The Zombies - Odessey and the Oracle production question -- piano

[ryleestrange]

I'm fascinated with vintage sounds, and trying to translate the difficult analogue techniques to a modern sound, but for the life of me i cannot figure out how the Zombies got their piano sound on this record. It's thin in all the right places, while still sounding robust and full. did they do a bass pass? what other types of effects did they use? i can't even tell how much reverb is on it. that's one of the reasons this album fascinates me so much. cos i can't quite figure out what's going on. so please, how does one get a piano sound similar to this the song "A rose for emily" (it's on youtube, i'm too newbie to be able to post links, sorry!)

 

[grimtraveller]

It may be helpful to search out reviews of the album like this one. You may find little snippets of info that are invaluable.
I like the album but it's not really a psychedelic one, just recorded at Abbey Road around the same year period that saw Sergeant Pepper, The piper at the gates of dawn and SF Sorrow recorded there. Stretching it, you might call it psych lite, like you could describe some of the Kinks' stuff in that period, but in truth, it's good inventive pop with a cynical, dark soul......

 

[ryleestrange]

Oooo reviews are a great idea! thanks! yeah i never considered them psyche pop. which is funny cos i count SF Sorrow among my favourite of that era.

 

[grimtraveller]

Yeah, SF Sorrow is a fantastic album. It took me a lot of listens to get it because it really is hard to access. On first listen, it sounds like noisy, unmelodic twaddle. But somehow, further listens seem to clear the mist and reveal a masterpiece. I think the Pretty Things are the only British psychedelic outfit that mastered both the whimsical, foppish English side and the harsh, discordant American sides of psychedelia. All the psych outfits I've heard were one or the other.
Usually when they talk of "lost psychedelic masterpieces" or suchlike, it's an exaggeration. With the Pretties, it isn't.

One other quick thing. Back in the 60s, there was very little interest among non industry people as to how bands/producers/engineers got the sounds they did so with bands that weren't the Beatles or Stones, there's not a great deal of info on how certain sounds were gotten. Alot of the time, it was experimentation/guesswork and only later did people go "wow !".

 

[ryleestrange]

Really? I loved it from the big Who-styled chords right on the first track. That album was an immediate yes from me.

i know. i've been finding modern documentaries on earlier works (like pet sounds) to be very helpful, but unfortunately, many of those are aimed at casual fans, not music producers who want to expand their craft. documentaries are often about the artist's life during the time they were recording [album]. which i enjoy in its own right, but i certainly wish there was about a million times more emphasis on the actual production side. i wish people had listings of the types of drums drummers used back then (which are surprisingly hard to find).

 

[grimtraveller]

Really? I loved it from the big Who-styled chords right on the first track. That album was an immediate yes from me.

Funnilly enough, about 4 years before I heard the album, I was aware of the opening track and "She says good morning". They were on this "British psychedelia" compilation that I got from the library. There were about 30 songs. The Yardbirds were on it. David Bowie, in an early incarnation as Davy Jones and the Lower Third, was on it. It had some great songs.
"SF Sorrow is born" is a great track. It has one of my favourite guitar intros. In those days, studios like Abbey Road were very uptight about recording loud electric guitars. The independents weren't, but the biggies {EMI, Decca, Pye} were. So people recording in them found they couldn't do a Hendrix or a Clapton and blast the place out. Paradoxically, engineers had no qualms about recording the acoustic guitar overdriven. So some wonderful new guitar tones were born as a result. "SF Sorrow is born" is a good example, not to mention that wonderful mellotron on both the string setting and trying to pass as a brass section. When I first heard the entire album, I couldn't understand why none of the songs were as good as the two I was familiar with ! But with time.........
The only crap bit on the album is "Well of destiny".
I also laughed recently when I found out what "Bracelet of fingers" was actually about.

i've been finding modern documentaries on earlier works (like pet sounds) to be very helpful, but unfortunately, many of those are aimed at casual fans, not music producers who want to expand their craft. documentaries are often about the artist's life during the time they were recording [album]. which i enjoy in its own right, but i certainly wish there was about a million times more emphasis on the actual production side. i wish people had listings of the types of drums drummers used back then (which are surprisingly hard to find).

I agree. I feel the same way. It gets a bit more of a mention nowadays but nowhere near enough. But I was thinking about this and kind of figured out that engineers were doing their job. If we spoke to postmen of the 60s, they probably wouldn't remember the details of what they used to do and the grade of sack they used either ! They certainly never thought there'd be such interest. Even the autobiographies of guys like Ken Scott, George Martin and Geoff Emerick show that they've forgotten heaps of stuff as often their recollections are full of contradictions and repeated half truths.

