shut up and listen

Intro – A chiming electric guitar line which occurs 3 times in the song (but is not part of the verses, choruses or instrumental break). It is doubled and panned wide but with the left side more prominent. On the right is a wailing organ/synth back in the mix.

Intro Riff 2 – A big cymbal splash/kick/chord strum features the guitars with whammy bars rocking the pitch. Then the instrumental intro feature a new electric guitar riff with all the main elements; bass, drums, electric guitars and acoustic. The acoustic guitar is panned left, clean riffing electric guitars centre, ride cymbal panned right, bass and drums centred.

Verse 1 – When the lead vocal enters the elc gtr riff ends and the drums drop back to a tom pattern, the rhythm electric guitar plays subtle strums while the acoustic guitar strumming provides rhythm. There is some distant organ sound (could be strings) eerily droning in the background during the singing, a long way back in the mix.

Chorus – instrumentation stays pretty much the same. The clean electric guitar strums become more prominent. The lead vocal is doubled (maybe tripled with a harmony?). The backing strings/organ swells and becomes more prominent. It is actually the same chord structure as the first half of the verse but with a different vocal melody line.

intro again – Everything else drops out, and it returns to the first riff – almost like a restart. This time the eerie organ/synth line comes in late on the right and an acoustic guitar and rattle hard left strum sits on top of the mix.

Intro Riff 2 again – The big cymbal splash/kick/chord strum is added to with a little vocal ‘ooh’. Then the instrumental intro feature a new electric guitar riff with all the main elements; bass, drums, electric guitars and acoustic. The acoustic guitar is panned left, clean riffing electric guitars centre, ride cymbal panned right, bass and drums centred.

Verse 2 – as before but with more prominent strings, especially in the second half, with plucked violins as well as long swells in the background.

Chorus 2 – as before but with more strident playing. Everything seems just that little bit louder than the first chorus.

Instrumental break: big climax with lots of splashing cymbals, electric guitar strums, and wordless vocal. Second part of the instrumental break is the third verse but instead of lyrics there are thick vocal harmonies doing ‘oohs’ matching the strings and a falsetto over the top. (With a nice little lyric line, hard EQed to sound like a megaphone, doubled and panned hard left and right).

Intro again – Everything else drops out, and it returns to the first riff AGAIN – almost like a second restart. This time there is some strange percussion panned left doing double time and back in the mix, with some more percussion panned right doing half time. The big cymbal splash/kick/chord strum is augmented with what sounds like random knocking on wood (acoustic guitar?) plus cymbal crescendo.

Intro Riff 2 again – The big cymbal splash/kick/chord strum is added to with a little vocal ‘ooh’. Then the instrumental intro feature a new electric guitar riff with all the main elements; bass, drums, electric guitars and acoustic. The acoustic guitar is panned left, clean riffing electric guitars centre, ride cymbal panned right, bass and drums centred.

Climax – same chord structure as verse/chorus but with screaming vocals, swirling phaser/flanger on the guitar, orchestral swells, backing vocal layers coming in as the climax builds, and drum fills with lots of splashing cymbals. The song ends kind of suddenly but augmented with a gorgeous doubled falsetto vocal matching the orchestral string movement as a little coda.

Overall quite a dense production that is supremely mixed to allow for a lot of clarity and cleanliness. Despite all the ingredients and vocals that must have been overdubbed (because they are all clearly Jeff Buckley’s singing) it still retains a live band feel and sound.

Intro – Male spoken Japanese intro with echo. Drums and main riff kick in. Occasional lead vocal ‘Hit me’ and other interjections scattered around the stereo field and sometimes back in the mix. The main riff is a little six note Eastern/Asian sounding plucked string riff. The bass drum is tuned to resonate and in effect it becomes the bass line, and it has a warping African ‘talking drum’ echo to it. It is augmented with a rim shot snare beat and a tabla flourish panned hard right.

First verse – lead vocal rap is actually quite musical with every second line doubled, doubled falsetto words in pauses in the backing (for example ‘Nigger!’) and a layered ‘Holler!’ in a big pause in the music. Doubled backing vox whispering ‘Yes!’ spread wide in stereo, repeats in between lead lines.

