That’s something that is bothering me with these videos, they are looking at it from a modern perspective. “So, why didn’t they just edit it out” THEY COULDN’T
I've heard McCartney, or maybe Geoff Emerick?, say that their songs were built (on a 4-track, remember) to play on AM radio for a month or so. Not to be scrutinized generations later. If the guide vocal had leaked onto what became the final rhythm track, why would you care?
@@apolloptx I agree, during those days music was made to be listened to while stoned. Aural artifacts kind of messed with your head when the songs were listened to, especially with headphones.
@@apolloptx Page has said a thousand times that the ghost vocals were unintentional. He always describes it as evidence of the "power" of Plant's voice-he sang so loud that they couldn't get rid of it on the tape, no matter how low they moved the fader. The only intentional thing was playing it up on Whole Lotta Love for the reverse echo effect. On Misty Mountain Hop, Baby I'm Gonna Leave You, etc. it's 100% an unintentional and unavoidable consequence of bouncing tracks and analog tape.
I think the coolest example of "ghost vocals" will always be in Zep's Whole Lotta Love, where Plant sings the "Way down inside" line at the end, where you can hear his ghost vocals slightly BEFORE he sings. It was recorded so hot that the tape magnetized itself
@@DrewArmstrongMusic Correct. It isn't reversed. REVERSED ECHO.There is a difference. It's an effect sometimes used by guitar players. It doesn't reverse the phrase just plays the echo of the phrase before rather than after. Page used it on plants vocals to make them more "trippy". Page has talked about it at length in quite a few interviews.
John Caash yes I’m aware of the effect and I know zep we’re experimenting with reversing echos in that song but with that instance I believe it was tape bleed that was a mistake, which reverb and delay were thrown on after and plant loved it. www.audiomasterclass.com/newsletter/whole-lotta-love--the-mysterious-pre-echo-explained-sort-of
I love those raw bleed throughs on the White Album -- the blood sweat a tears of the recording process, the mechanics under the hood, allowed to show through.
Near the end of Yer Blues, after the hard edit out of the guitar soloing back to the verse, you can hear Lennon’s guide vocal all by itself without any lead vocal overdub. It’s a great example of the loose approach that makes the White Album such a fun & engaging listen.
Agreed! Another interesting fact about the instrumental outro verse: it's the exact same portion of the instrumental used in the first part of the song (minus the lead vocal). If you line them up, they match up perfectly.
@@YouCantUnhearThis Also that distant from the mic vocal used at the end became intentional when Lennon performed it live. You can see it on his Rock and Roll Circus Dirty Mac performance. He steps back from the mic to achieve the same effect. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fj4aJ8R0k2Y.html
@@YouCantUnhearThis Now maybe you can explain the end of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise). At the 1:09 mark of Reprise Paul begins yelling and we hear what sounds like: "Paul McCartney's dead! Really, really dead! Paul McCartney's really dead!" Please perform your magic video breakdown for us on that one. {must be an echo chamber around here]
First example is called 'bleed' . As in when a sound 'bleeds' on to a different mic. 'Audible guide' or 'ghost' vocals are called 'scratch vocals' or 'scratch tracks' . The band plays together to make it natural, but you're trying to record just one of the instruments, and the other players are indeed acting as a guide for the one being recorded. Just thought some people might be interested in the terminology most often used. Great channel.
There is also "cross-talk", which is bleed across channels on the tape itself, or within the mixing console. There is also "print-through", where magnetic tape can bleed onto itself in the windings of tape stored on a spool. This is why tapes are stored "tails out", so any print-through will be perceived as echo/reverb. If stored "tails in", print-through will be cause a ghostly echo _before_ the sound.
Thank you very much this gives me a bigger outlook on the word bleed ....this is a prime example of what you think you know ...may not know at all ...this is why they say knowledge. Wealth success truth !!!!i love music and ive learned so much on this channel thank you all love light and life and laughter you have to have laughter to see the light then ifyou have light and laughter you may have love which is the cure for every thing and the just maybe you have LIFE some merely just exists where very few actually Live!!!
There are moments in the song when Keith's "ghost" vocal is even more audible than what's pointed out here. I remember the first time I noticed it, I had no idea what it was!