 

[ryleestrange]

So people recording in them found they couldn't do a Hendrix or a Clapton and blast the place out. Paradoxically, engineers had no qualms about recording the acoustic guitar overdriven. So some wonderful new guitar tones were born as a result. "SF Sorrow is born" is a good example

Another great example of that is JUmping Jack flash, which is just a recording mic shoved up close to an acoustic guitar. most people don't know there's no electric in that song.

 

[grimtraveller]

Another great example of that is JUmping Jack flash, which is just a recording mic shoved up close to an acoustic guitar. most people don't know there's no electric in that song.

True, same with "Street fighting man". The only electric instrument in that song is the bass. The guitar and drums were played in a hotel room on an acoustic guitar and tiny almost toy travelling drums {those olden day practice drums that had a tambourine as the snare !} recorded onto a cassette and overloaded, then transferred onto tape. Part of "Gimme Shelter" too. Keith Richards says that because the cassette would distort, you'd get this great electric sound without having to use an electric guitar. So he'd connect it to a small monitor and put a mic on the monitor and record what came through. He reckons it would have gone further except that as cassette technology improved, they put a limiter on them so that they wouldn't distort, thus killing a great innovation !
I love those old stories of the things they used to do in the 60s just to get different sounds. I try them out from time to time. I tried that guitar into cassette idea, but the result was awful ! Partly because the cassette I had was so good it wouldn't distort and partly because I slathered too much chorus on {I was in my 'drench everything in FX' period} and it just made my skin crawl. That was the reason I hate the sound of chorus to this day !
Thinking about it, many of the sounds that ended up on albums like "Odessey and Oracle", "SF Sorrow", "The piper at the gates of dawn", "Sergeant Pepper", "Magical mystery tour", "A saucerful of secrets", "Tangerine dream" and "We are ever so clean" weren't necessarilly thought out beforehand and easilly got. Many came about through accidents or twiddling knobs or running instruments through strange looking artifacts and fortunately, the engineers and producers on hand were willing to accommodate their curiosity. Most of those sounds didn't become staples of rock and pop records and that tells me something. It tells me that they satisfied their curiosity in the moment and moved on. They rarely considered those experiments as anything other than diversions. As such, you should also try experimenting. I tried weird "necessity is the mother of invention" type things like singing through a bass drum before I had a reverb unit or putting the drums through a distortion unit and double tracking the drum part clean and then crunching the two together or backwards piano.
I know many view all of that as passé and a waste of time in these days of clean quick digital recording but I still like having fun doing nutty things with audio.......sometimes !

 

[ryleestrange]

oh i do things like that all the time. well, at least, i like fiddling with knobs and levers till i get interesting results. funny you bring up the chorus thing, cos my biggest production love is def leppard. the bombastic, wall of sound, everything and the kitchen sink-style production. i've only tried to diverge from that cos i wanna do something simple that fits my voice better. but man, do they love chorus. i do as a layer, sometimes, but their chorus the hell out of everything, at least did back in the day. now i like fucking with delays and stuff like that to get odd rhythmic things happening, or overdriving the hell out of my bass, or having a really dark reverb on my snare to make it sound like you're hitting it in a hollow cave.

most things i hear in songs taht i like i'll spend hours trying to replicate by ear.

 

[grimtraveller]

my biggest production love is def leppard. the bombastic, wall of sound, everything and the kitchen sink-style production.

Def Leppard.....interesting band. I don't really go for their style of sound, although they did it brilliantly. Most people that are into the succesful and well known Leppard sound don't really rate their debut album "On through the night". Even Joe Elliot doesn't ! But for me, it's not only one of the best debuts I've heard, it's one of the best heavy rock albums I've heard and to me, they were never the same band after it. They were a great example of a band that wrote songs and utilized heavy rock as the vehicle to present them rather than the other way around. Mutt Lange got together with them for their second and their plain, naïve, raw, English twin lead heavy rock sound disappeared forever.
I think they were right to go in the direction that they did, even though they lost me in the process. At the time of the magnificent debut, it seemed they were the leaders of the NWOBHM, a resurgence of British metal, taking the baton from the first wave of heavy rockers circa '66~79. But in retrospect, it was a false dawn and the last throw of the dice as heavy rock began splintering in a thousand unforeseen directions. Leppard possessed the foresight to exploit a melodic hybrid of hard rock and layered stadium rock that other bands had hinted at but they really took it on to new places. I dig their story and whenever documentaries or interviews come on, I'll watch them. Very intelligent and articulate guys.
But the 11 songs on "On through the night" were their apogee for me. The twin lead guitar attack of Pete Willis and Steve Clark just does it for me. That said, there are a number of key elements on that debut that they expanded on through their career.

or overdriving the hell out of my bass, or having a really dark reverb on my snare to make it sound like you're hitting it in a hollow cave.

