... it comes up again and again in interviews and biographies, variably calling up themes of deep admiration, a source of consolation, and a baleful haunting of the spirit."

> Music journalist David Dalton, who visited Wilson's home in 1967, said that Wilson had analyzed "Be My Baby" "like an adept memorizing the Koran." Dalton later wrote about a box of tapes he had discovered in Wilson's bedroom: "I assumed they were studio demos or reference tracks and threw one on the tape machine. It was the strangest thing ... All the tapes were of Brian talking into a tape recorder. Hour after hour of stoned ramblings on the meaning of life, color vibrations, fate, death, vegetarianism and Phil Spector."

> In the early 1970s, Wilson instructed his engineer Stephen Desper to create a tape loop consisting only of the chorus of "Be My Baby". Wilson listened to the loop for several hours in what Desper saw as "some kind of a trance." Wilson's daughter Carnie stated that during her childhood: "I woke up every morning to boom boom-boom pow! Boom boom-boom pow! Every day." Wilson told The New York Times in 2013 that he had listened to the song at least 1,000 times. In his 2016 memoir, Wilson recalled playing the song's drum intro "ten times until everyone in the room told me to stop, and then I played it ten more times." Bandmate Mike Love remembered Wilson comparing the song to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. [0][1]

A personal anecdote: Hearing "Be my Baby" in my parents' kitchen radio, recognizing it as this wonderful piece of music I had heard somewhere before, and listening to it very happily, is one of my earliest childhood memories. My daughter, who is 2, saw the single's cover pop up in the YouTube suggestions on my laptop screen a few weeks ago and specifically demanded this song to be played multiple times (she had seen the cover a few months earlier when we played it to her, and remembered it). So maybe Brian Wilson was onto something.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_My_Baby

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Wilson

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.

It's too late to listen to it for the first time in 2021. You had to listen to it in 1963, or with that frame of mind, because before then there was nothing else like it. Everything after was influenced by it. And now it's normal. Just like Dylan, or the Beatles or any great influencer. They don't sound that great today. If you weren't alive before them, it seems normal and pedestrian, like a standard that was always there. Only it wasn't. At some point someone had to invent that great leap forward, then everyone after copies it, and so today it is taken for granted as the standard baseline from which you build your thing onto.

This is exactly how I felt watching "Citizen Kane". It just felt like an ordinary movie? Still, a good movie, but what was all the hype about? Turns out the gravity of that movie was all about the influence it had on all future generations of film.

See also Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy

"Why is this guy saying all these obvious things as if they were important?"

Because he was literally the first one.

I’m aware of the Seinfeld effect and I concede that is probably part of it, but I also think your other examples - Dylan and The Beatles - are great, and have stood the test of time far better than The Ronettes.

Dylan, Stones, Beatles and other evolved over time. Ronettes were primarily one-hit-wonder territory. I know they had multiple 'hits', but they were largely manufactured by Spector. The other examples were self-directed, self-contained and were able to evolve and improve themselves over time.

Had the Beatles never done anything after their first album, it would still be 'good' for its time, but it was their ability to improve each record that gave them such an edge over everyone else.

Is there a contemporary equivalent to that song? Is democratization of production and commoditization of delivery stifling “breakthroughs” in music?

My thesis is that when every piece of music has a clever gimmick, nothing sounds unique.

This is a curse of many highly influential works, they seem unoriginal after experiencing the works it influenced first[1].

[1]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunn...

I've heard the song before but when back and listened to it.

Sounds like many other terrible recordings from early 60s- terrible mix, terrible background noise, instruments can't be heard distinctly.

Contrast Take Five, recorded live several years before. It's got some background noise but it's still so clear you can hear the creaking of the bass during the drum solo.

Any track on Pet Sounds. Recorded only a few years later, and under heavy influence by Spector, it sounds so much dramatically better.

Can anybody point out a better recorded example of Spector's wall of sound?

> Can anybody point out a better recorded example of Spector's wall of sound?