Here's the option you left out from a studio rat of over 50 years. They didn't rewind the tape properly before storing. You should always fast forward the 2inch reels to store them. Sometimes and engineer would be so tired or the helper, not knowing better, would just hit rewind and store the tape. This can cause the magnetic tape to lay differently and the reverb tracks would sometimes "bleed" through the tape. That's what I've always been told about such albums as Led Zepplin 2 where you faintly hear the vocals before they are actually played. This too is another form of "ghosting." I still Love the sound of the analog tape btw. I love the smell of opening a new box with a 2 inch reel of tape in it. For me, as an artist, I always thought that smell was a blank canvas just waiting to be painted with all sorts of textures and sounds. Much warmer than digital in my humble opinion.
There are a number of famous tracks escaping me now that have that faint first second or so of the song before it repeats at full volume and the song continues. If they removed them after all these years it would sound wrong to me! I think there may be some on the White Album or Let It Be but I'm more confident of it happening with Led Zeppelin IV on a track or two. Maybe on Black Dog when Plant comes in? Have to check my old tapes.
@@Kevbo4 I knew I have heard this many times before and it drove me crazy not knowing what caused it or why I seemed to be the only one who noticed! I'm so happy to read these comments :)
New video!! Also, an update on my channel: I've been dealing with some RU-vid copyright claim issues lately, but more videos on the way soon. I'm thrilled to see how much attention and conversation this channel has sparked recently. Thanks for watching!! Also: look out for a podcast version of the series, coming soon.
Great content. Ive always been a big fan of yer blues. One his/their best off the lp. The opening countdown always caught my attention as sort of an indication they were having fun in the studio with the mix and to listen closely to the background.
I"ve left a lot of these in my own home recordings and the usual reason was "couldn't dig it out without ruining the whole thing." I think that is probably the most likely reason. It was low enough that you can leave it in. I hear these ALL the time and also, I love listening to acoustic guitar players sniffle and twitch during their grammy-award-winning recordings.
The Long and Winding Road near the end, there's an extra "don't leave me waiting here" after the main vocal finishes. It's one of my favorite things in a recording ever, I think it sounds so cool.
Yup. Simple. Because he was singing live for the base track. One of the things I love about these recordings. You can hear the same thing with George's guitar on can't by me love as well as many others. I think it sounds great
The extra guitar solo by George was attributable to his being unhappy with the original recording in Paris. He redid it in London but the engineers couldn't completely eliminate the first one. I like it too!!
On the song I’m your Captain/Closer to home by Grand Funk Railroad, what you will hear is, I’m your captain, (all right) I’m your captain. This occurs the first time the phrase is said in the song.
The Beach Boys have had several ghost vocals and mistakes. Probably one of the most infamous examples is in the mono mix of Here Today, which has several bits of talking in the background, most prominently at the instrumental break. The rest of their little studio mistakes should be listed on this website: www.surfermoon.com/essays/noises.html
Here's one I like - California Dreamin' - Mamas and Papas. The structure is the lead vocalist (John Phillips I think) sings a line, then the band repeat it. For example 'All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey). But at 0:48, the line 'I passed along the way' is NOT repeated - except listen very carefully and you can hear the rest of the band singing it! Maybe its just the reverb effect, with the main vox fader down... Of course right at the start of the song you can also hear a remnant of the original Barry McGuire vocal too. God bless old analog tapes!
On Out On The Tiles from Zep III you can clearly hear someone (I think Robert or Andy Johns) is yelling "Stop" after "I'm so glad I'm living" after the first chorus. Also there are several Zeppelin songs with mumbling and random noises that I am sure has a great story behind them. Telephone on The Ocean ect. ect.
Even recording digitally with my bands, I like to leave my scratch track vocals very low in the mix. It adds a little depth that almost isn't noticeable. I don't do it with every song, but it's fun to leave it in sometimes.
They knew they were there. There just wasn't any way to remove them. Another 'ghosting' anomaly from analog recording came from magnet tape being stored over time. The magnetic fields stored on each track were recorded at the highest level possible without distortion. The signal was so high, it would imprint itself onto the next layer of tape on the reel. To minimize the effect, tapes were stored with the 'Tails Out' - meaning the tape would need to be rewound to the beginning before playback. The 'ghost' audio would then appear AFTER the actual signal when played and sound like a soft reverb in the background. Tapes that were stored "Heads" would have the faint ghost audio playing BEFORE the actual signal rode across the playback heads.
