Posted on 10/25/2014 10:30:26 PM PDT by re_nortex
Here's a full length (12:04) version of Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations in high quality evidently played off vinyl. This longer version has a very long instrumental introduction and a long bridge at the midpoint.
The musicianship impresses me. A very haunting melody with a string section and brass, rare in music nowadays. Since I know little about the recording industry, I have to ask the intelligentsia (a big word for FReepers), what techniques were used in the early 1970s to create such a sound. I presume it was recorded in the rather modest facilities of Motown in Detroit, shown below. As for the string section, did that predate synthesized violins? If so, were these musicians part of the Motown staff or did they contract with the Detroit Symphony?
Sorry for the naive questions but I know I can find good answers from good people here about this song that, some 40 years later, I still find intriguing.
I'm truly sorry since it was expressed so poorly by me. The intent was to convey any of these:
...the intelligentsia (in other words, FReepers)...
...the intelligentsia (a polysyllabic word that means FReepers)...
...the intelligentsia (synonymous for FReepers)...
And that's why I posted my vanity here on FR, my primary source for news, informed opinion and, well, everything, hence my ham-handed reference to intelligentsia (FReepers). Evident in their hit, Smiling Faces is the rich instrumentation that would be heard a year later in "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone".
For a long time, recording technology and artistic virtuosity were expanding in tandem. Somewhere in the late 80s - early 90s, it seemed that artistic expression and skill began to take a back seat to the fast developing technology side, and even began to fall off. Quite a bit, actually.
Over the decade of the 90s (and into the next century) the general quality of musicianship among top recording artists seemed to fall like a stone. Gone were the singers, players, and writers, who forged whole new genres, and pushed the boundaries of popular music to greater heights of excellence. In came the synthetic pop bands with their drum machines, sequenced loops, sampling, and soul-deadening rap 'music'.
Quality artists were pushed to the wayside, and know-nothing, talentless hacks were pushed to the front.
In my view, the forward march of degraded leftist ideals has much to do with the degradation we've witnessed in popular music over the last twenty years. It's an insidious contagion that infects and poisons everything it touches.
I appreciate you posting the question tonight. It sort of took my mind off the more serious stuff and gave me an excuse to delve into something I know a bit about.
I spent some years as a player myself, and ran a modest recording studio for a time. I’ve probably forgotten half of what I knew back then, but just talking about it brings back a lot of small details.
I was surprised that the names of Motown’s chief producers popped right into my head. I haven’t thought of them for twenty years or more.
Thanks for stirring the old brain cells up!
All true, but don't leave out the growth of MONEY. Yes there has always been money in music, but with the advent of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, and especially The Beach Boys, the younger generation got into music in a big way. These kids also were not shy about spending money. I know. I was one of them.
Here's the deal. My parents grew up in the depression and didn't spend what they didn't have to spend. That meant that music was enjoyed in the car on the AM radio that came with the car. Maybe there was a radio in the kitchen that played Sinatra or Tony Bennett. We had an Uncle that was childless and had some extra money and he had a "Hi Fi" in his living room. It was a nice piece of furniture. He bragged that he had "more than fifty albums" in his library. (I found out later that most were 78's, and not LP's). By the time I was 17, my rig left him in the dust. My friends rigs left mine in the dust. I had maybe 130 albums and my friends complained that my selection was too limited.
The point being that by 1970 money was ROLLING into the record companies in amounts that could only be dreamed of before. The record companies didn't mind spending a few bucks for state of the art recording equipment. The equipment makers noticed and soon last years state of the art was second rate and new stuff was needed.
All this was because of the musical groups that caught the attention of the baby boomers at a time when they could spend money that the older generation couldn't or wouldn't spend. The Beatles had more to do with this phenomena than simply the march of time.
And on the subject of the Beatles, this is purportedly the recording equipment in use at Abbey Road during their early years:
This is not an area of my expertise, but I daresay a typical home computer equipped with today's recording software applications rivals what was available to George Martin at the time.
As a lifelong working musician myself I find Wiki and youtube invaluable tools of my trade among others on the net. I wish they were around when I started out a long time ago.
Sargent Pepper was recorded on a 4 track machine, an amazing feat. They would record with all 4 tracks and then use a technique called bouncing where they would move 3 tracks over to one. That would free up 3 tracks and they would repeat the process over adding layers of instruments which would add depth and space along with primitive tape looping adding delay and echo.Everything was painstakingly edited with razor blades and taped back together.It took a little over 5 months and the music world writers at the time we’re saying the Beatles had dried up and ran out of ideas. Hahahahaha!
” No doubt, the Motown recordings of that time were being done in state of the art studios with the latest multi-track equipment and sound processing gear.”
And studios that were small in size would frequently rent out big rooms at other studios. It was no big deal. Read Sir George Martin’s fascinating book, “All You Need Is Ears.” I does cove a small amount of his career with the Beatles, but is much more his history, and the history of recording. I highly recommend it.
That may account for the "full orchestra" sound on "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" with shimmering strings, a harp and brass. The small quarters of the Motown facility just seem too tiny for everyone to fit in a confined environment. As for the string section in particular, were they likely rented from the local symphony or did they have such players on the staff? Multiple violins were featured on Motown songs of the 60s and early 70s such as "Love Child" and "The Happening" by the Supremes.
Indeed. IIRC I once heard where some of Patti Pages vocals were overdubs of about 16 variations of her own voice.
And speaking of overdubbing, Les Paul with a peek behind his "magic curtain" and 24 tracks.
Amazing. Today you can produce a symphony orchestra on your iPhone.
They used strings, but don’t know who they got. Most likely the engineer was Tony Bongiovi, Jon Bon Jovi’s cousin, who was the first (and only, for a while) white engineer at Motown. One of the classic techniques was massive layering (made popular by Phil Spector and Shadow Morton) which had multiple guitarists, even drummers, playing the same thing. It gave a much rounder and richer effect than the later synthesized technique because by nature even the best human musicians are never perfectly in synch. This produces a warmth and thickness that cannot be replicated by a computer, which has more perfect calibration.
I bet that’s Tony in the pic. Talked to him many times but never met him.
Eventually, we will move away from the need to compress music into mp3s and the sound will improve once again.
Yes, all those buying mp3s today will eventually have to buy their music all over again once the new uncompressed formats start to emerge. We will need terrabyte-sized hard drives to hold it all but those are coming as well.
Over the course of my lifetime, there are albums I've bought four times. Vinyl; cassette; compact disk, and finally mp3.
You reminded me of my first multi-tracking experience:
Two cassette decks. One microphone. Record on one machine, bounce both tracks onto the L input of machine two, while recording to the R input live. Swap cables, bounce both tracks from machine two onto the L input of machine one, while recording to the R input live.
Ugh. By the time I’d recorded all the parts, the first tracks were degraded horribly. The first Tascam 4 track Syncassette machine I owned was a revelation! Then I could do THREE tracks before bouncing down to mono, and had three more tracks to work with. Never had to use more than that! But the mixdown on that bounce operation had to be right.
Same thing can be said regarding movies. The star now is the special effects, not the actors or the acting.
Been there! But back in the day I bought an 80-8 (still have it).
The machine was pre-Dolby, but it had noise reduction circuitry that boosted the high end onto the tape which significantly reduced the hiss of bounced tracks.
I believe the Beatles used it on some of their earlier recordings.
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