"River Deep - Mountain High" is probably the pinnacle of the wall of sound that Spector did. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Lehkou2Do) That said, you aren't going to get the clarity you're accustomed to because of the layers and layers of sound required and the fact that up until the mid 60s you were dealing with only 2-3 track recording. The Beatles didn't get access to 8 tracks until late 1968 (Sgt. Peppers was done with two 4 track machines), and 16 tracks weren't common until the early 70s. Wilson did Pet Sounds by initially recording the backing tracks on a 4 track, piping that mono mix into track one of the new 8 track console Columbia had installed, and then using the remaining channels for vocals (one channel for each member) and sweetening. I'd say the best quality recording of Spector's wall of sound is "Let it Down". (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gyk_gvuIoI)

That said, if you've listened to Pet Sounds and "Wouldn't it be nice" then you've heard the wall of sound.

I happened to be listening to that track when I read your comment. My complaint about that track is that it's very muddy (none of the instruments playing together sound very clear).

I went and listened to River Deep- same problem. Just too much sound and poor mixing. Now I'm listening to Let It Down- definitely much cleaner-sounding (less warble and garble).

When it comes to multitrack recordings from the 1960s I still think the best is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983..._(A_Merman_I_Should_Tur... which Hendrix was disappointed in (compared to both the Beach Boys and Beatles concept albums) but has an excellent stereo image, instrument separation, dynamic range, low background noise...

>My complaint about that track is that it's very muddy (none of the instruments playing together sound very clear).

This is partially the point though. It's meant to evoke a feeling, not to be a picture perfect, clean separation, pristine recording of instruments. One of Spector's sayings when talking about certain instruments in his Wall of Sound arrangements was "Felt not heard".

Another thing to consider is that the Wall of Sound was produced to sound a certain way on a crappy AM car radio speaker. "Muddy" is the goal, because that's what sounded best when you were cruising around the neighborhood on Friday night with the windows down and your arm around a girl.

Exactly what you said. The issue is that it influenced everything that came after. So it doesn't sound novel now.

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...

If 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 to these back to back:

  * (spector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4HjTH_fTM
  * (naked)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfVAJNqWw84

  * (spector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90M60PzmxEE
  * (naked)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLddD6Xf-8g

> 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.

To expand on this, the album was produced at a very contentious time for The Beatles when they weren't cooperating with each other, around the time of their breakup.

The recording project had been put on hold, and I think Spector only became involved when it was revived. He replaced George Martin, their normal producer. And this was done without consulting some members of the band.

This article (which is about "The Long and Winding Road", one of the tracks above) is an interesting read:

https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/the-long-and-winding-road...

Paul McCartney was furious that his song had been altered without his knowledge or agreement. George Martin, their normal producer, didn't have complimentary things to say about Spector either.

* (spector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4HjTH_fTM

* (naked) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfVAJNqWw84

* (spector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90M60PzmxEE

* (naked) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLddD6Xf-8g

Wow, I might actually prefer the Naked version of Long and Winding Road. The stripped down background makes the vocals convey more emotion. For Across the Universe, I still like the more psychedelic sound of the original - but thanks for the links! Despite being a Beatles fan I never listened to the Naked album.

Not quite 'wall of sound', but there was a lot of echo-y stuff added to early US Beatles albums per Dave Dexter Jr, "for the American market". I suspect there was an attempt to be "wall of sound" like, at least in part, but it was also an easy way to give yourself "production" credits on Beatles' work.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22produced+by+george+martin...

(I mostly love the Spector sound but it's a famous and funny quip.)

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...

> Indian tradition of over-driven vocals in music

That's interesting, any examples of that? The Reddit link doesn't give an example or explanation

That sound shares some things in common with the “motown sound” as well

Very cool!

One feels like I'm sitting in an orchestra pit or at a concert, the other sounds like an intimate private studio

wow, never heard of that. I like turning off the schmaltz.

Wrong wall of sound. Actual wall of sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound_(Grateful_Dead)

The grateful dead bankrupted themselves bringing a revolutionary approach to sound reproduction to their touring kit. Unlike every system before and after, it directly routed the audio of each individual player to a unique cluster of speakers. Many of the reproduction qualities are still not easy to achieve today (perfectly in-phase at a quarter mile out), although the actual system was impractical and was eventually retired.

Is there any advancement in technology that could make it more feasible today?

no, transistor-based technology means that these days it makes more sense to capture each input audio stream and mix it before sending it to speakers.