Probably the most well known is in A day in the life. That counting was there to lead into the orchestral part. Of course, the alarm clock ringing, while not a vocal, was something that they couldn't remove, so Paul just wrote it into the song. There's actually something more human and organic with these pre-digital recordings that makes them more interesting to listen to.
I believe that is also the song where towards the very end piano fade...you can hear a chair squeak (probably someone repositioning themselves) & someone promptly "says"....shhuushh.
JAMES PARA to all three of you, preach it. The older music required lots of talent and precision, and was great. Today’s crap is dumb, talentless, un-Christian, and is pretty much lazily slopped together and tasteless kids like it. Sadly, many of the good artists retired, are old, or are dead. Also, modern music contains cursing and messages about rape, sex, and all that naughty stuff every 6 nanoseconds.
There's enough great stuff made today if you're prepared to dig for it. Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, Toro y Moi, King Gizzard, Shintaro Sakamoto are all pretty damn talented.
Yes, there was a preamp I had where you could listen to 'sum' and 'difference' as well as 'left and 'right'. When you selected 'difference', the center vocals disappeared and you could hear all kinds of cool stuff in the background.
You should do a video on the extremely bizarre guitar solo in All You Need Is Love. Someone brought it up to me and now I haven't been able to unhear how messy it is, which given your channel name sounds like a great video idea.
That's a great suggestion. All You Need is Love has a TON of weird anomalies, like the infamous debate over who is singing "She Loves You, Yeah Yeah Yeah" in the outro!
George had to do that solo on the fly, and apparently he didn't have enough time to rehearse it, but George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick left it in, warts and all, for some reason.
In the Strawbs track 'Tears and Pavan' (Bursting at the Seams 1973) at 5.46 you can clearly hear Dave Cousins (the singer) talking, i'm fairly sure its from where two recordings were mashed together, and they neglected to totally remove it. Its about 3 seconds into the outro, which makes some seance if they had a superior recording of that part. no clue what he is saying, but sound a bit like 'lets record this'.
The craziest artifact such as this is by far the orchestral cover of Ticket to Ride ,which much have been left over from whatever was previously on that tape, playing as quiet as audible, at the very very end of The Dark Side of the Moon album as it fades into the heartbeat.
Oh, i love that. I have heard that it was playing outside Abbey Road studios at the time, and the recorder accidentally picked it up as they finished recording ''Eclipse'', but i really think it was a hidden tribute to the Beatles.
It's a huge myth that analogue mixers were too crappy for anyone to hear the guide vocal bleed. If you can still hear these artifacts on a garden variety record player after all these years, then the recording mixers certainly let listeners catch them.
The first instance i noticed guide vocals being left in the mix with Led Zeppelin occurs during the `Way down inside' vocal part in Whole Lotta' Love, from their second album. And now that I think of it, Babe I'm Going To Leave You and How Many More Times, from the debut, may also have very obvious ones.
Maybe you're hearing what's been called "pre-echo" which is due to print through (the magnetic pattern on one section of tape gets weakly transferred to the overlapping section of tape). Storing the tapes tails out is supposed to minimize "pre-echo" in favor of less obtrusive "post-echo".
1- The Whole Lotta Love extra vocals are due to them adding a reverse echo, ie, re-recording the track backwards with an echo so you hear the echo first when played normally. 2- How did you miss the most notorious bleed of all? The 'fucking hell' in the background of Hey Jude....
Listen to "Paperback Writer" about halfway through and you can hear one of the background vocals getting his note - "Paper...." - and then clearing his throat.
There is one section in a song that bothers me all the time because of this. If you listen to Don Mclean's "Castle In The Air", Believers version you will hear someone shout "Hey" at around the 1:23-1:25 mark. He is in the middle of the bridge and there is just a "Hey". Now I hear it every time I listen to that song.
What about instances where a vocal is double-tracked, and one of those voices makes a lyric mistake. Examples include The Beatles' "Slow Down" & "I'll Get You".
Listen to the Beatles version of Chuck Berry’s Rock and Roll music. The chorus John sings, “its got a back beat you can lose it.” However on subsequent choruses he sings, “its got a BLACK beat you can’t lose it.” A homage to John’s love of American black rock and roll stars and their songs?
