most overdubs ever on a song

Sometimes being the key word.
My point was that Brian Wilson resorted to the ping-pong approach, so in fact he needed more than eight tracks to get the job done.

By the way, I knew about Pepper too. We are so well-informed around here.

 

I was about to suggest the calliope collage on "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite," but I think Enya beats that too!

 

Didn't Tears For Fears wear out the multitrack tape while recording Songs From The Big Chair?

 

I agree.

The more tracks involved, the more over-indulgent the production.

With too many tracks, everything will sound like Fleetwood Mac, Styx or ELO.

 

In general I'd agree with the "less is more" approach, but I'm not gonna argue with the results on Siamese Dream.

 

I reckon the I'm Not In Love overdub story is hype. Me and a guy at school tried to recreate it with a Roland Space Echo, a Korg 700S and a Tascam 4 track cassette deck and we came really close.

 

Loveless

 

There's a note that says "choir by Robin Gibb" on Robin's Reign. The Worst Girl In This Town is probably the best example. I doubt it's near 500 but of course I could be wrong.

 

Many Meat Loaf albums, voice wise. Especially I d do anything for love.

 

Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers

 

Is anyone else reading this? We have the answer.

 

I seem to remember reading something about the making of Sly And The Family Stone's There's A Riot Going On LP where Sly was doing overdub after overdub in his Bel-Air mansion (including letting any woman who would sleep with him contribute her vocal "talents" to the tapes). Not sure if this was confined to a single song or the entire album, but apparently the session tapes were in quite a mess when they went back in to remaster the album a few years back as part of the S&TFS catalog upgrade. It's also why the album has always sounded so muffled.

 

Would Richard Carpenter not be able to trump any of these numbers on one or more songs by the Carpenters?

 

Indeed, there are at least 24 vocal overdubs and usually more on every Carpenters project. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is easily in the top 10, as is Boston's Third Stage.

 

I'd say that Brian truly did need nothing more than 4 or 8 tracks. it kept him focused on getting in there and cutting the tacks and getting the job done. If he would've had 16 tracks in 1966/67 (at the height of his powers), he would've had too much room to experiement and would've spent hours and hours on the same thing. Well, in 66/67 he was doing that anyhow. By the time 16 track became prevalent, he was out of the game...sadly.

 

Just because you were able to came close but didn't recreate it, it does not make it hype.

 

Blame the human, not the machine. Got ya!

 

X <= 16 Viva la Rock!
X > 16 Rock is Dead.

Silly.

 

Penny Lane how many piano overdubs are on that??

 

Black Sabbath are a good example of this. Their early albums sound a lot heavier with only one or two guitar overdubs at most than do modern metal bands who overdub 24 rhythm guitar parts in an attempt to sound big and heavy, which more often than not ends up just cancelling out all the edges and blanding out the sound.

 

I've seen some examples here of what I believe are multis with many PASSES rather than endless overdubs(Rumours). To me, that's an important distinction.

As a non-singer, I once did over 50 passes of the same line before it was deemed "tolerable". Long story.

I once had a discussion with an folk artist who claimed to have used almost 100 tracks for a song.

I then went and thanked God that I did not have to mix it. However, I think the ultra-purist "all we need is four tracks" is bunk. The truth lieth somewhere in the middle.


Dan

 

Any number of Bee Gees songs from their disco era might qualify. I heard that they used 2 24 track recorders synced, the second machine would have 23 tracks of every part and then that got mixed down to the master machine.

Before that era, Todd Rundgren's "Onomatopoeia" claimed to use the most tracks, but in reality the sounds could have been combined onto fewer tracks because the effects happened one after another. Anyone who's used 8 or fewer tracks knows how to double up tracks for different parts that only happen in in the bridge vs the verses (without automation mixing these multis was an art, especially if you needed to change both the levels and EQ).

 

Well, Brian Wilson reportedly made his "Imagination" solo album on a 96-track machine. Listening to the song "South American" this is rather obvious in the percussion department.

Also, the Eric Clapton & JJ Cale song "Ride the River" sounds like it was recorded on a machine with 96 tracks ... that horn section there just does not sound like a horn section normally would sound.

 

Amen! The more tracks available seem to give credence to the whole "The more you think, the more you stink" philosophy IMO.

Oh I dunno...since I dusted off some of my old recording gear last year, I get better sounding recordings off my old 4 track than I ever did off of either of my analog or digital 8 track recorders

 

I'd say eight-track is about right. With just 4 tracks even minmal overdubbing requires bounce-downs and/or combining two or more instruments on a track. At this point noise can become an issue. Not a problem with 45s back in 1965, but very much so when the recordings are issued on a different medium years later. With eight separate tracks, most guitar-based rock could be recorded cleanly and effectively. Ron