Wall of Sound
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For the UK independent record label, please see Wall of Sound (record label)
Wall of Sound is a phrase used to describe the effect created by the music production techniques of record producer Phil Spector.
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[edit] Description
Spector usually worked at the Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles because of its exceptional echo chambers, essential to the Wall of Sound technique. To create the effect, Spector arranged the songs for large orchestras of musicians playing instruments traditionally associated with orchestras (such as strings and horns), as well as instruments not generally used for ensemble playing (such as the electric guitar). Microphones in the recording studio captured the sound, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber -- a basement room outfitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio would be played through the speakers and would reverberate around the room, being picked up by the microphones. The echo-laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was transferred to tape.
The natural reverberation and echo from the hard walls of the room gave his productions their distinctive quality and resulted in a rich and complex sound when played on AM radio, with an impressive depth rarely heard in mono recordings.
Songwriter Jeff Barry, who worked extensively with Spector, described the Wall of Sound as
- basically a formula. You're going to have four or five guitars line up, gut-string guitars, and they're going to follow the chords...two basses in fifths, with the same type of line, and strings...six or seven horns, adding the little punches…formula percussion instruments — the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines. Phil used his own formula for echo, and some overtone arrangements with the strings. But by and large there was a formula arrangement.
The Wall of Sound may be compared with “the standard pop mix of foregrounded solo vocal and balanced, blended backing”. In contrast, “Phil Spector's 'wall of sound' (‘one mike over everything’) invites the listener to immerse himself in the quasi-Wagnerian mass of sound:
- …he buried the lead and he cannot stop himself from doing that…if you listen to his records in sequence, the lead goes further and further in and to me what he is saying is, 'It is not the song...just listen to those strings. I want more musicians, it's me”
(again Jeff Barry, quoted in Williams 1974, p.91).
- This can be contrasted with the open spaces and more equal lines of typical funk and reggae textures [for example], which seem to invite the listener to insert himself in those spaces and actively participate.
(Middleton 1990, p.89).
[edit] Controversy
The Beatles' album Let It Be was produced by Phil Spector and is cited as a famous example of his "Wall of Sound". Paul McCartney claimed that the production had ruined the work, particularly McCartney's composition "The Long And Winding Road", and a 'de-Spectorised' version of the album was released as Let It Be... Naked in 2003. George Harrison and John Lennon not only favored the production style but they continued to use Spector on various solo projects. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and John Lennon's Imagine and Rock 'n' Roll albums featured the production sound; each musician would later have similar misgivings over the style.
[edit] Other references
The term "wall of sound" was also frequently used to describe the improvising style of tenor sax player John Coltrane, particularly his way of running through scales rapid fire -- the individual notes blurring into a larger pattern. Also, the sound system the Grateful Dead used while touring was called the Wall of Sound, which included 89 300-watt solid-state and three 350-watt vacuum-tube amplifiers generating a total of 26,400 watts RMS of audio power.
[edit] Wall of sound in other hits
"Be My Baby", a 1963 hit for The Ronettes, written by Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich and produced by Phil Spector, is often cited as the most perfect expression of the Wall of Sound. The group ABBA used a similar technique in one of their most famous songs, Dancing Queen.
[edit] Sources
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
- Williams, Richard (1974/2003). Phil Spector: Out Of His Head. Abacus. ISBN 0-7119-9864-7. Cited in Middleton (1990).