70's rock n roll band from Finland named Hurriganes use to play that song live and their drummer and singer Remu didn't understand or talk english but he would learn the lyrics from records. He sings it "black beat" on few rare live bootlegs that i have
Analog had those imperfections that made it more perfect that is why those original LP's still are treasures. Some of the recent remixes take out all those imperfections. Long live Analog recordings!
The Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album. Some Gram Parsons lead vocals were erased and replaced with Roger McGuinn's. Parsons' singing still bleeds through, most noticeably on "The Christian Life." Any number of reasons have been cited: Parsons was still under contract to producer Lee Hazlewood who threatened legal action; also, Chris Hillman said in an interview that salaried employee Parsons attempted to get actual partner/shareholder/part owner McGuinn fired - not an easy task. The Parsons vocals eventually turned up on the expanded CD release.
Completely disagree with 'they didn't notice' * you don't need digital setup to notice these things and your first example and let's say the can't by me love example I gave of course would've been noticed.
Listening to the raw 4-tracks, they'd most definitely be able to hear it. A lot of the Beatles' mistakes aren't present in the mono version, but ARE present in the stereo. Many of the mono mixes took weeks to create while a lot of the stereo tracks were mixed in an evening. Tracks that were supposed to be muted are left open, sometimes even wrong takes being used.
Imho...i think the beatles didn't have enough time to record: in B.E. days (as told Paul) they has a tight schedule and they used to have only 2 weeks to writing and record an album., and a realise deadline due marketing strategy: they realised 2 album per year.
Most likely they couldn't remove the guide vocals. As great as digital recording is and all that it allows artists to do in the studio, it can sometimes be too perfect. Combine that with the horrible trend of overusing compression and you get music that sounds like it can't breathe.
You don't mention one of the most famous ones. On Yesterday, the first time you hear the phrase 'Something wrong, now I long for Yesterday.' That was the original Vocal coming in on the Guitar mic. George Martin wanted that line better but couldn't completely get rid of the original so it sounds like the part is double-tracked.
Good channel! Here’s a topic which people would certainly not be able to unhear.... Splices in songs.... aside from obvious ones like Strawberry Fields which everyone knows is made up of different takes, did you know there is a splice in She Loves You? The Let it Be version of I Me Mine splices a whole extra chorus on the end of the song? Probably many many others...
On the Elliott Smith song 'King's Crossing', which was on the album/CD From A Basement On The Hill. The album, or several songs, were not yet complete when Smith died. Sam Coomes of Quasi & Mary Lou Lord were two of the people I'm aware of that came into the studio to help complete some of the tracks & mixing. Towards the end of the very climactic & ghostly song King's Crossing, the lyrics on the last chorus, "I'm going on a date with a rich white lady, ain't life great? Give me one good reason not to do it [Here you can hear, I believe it was Mary Lou Lord whisper 'Because we love you'] So do it! This is a place where time reverses, dead men talk to all the pretty nurses. Instruments shine on a silver tray, don't let me get/be carried away...... NOTE: They say he committed suicide, 2 self inflicted knife wounds to the heart!? The case surrounding his death is still not closed.
There’s an F-BOMB in “Hey Jude”. I’ve always heard John saying something in the blend of tracks, but I never knew it was “ah, fucking hell” after he possibly dropped a pick or something like that. If I remember correctly, it’s toward the end between a couple of the last lyrics before the long “ahhh...” that leads into the vamp out.
Well years ago, I had heard/read John saying in an interview, "I needed a new bit for the middle and Paul had this bit not related to the song and said, 'How about this?', and played it and I said, "yeah, that'll do" - so when it ends with Paul's "went into a dream" then here comes back with John again with the "Ah's" so my 'assumptions' disagree with this video who says the "Ahs" were part of Paul's bit - I don't see it that way - It's John, then Paul's bit ending with "Went into a dream" and back comes John with a "joiner" of "Ahs" to get him back to the verse. So to me it's John's song - Paul's insert in the middle and John coming back with the Ahs to his song. But geez you can just ask Paul you know lol. I would add however that the Paul bit is, comparatively speaking, totally dry (no reverb) - whereas all John's singing, including the Ahs, is a different 'mix' with lots of reverb - it's almost as if Paul's dry bit was recorded and spliced in the mix - so I don't see the Ahs as Paul's addition to the song or him singing it. John's singing his part, then Paul sings his bit, then back to John and the reverb on the Ahs.
