Interesting sounds on songs explained...

I’ll give me an example of something pretty cool that you probably wouldn’t know unless you saw the Graceland behind the music documentary making of the record. Whatever it’s called.

On “you can call me Al” by Paul Simon that bass guitar break is the bass part forward on the way down and on the way back up is the same part backwards.
And by backwards I mean the tape is played backwards

Other examples of cool things like that that we probably don’t know about?

 

That's really cool, I never knew that.

 

Most Kate Bush fans already know this but the helicopter sounds on "Waking The Witch" (and also "Experiment IV", I believe) were borrowed from "Another Brick In The Wall Part 1". Kate couldn't find better copter sfx anywhere so she asked for permission to use the Pink Floyd sound effect. Same exact tape was used, courtesy of Roger Waters.

 

very cool

 

The loon call on the Tragically Hip's Wheat Kings was a recording they discovered. The guy who originally recorded it eventually discovered and I believe they had to compensate him for it.

Judas Priest's Metal Gods has the cool percussion sound that was a drawer of silverware being dropped.

 

George’s White Album tune “Long Long Long” you can hear a wine glass vibrating on a speaker at the end.

 

There’s Jon Bonhams ‘Squeak King’ squeaky pedal.

And the drum sound on Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer was the drums being placed in front of the elevators in the Columbia studios.

 

Not sure I want to admit that this is interesting but, regarding XTC's song, Travels in Nihilon, from the album Black Sea -- I always feared that the "liquid" sound at the end of the song was a recording of someone p***ing. Thankfully, Andy P. cleared it up in a 2008 interview...

Because we've got the Korg doing its desolate wind at the end -- "the bleak landscape of disappointed youth" -- I thought, "Okay, we need some rain." There was not tape library of sound effects there, so it was a case of, "Well look, why don't we make our own rain? How hard can it be to make the sound of rain?"

So we plugged in cable upon cable upon cable, 'til we got hundreds of yards of cable, with a good-quality mic on a boomstand, and we put it in [producer] Steve Lillywhite's room, which had a shower in it. We recorded his showerhead spraying water on to the shower curtain. And it sounded nothing like rain! We got it, and were playing it back, and people were saying, "That's nothing like rain." Then somebody said, "It just sounds like somebody taking a p*ss!" And I thought, "[gasp] That's even better! This is the industry -- the Pop industry, the fashion industry, the religion industry -- p*ssing on you, in contempt, for being such a dolt and buying into all their s**t!"​

Personally, that news came as a relief. (pun probably intended ) I can listen to the song again without the unwelcome mental pictures.

Andy Partridge interview: Chalkhills: XTCFans: Andy's Take: "Travels in Nihilon"

XTC - Travels In Nihilon (Long, watery ending begins at 6:00 mark)

 

To this day I ignore what makes the high-pitched choppy-bubbly sound heard in various parts from Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick". Eg., over Martin Barre's lute bit introducing Verse 21, "The poet and the wiseman stand / Behind the gun, behind the gun"...

 

The percussion sound in The Pretty Things' B-side Cold Stone is a spinning metal ashtray being pushed down over and over.

 

I thought they got the drum sound by placing a speaker at one end of the lift shaft, a microphone at the other, and playing the drum track through the speaker. I don't think the drummer set up in front of an open lift shaft door.

 

Now that’s what I thought but looking it up that’s not how it seems the did it!

 

R.E.M. "We Walk" -

• "We Walk" features lots of thunderous noise throughout, though the actual noise itself isn't thunder — it's a recording of then-drummer Bill Berry playing pool. Producer Mitch Easter recorded the billiard balls hitting at a sped-up pace, then slowed the tape down and added reverb.

 

I still have never seen a definitive answer for what those bizarre sounds at the end of Pink Floyd's "Bike" are.

 

I once put up a thread here asking about a particular song, and it turns out it had been a bunch of other threads as well, lol. But nobody seemed to know what the noises were:

The beginning of "Silly Love Songs" by Wings

 

Lol. My taper friend once discovered that no matter how many times he recorded rain falling, it sounded like bacon frying.

 

The jewelry percussion effect on The Beach Boys Surfs Up is pretty inventive

 

In the Queen song Seaside Rendezvous (A Night At The Opera) the bridge features a brass band that was created vocally by Mercury and Taylor. Mercury does the clarinet and other woodwinds, Taylor does the tuba, trumpet and other brass instrument. That's not a kazoo you hear, it's Roger Taylor's voice. The tap dancing is created by both of them at the mixing desk using thimbles.
How unfortunate that this wasn't filmed, it had to have been a hoot.

 

On Grandpaboy's (aka Paul Westerberg) song "Vampires and Failures" the buzzing sound about half way through that drones on is an electric razor. A very cool song with a very cool effect (starts at about 2:16)!

 

All Beatles fans know but the horn sounds on the bridge of Lady Madonna are the Beatles voices

 

Are you asking what it's suppose to represent? I always assumed it was suppose to be a factory churning out silly love songs.

 

The hypnotic loop on Pink Floyd's "On the Run" was produced by the EMS Synthi A, which was new at the time Floyd recorded DSotM but was soon supplanted by more elaborate synths.

 

Yeah....it's also the same set of stairs/ elevator shaft used for "Summer In the City" intro.....dum dum BAM dum dum BAM.

There are one or two earlier top 40 hits that did that too. Halee used the idea a few times before the boxer, at one point turning whatshisname (spoonful engineer) on to the idea in 66. I believe the building had signs posted at the elevator/foot of the stairs to not use the hallway/stairs/shaft for recording between certain hours.....was interfering with normal building biz.

 

Anyone know how the overall sound of the band sounding like an interpretation of a vacuum sound was created for this song?

 

Funny this thread starts with a Paul Simon example...and it's not the cuica, so iconic from "Me, You and Julio". I only found a decent video demo of the "monkey drum" this very evening:

I'm 63, and never actually seen one in practice!