Technology can be an art form.

[acelightning]

Phil Spector, the producer of a lot of well-known pop hits, died of COVID while serving jail time for murder. He was known for his "Wall of Sound" technique, which used a lot of overdubbing to make a densely textured sound that would get people's attention. It would punch right through the road noise when you heard it on the AM radio in a car.

Comments

[dandybun]

Spector made some memorable stuff, he also screwed a lot of it up. With the exception of "My sweet lord", I hated what he did with George Harrison's "All things must pass.

[achinhibitor]

I read somewhere he also constructed a huge reverb chamber in the room below the studio and used that to generate a densely textured sound. And IIRC something about he was the first to conceptualize that he wasn't just recording what the singers did, but but actively constructing what the "track" would sound like.

Of course, he went off the rails in later life. "But success clearly didn't translate into happiness for [Phil] Spector -- if anything, it allowed him the luxury of indulging his demons."

[acelightning]

That was the original form of reverb - an actual echo chamber, a room with smooth hard walls, with a speaker at one end and a mic at the other, and preferably in the basement so the walls won't vibrate. But the opening of "He's So Fine" would come blasting out of the car's AM radio speaker, and everybody sang along. Now, "He's So Fine" has the same tune and structure as "My Sweet Lord", now Spector could have done something combining the two. Now, I'd have to turn myself into the Overdub Sisters to do it. (Now where did I put the good mic?) But there was a doo-wop song called "So Fine" ("My baby's so doggone fine, sends cold chills up and down my spine... Whoa, yeah, so fine!"). I have a "head arrangement" of "So fine", "He's So Fine", and "My Sweet Lord"