I don't know if this counts as a ghost vocal but at the very beginning of We Will Rock You, you can hear Freddie Mercury saying what sounds like "one" A similar ghost vocal is heard on Break on Through by The Doors, where at the very beginning, just before they start playing their instruments, Jim Morrison can be heard saying "yeah"
In Pink Floyd's "Let There Be More Light" at about 2:35 when Richard Wright is singing "Something in the sky sky waiting there for me" you can hear an additional whispering voice singing the wrong line and repeat the "Something..". Idk if it is an early take because it fits perfectly in the recording quality of the main vocals so maybe its just in there because no one cared.
Anyone of a certain age who owned a Sony Walkman or similar knows what tape bleed sounds like. I always loved hearing those ghost voices and sounds that bled through from Side One of a cassette tape to Side Two. It seemed to occur more often on cassette players that switched from one side of an album to the other without having to take the cassette out and flip it over.
Listen to the Beatles version of, “Slow Down” at 1:14 John sang the word, “girlfriend” and later overdubbed the word, “boyfriend” over it. You can clearly hear both words, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” at the same time. It changes the meaning of the song.
Same in the song Revolution. At 0:23 you can hear John Lennon say evolution but due to a double track error the second vocal says, what seems to be, institution.
John does not sing the word "girlfriend". John double tracked his vocal. In one track, John sang the line "And now you don't care a dime for me." In the other track, he sang "And now you have a boyfriend down the street." In the final recording, both vocal tracks are played back at the same time. The Beatles left the goof in on purpose, as they often liked to do.
The last chorus on Black Hole Sun. You can vaguely hear Chris screaming 'black hole sun, wont you come! I always point that out to people, and they say they've never noticed.
I've always thought that part was intentional because it continues and then it becomes the main vocal and pans from ear to ear and has some sort of minor distortion on it to sound like it's coming from over a walkie talkie or something
I thought you were going to talk about led zeppelin's out on the tiles, there's one part that someone (i'm quite sure it's page) says "stop it" loud and clear after Robert sings "i'm so glad i'm living" Maybe that was kind of intentional lol
For me, I think the first time I really noticed the "count up" transitions in "A Day in the Life" from sgt pepper was when listening to an unfinished take on Anthology. I never noticed it on the final release before, now I hear it everytime I play the song. And I still listen to my old Beatles LPs, including the VeeJay release "Introducing ... The Beatles".
This is the type of channel real beetle fans have been dying for, no bs trivia that's been said to death just interesting tidbits to geek out to! pls keep it up we all appreciate it
"Crazy" by Patsy Cline also has a ghost vocal like this, albeit for very different reasons. In Patsy's day, everything was recorded live, in one room, with only movable sound barrier walls to prevent mic bleed. Patsy recorded "Crazy" just shortly after being hospitalized for months due to a near-fatal car accident. She was still dealing with bruised ribs for this session, consequently causing her to be flat on the higher notes. Sessions lasted for 4 hours in those days (1961), and she, the session players/background vocalists, and legendary producer Owen Bradley spent the last hour working on this one song. Bradley elected to call it a day, deciding to overdub Cline's lead vocal on the best instrumental track they'd recorded in another two weeks in order to give her ribs time to heal. Patsy came back two weeks later and nailed the vocal in one take. The ghost vocal was not as noticeable in older mixes of the track on vinyl. Remember, they were recording on 3 track stereo live. However, when re-mastered in the early 1990's for inclusion on "The Patsy Cline Collection" box set, the ghost vocal is more prominent. Link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CKTOvHw8qFM.html It's subtle, but it features in the left channel.
I don't know if this is the same thing, but in "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, when they say "I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain", I can hear someone saying "must never break the chain" instead of "would". I looked in the official lyrics, it says "would". I asked my brother if he could hear it and he told me that "must" WAS the correct and intended lyrics; he'd always heard it that way. Was there possibly a mix up in different recording samples that resulted in this effect?
On "Yer Blues", how can John have overdubbed his vocals on what is, according to EVERYONE involved in the session, a live in the studio recording? The Beatles set up in the smaller studio (I think it was Studio 3) and played. (And Mark Lewisohn's book on 'The Beatles' Complete Recording Sessions" quotes Chris Thomas as saying that no overdubs were performed on Yer Blues, and the session sheets bear this fact out as well.)