First chorus – Vox: Doubled ‘Get ur freak on’ hard panned apart is repeated and interjected with a centred ‘Go!’, as the drums/bass continue with the riff. The chorus is distinguished by the addition of an eerie, slow, low string backing. It is joined half way through by a lead synth line doing a buzzing impression of a theremin. Ends with all the music dropping out and the lead vocal shouting ‘Who’s that bitch?!’. ‘Bitch’ is doubled and effected with a pitch shift that shimmers off with reverb.

Second verse – much like the first. Some minor differences; the ‘Holler!’ doesn’t get a pause in the music to let it come through, instead there is a pause filled with a male sung Hindi?

Second chorus – exactly the same as the first except it ends with a drop and ‘Quiet!’

Third verse – this is where it breaks the pattern. The lead vocal raps as it did in the first two verses but the backing changes quite a bit. The main difference is the main riff is missing for the first half. The drums/bass drop in and out, and a new melodic/harmonic element appears; an orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence punctuating the flow and staggering the groove. When the main riff reappears in the second half of the verse it is not the plucked string instrument but a casiotone keyboard sound in a higher octave.

Third chorus – this is different to the first two choruses. The main riff returns to double with the casio higher version. Instead of the eerie string and synth ‘theremin’ of the first two choruses, there is the orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence of the previous verse playing under the vocal.

Instrumental ending – strangely the song finishes with more than a minute of instrumental break down. Firstly it seems like a simple breakdown with just the drums and high keyboard riff playing for a few bars, underpinned by a howling wind sound effect, but instead of the expected final chorus climax it continues with a spoken Japanese interlude and the complete drop out of the riff. The drums/bass continue as the orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence returns for a few bars, then it leaves to be replaced by the eerie low string backing before it and the wind is replaced by the return of the main plucked string riff for the final fade out. Very odd.

Overall a highly unique sounding track. The production is as involved as most hip hop but with very idiosyncratic elements and a strange structure that ends anticlimactically with almost some sort of demo of each part of the production one at a time. Obviously it is the riff and the ‘Get ur freak on’ vocal hook that makes the track work but in some ways it is anti-Western with little resemblance to conventional harmonic or melodic devices and even an inversion of the conventional song structure (with the instrumental intro at the end).

Fat, fuzzy synth bass drives this slow, lazy groove. Funk guitar (high end only) and lots of layers of melodic synths in the back of the mix, obviously needing to sit under the rap vocals. The drums and percussion are strangely sharp, the hats in particular are harsh, panned hard left, accents hard right. There are lots of special details that happen sporadically here and there (laughing, scratches, spoken word samples)  – an incredible amount of production work, especially considering they all sit buried under the rapping. There’s a lead synth line that appears in the intro, then drops out when the rap starts but then keeps reappearing under the rap. The lead rap vocal is characteristically dry with no noticeable effects on it (except for a delay on a single word later on…)

The chorus -if you can call it that – is only distinguished by an increase in the amount of background sound effects and the reappearance of the lead synth line. It really only feels like a chorus when it finishes – these elements disappear and the second rap vocal starts.

The second lead vocal (Snoop Dogg) gets a little group vocal reinforcement at one stage, but it is not a reoccurring element. There is a delay on the final word – ‘bitch’ – of Snoop Dogg’s first verse, panning off to the left. The vocals are dry, as is the hip hop style, sitting right on top, every word crystal clear. Compare the dry rap vocal with the female backing vocals (especially at the end when they can be heard on their own) and hear the reverb on the wordless vocals. These female vocals appear at the 3:43 mark (during the second and final “chorus”) and continue for the rest of the track, with rap over the top. Synth line is present here too – all these elements create the climax of the track, as they all come to a stop leaving the female vox to finish the track.

Overall quite an involved production, deceptively so, as at first the laidback feel of the track makes it seem simple. There aren’t any dramatic switches from section to section. Instead elements just casually slip in and out of the mix making it feel like one long flow rather than a structured piece of work. This is of course due to the bass line remaining constant and present throughout. The rap is obviously the prominent element, and interest is maintained by there being two vocalists trading verses.