Although I'm pretty experimental on many things, I'd say I was least so with my bass. Well, that's maybe not true because I've developed ways of recording three bass tracks at once {mic amp, DI and line out} and blending or using an acoustic bass guitar as a fretless {it has no frets and can be plugged in}. But I try to keep the bass sound as unaffected as possible. It wasn't always like this though. When I used to record on the 8 track portastudio, DI always sounded so 'floomy' but using the line out from my then amp {a Carlsbro} produced this slightly overdriven sound, plus I always overloaded the bass channel recording level. So when I solo the bass, it really is overdriven and I don't really like it. But in the context of the mix, it sounds neat. But over the last 4 or so years {coinciding with my moves to the dark side ~ digital}, the way the bass is in my songs has changed a bit and so too has the sound. Alot of the subtlety of effected bass is lost in a mix and can also make it hard to mix. A 'cleaner' {ie, non effected} bass sound drives the power home, I've found.
As ever, everything is song dependent.
As for the snare, I also like to put reverb on it to stand it out a bit. What I do is I heavilly compress the snare and add different reverbs {reverse sounds good on a really short setting} and create a second track, then put it just under the main snare in the mix so it's effect is subtle, but if you take it away, it sounds really thin. Alot of drummers don't like reverb on the snare but I do {I'm not a drummer but I've always thought 'drummish'}. I think it often adds an interesting colour.

most things i hear in songs that i like i'll spend hours trying to replicate by ear.

I tend to go for what I call "approximations" of a sound. It's funny, because I'll work out what seems to be an approximation, based on memory. Sometime later when I hear the original sound that my approximation is based on, it sounds nothing like what I've come up with ! But I like it that way.

 

[ryleestrange]

In my opinion Lep has never had a bad album. There was a time after i got into them that On Through The Night was my favourite album of theirs. Thing that still astounds me about def leppard is a.) that 4 of the five members can sing, and do so live, as well. b.) that, as you said, they can blend heavy rock with brilliant pop songwriting and c.) they write the best bridges i've ever heard. I also remember watching an interview with Phil Collen, about how he's not into wanky guitar solos, and that every solo should have a point, a melodic intention, that fits with the rest of the song. their 1996 album Slang is my all-time favourite album, and is by far their least successful. I'm one of those guys when it comes to bands. I often like the overlooked gems more than the "important" records. I'd pick White Album over Sgt. Peppers any day, for example.

As far as affecting instruments that really probably stems from my love of def leppard. And has never worn off. All my favourite artists, The Wildhearts, Devin Townsend, all have that same size to their production, and bands like Megadeth and Judas Priest were also two bands of that day (and before) that could write a heavy tune with a great hook, and melody. That's what i look for in a band. How heavy can you be while still remaining both melodic and memorable? Type O Negative is another love of mine, and possibly the first band that i think fits those criteria very well.

 

[rayc]

Are your listening to the mono or stereo mix of the Zombies? The stereo might geiuve you a better listening opportunity for the piano. I much prefer the mono but, as with Pet Sounds, the stereo allows some detailed listening.
SF Sorrow - I have the album & a DVD of it being performed live at a reunion gig - always liked that album.
I can't get into NWOBHM I'm afriad - the style, tempo & songs just aren't mine to embrace. Gimme Budgie & a couple of other heavy, heavy dudes any day. I LOVE heavy pop like Slade!
Twee Brit Psych annoys me - those gnomic tomes on Piper drove me away from the album for a while. I like lots of Brit Psych but skip the twee stuff - AND that goes for much of Sgt Peppers: The music hall lifts didn't do it for me.

 

[ryleestrange]

Are your listening to the mono or stereo mix of the Zombies? The stereo might geiuve you a better listening opportunity for the piano. I much prefer the mono but, as with Pet Sounds, the stereo allows some detailed listening.
SF Sorrow - I have the album & a DVD of it being performed live at a reunion gig - always liked that album.
I can't get into NWOBHM I'm afriad - the style, tempo & songs just aren't mine to embrace. Gimme Budgie & a couple of other heavy, heavy dudes any day. I LOVE heavy pop like Slade!
Twee Brit Psych annoys me - those gnomic tomes on Piper drove me away from the album for a while. I like lots of Brit Psych but skip the twee stuff - AND that goes for much of Sgt Peppers: The music hall lifts didn't do it for me.

Slade is brilliant. You should really check out bands like Saxon or Horsepower, they have very sweet/slade-influenced hard rock.

I dunno if i'm listening to mono or stereo, though i'm own the recent remaster, so i'm going to assume stereo.

also, i love Budgie. Cruelly underrated band.