Here's where things ended up: https://meyersound.com/news/fare-thee-well/ Almost everywhere you go, you'll see stacks of meyer sound speakers.

Phil 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. Mono doesn't work very well on headphones though imo.

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.

Two of the examples of later applications of the wall of sound in the article are Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey," and Spiritualized's "Let it Come Down," which are both fantastic albums if you are into that. The latter doesn't use the same kind of reverb, but that technique of creating a giant wash of sound was huge across the entire subgenre of shoegazer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoegaze), and arguably extends into the current era with the whole modular synth drone scene, which comprises a varied spectrum of diminishingly listenable microtonal soundscapes.

I think I understand why Spectre was less about the song itself than the overall effect of the production. The early Raveonettes albums took the best parts of most of what he produced and made more perfect versions from a lofi pop perspective, imo. Songs like "Lust" "Great Love Sound" and their cover of "I wanna be adored," are probably the most comprehensive examples the style Spectre pioneered, and I'd say they improved it with interpretation. I would probably even recommend "Lust," and "Dead Sound" as examples that representative of Spectre's sound more than any of the actual songs he produced. Nothing can compete with hearing JMC for the first time in the 80s/90s, but the Raveonettes are pretty close. They're to that era what Interpol was to Joy Division - interpreted, and almost better. That wall of sound technique over pop is a big influence on my own stuff still.

Let it Come Down perfected the wall of sound style imo. Beautiful album.

Despite being a crazy murderer, Phil Spector was a great audio engineer. A big reason he produced this way is that he knew it would sound good ("hot") on jukeboxes and radios of the time.

> The intention was to exploit the possibilities of studio recording to create an unusually dense orchestral aesthetic that came across well through radios and jukeboxes of the era.

Really happy to see people discussing "Be My Baby" on here, that's one of the best songs ever. Not just for Spector's production but the vocal performance is amazing too.

Listening to songs in the Wall of Sound style production, and in particular "Be My Baby" really influenced me as a musician.

I don't know if this is even Wall of Sound, but Along Comes Mary by The Association is a super interesting song to me. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URUd5RUAz1I)

It starts with a guitar and a keyboard (panned all the way left and right) plus bass guitar, drums, claps, and vocals. Pretty standard so far. Then we get to the first chorus which introduces brass, cowbell, and vocal harmonies. Right after that, a lower brass comes in which doubles the bass. Later we meet the flute, and then during the final verse the vocal harmonies get more intense. The result sounds huge to me, but each part can be distinctly heard (which is why I'm not sure if this qualifies as "wall of sound").

As if the production weren't enough, the composition is also brilliant. It's catchy and poppy, yet it has some very strange chord progressions and interesting harmonies.

The genre is apparently "sunshine pop" but I haven't been able to find any other songs in that genre that I like even half as much.

There was a similar concept with a similar name at the same time in jazz music:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheets_of_sound

Sheets of sound was more an consequence of Coltrane's unique style and technical skillset, but this article does make me wonder if both concepts were to some extent outgrowths of the technology at the time.

If you need a good example album, and as we're heading into the season, I would recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Gift_for_You_from_...

"Wall of Sound" was also an extremely awesome record/CD store on Pike St. in Seattle in the early 90s that specialized in experimental, electronic and ambient music (which I always thought was a better target for the term "wall of sound" that Spector's stuff).

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.

Devin Townsend does this too

Heh I was expecting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound_(Grateful_Dead)

Huh! I was expecting some reference to post-rock like Mogwai and Mono, and/or dreampop/shoegaze like My Bloody Valentine.

I was expecting a reference to Phil Spector's wall of sound arranging technique, and was pleasantly surprised!

Why 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is it not stupid that someone's sins should stain every single unrelated thing they've ever done? What kind of moral fascism is it where the person must be good and holy in order to not invalidate every single thing someone has made?

Same thing could be said about ReiserFS... a technical achievement completely disregarded because the creator murdered his wife.

The idea that a creation or an idea is tainted by its creators sins has no basis in physical reality and exists solely in the minds of humans.

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.

If nothing else, it’s a useful reminder that people can do both bad things and good things, and that it’s hard to reduce someone’s life to a simple summary judgement.

TIL! Thanks for cluing me in to that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lana_Clarkson

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