There’s a lot to talk about in this production. The crowd sound effect fading out from the previous album track, the doubled piano in stereo, the ways the drums have been recorded and mixed to highlight the toms (like timpani) and de-emphasise the snare, the orchestral interludes, the layered reverbed vocal ‘aah’ after the middle section, the sustained piano chord at the end, the high pitched tone, the tape loop… but let’s just take a look at the use of stereo.

At the beginning the lead vocal (Lennon) is panned right. From the second verse it begins to slowly pan across to the left, coming to the centre on the lyric ‘lords’ and finishing far left on the line ‘I’d love to turn you on’.

In the middle section the lead vocal (McCartney) also begins hard right but doesn’t move.

In the final section when Lennon’s vocal reappears it is still hard left, and remains there until the final line ‘Albert Hall. I’d love to turn you on’ which is doubled with the vocal in both sides equally.

Lennon’s entire lead vocal is echoed, pushing it back in the mix, and the echo follows the dry signal across the stereo field. McCartney’s vocal has no echo or reverb and stands out as very dry, compared to Lennon.

These extreme panning positions of the vocals are balanced by instrumentation. While the bass and drums sit centre, Lennon’s first vocal (hard right) is balanced by piano, guitar and maracas on the left, although they don’t move as the vocal slowly moves to hard left. In the final section when Lennon’s vocal reappears hard left the piano, guitar and maracas now appear hard right. The mid section, featuring McCartney’s vocal hard right, is balanced with the piano and shakers hard left while bass and drums stay firmly centre. At the end of the middle section the reverb soaked ‘aah’ drifts from right to left and back again.

To close the track (after the piano chord dies out and the high pitched tone) is a tape loop – ‘Never could see any other way’ that also slides around the stereo field.

Overall an amazing use of stereo, especially considering how new the effect was at the time. Stereo has been used not just to create more space in the mix but as a way to further differentiate between the two vocal characters (one dreamy and floating around, the other matter-of-fact and firmly fixed in one position).

Notes: Because A Day in the Life is the last track on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album that loop at the end was intended to be a locked groove. So, instead of the needle reaching the centre of the record and triggering the automatic lift off it remains locked in a circle, playing the loop endlessly (until the needle is manually lifted). It would have been quite a surprise to people used to listening to vinyl records come to an end automatically. Kids, ask your parents about vinyl

see here for a fascinating travelogue of locked grooves

This sounds so simple and straight forward now, and in many ways it is, but at the time it was a new style, and a new sound.

Acoustic guitar, upright bass, electric guitar and a single vocal. No overdubs, no editing, just the one effect (slapback echo). There was no multitrack recording and no stereo. What could you do without the freedom to multitrack, drop in overdubs and mix (in stereo)? Could you invent a new style of music???

Being the fifties it is understandably mid sounding – no deep bass and no sparkling highs. The double bass is hard to hear, despite the percussive thumping playing style. The acoustic guitar also has a percussive, clacking style of playing. In the instrumental breaks (there’s two) there is a distinct percussive sound, like sticks… but no drummer is credited so it must be part of the guitar or bass playing?

The playing is effectively a totally live performance, with the electric guitar played in a muted style during the singing to sit under the vocal and then playing more assertively in the solos.

The most noticeable quality is the slapback echo on Presley’s voice. There is heavy compression, presumably natural compression of the recording equipment, that allows the vocal to stay up front from the low first line ‘Blue moon’ to the higher ‘Well it was on some moonlit night’ . Presley also modulates his singing so that he is pushing out the low notes and easing off on the higher notes. Remember, none of these guys were recording pros – it was new to everyone involved. they were just trying to make it sound good in the room they were in.

The now iconic slapback echo is what makes this such a powerful recording – it makes the vocal stand out above the instrumentation in a totally new and exciting way.

Notes: Sam Phillips was trying to emulate the sound of juke boxes in little restaurants and burger joints where the sound bounced off the hard walls of a small room. He was conscious of the artificial dead sound of the recording studio and that people preferred to hear something familiar. Ironically he created a totally new sound based on a familiar sound – the sound of our one’s voice bouncing back off the bathroom wall as we sing in the shower perhaps?