 

[grimtraveller]

I often like the overlooked gems more than the "important" records. I'd pick White Album over Sgt. Peppers any day, for example.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, I've gotten into an album long before I was aware of it's critical or fan status. I remember being quite pleased when I read that Deep Purples' "Fireball" was regarded as part of their trio of classics because I already thought it was a great album. The same article mentioned "In rock" and "Machine head" as the other two. In rock turned out to be that, Machine head did not. But I love their debut, "Shades of Deep Purple" and their original last album "Come taste the band" and one rarely hears anything about them.
It was 25 years before I began reading of "Physical grafitti"'s status. But I'd been in love with it that long. Whereas their debut was held in almost mythic esteem but I was never impressed by it. It took me years to appreciate it. With the Beatles, I so fell in love with their music that pretty much anything of theirs I liked. When I heard Pepper, I thought, as I still do, that it was a fantastic album. It was after that that I heard about it's mythic status. But I loved "Revolver" and "Rubber soul" 20 years before it was fashionable to hold them in high esteem. I dug "the White album" and "Yellow submarine". I recorded them illegally at my school. I just thought they were great.
I think I'm like that with most bands actually. A good report can't make me love an album.

How heavy can you be while still remaining both melodic and memorable?

I think that in heavy rock's initial flourish {I count that as '66~'80}, as heavy as the bands were, most of the groups wrote songs and used heavy and hard rock {hard rock is just heavy metal with the amps set to 8 !} to present these songs, as opposed to some groups like maybe early Grand Funk Railroad that had a heavy rock style and used songs to present this. There's quite a difference in my mind. I mean, I love the Funk, but there is some justification for the NME's categorization of their stuff on their first few albums as "song after song of tuneless heavy metal". I love "Live album" but it is kind of that way. Whereas Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Budgie, Nazareth, Cream, Status Quo, Aerosmith, Blue Öyster cult, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, Kansas, Hendrix, Kiss, Lone Star, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, Motorhead, Triumph, Mahogany Rush, Boston, Rush, Wishbone Ash and a host of other heavy bands wrote catchy, melodic stuff with hooks galore {yeah, Quo and Motorhead were pretty hooky !}.
I've long felt that also, their vocalists knew how to sing because they had to. They came up in or were inspired by the era where the vocal {and by extension, the vocalist} carried the song so the melody had to be memorable. The real skill was in how this was all fused together, the power and the melody.

I can't get into NWOBHM I'm afriad - the style, tempo & songs just aren't mine to embrace.

NWOBHM was a bit of a disappointment to me. I first heard of it in 1980 and because it fell plumb in the midst of my heavy rock odessy, I expected big things so it was probably my fault. I remember my Uncle's girlfriend was coming out on holiday to Nigeria where I was living at the time and I asked her if she could bring me two LPs, "Argus" by Wishbone Ash and this one, "Metal for muthas" which featured some of these NWOBHM groups {and an older band, Nutz}. I especially wanted to hear Toad the wet sprocket and Ethel the frog. Well, she got me "Argus" but not Muthas........When I got back to England the next year, I wasn't keen on any of the new bands except Leppard's debut. Still one of my faves. Most of my heavy records came from that '79~'81 period. Interestingly, I added very very few heavy rock records after 1981 to my collection.

Twee Brit Psych annoys me - those gnomic tomes on Piper drove me away from the album for a while. I like lots of Brit Psych but skip the twee stuff - AND that goes for much of Sgt Peppers: The music hall lifts didn't do it for me.

I have to say, I'm a sucker for the twee {that would make a great album title !}, whether it be British psychedelia or American 70s pop or jazz or folk or anything. I like a bit of whimsy, though no one does it like the English.

Slade is brilliant. You should really check out bands like Saxon or Horsepower, they have very sweet/slade-influenced hard rock.
also, i love Budgie. Cruelly underrated band.

I like quite a bit of Budgie's early to mid 70s stuff. I was something of a late convert to them. Had I gotten into them when I was on my heavy rock kick circa '79~'81, I probably would've appreciated them more. That said, "In for the kill" and "Napoleon Bonapart" would definitly be with me on my desert island ipod.
I loved Slade and the Sweet as a kid, indeed, the first single I ever owned was "Blockbuster". From '73~'75, they knocked out some of the defining songs of my chilhood. "*** on feel the noize" sparked off a frenzy of kiss chase at my school that dethroned football for a month during our playtimes. Reality soon asserted itself though ! The "Girls, grab the boys" line was taken as a command by the girls in my class. Kids believed in pop music in those days ! There was a guy in my class called Kieran McCrystal and even though I've not set eyes on him since 1974 and we were never exactly friends, whenever I hear "Hellraiser" and "Ballroom blitz" I think of him. I wish they didn't, but they just always remind me of him.
When I got a little older I listened with both ears to both bands and found them to be far more than was ever apparent at the time. I still listen to their stuff now. Skillful.