Re: Embarrassed Correction re: 5:15 intro

> From: Litgo@aol.com
> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 00:37:38 -0400
> Subject: Re: Embarrassed Correction re 5:15 intro
> 
> I'll venture a guess as to what it is. Imagine the assembled musicians
> getting ready to play the intro to the song. Somebody counts off so the
> guitar, piano and bass can all start at the same time. At the end of the
> countoff, somebody hits a drumstick which makes an errant clanking noise.

Actually, you're right about this.  This is common practice in recording
sessions.  Typically four to eight counts before starting the song,
sometimes 4 counts and four implied counts of silence.  After you're done,
you edit (with a razorblade in the old days, with a click of the mouse these
days) the intro off.

> Later, when putting the tracks down, and this, mind you, is just a guess,
> they cue the tape up right past the count off, but before the opening chords
> of the song. However, someone stops the tape right at the end of the
> countoff, but before the clanking sound. When the rail station tape is being
> played, and the engineer hits play on the paused tape of the piano, the
> errant sound, starts at zero speed but is brought up to speed, sounding from
> a low, slow frequency to a high, quick frequency. 

Very much on the ball, except that the noise is a combination of servo noise
and probably bias frequency (which I didn't even think of before, but it's
usually not that loud, plus there's too much of a pattern to the noise
itself)  In this case to assemble the song as a whole it looks like thay had
no less than four machines running.  Machine #1: Railstation noises; Machine
#2: Piano tracks; Machine #3: Band Tracks.  These all went through a mixer
and into machine #4 recording the whole shebang.  Yikes!  Computers make the
process a lot more simple these days.

> Now, this is most likely not the case because the sound doesn't sound like
> that. But, any tape getting up to speed usually has some type of audible
> "noise" on it. 

I dunno, I think you're pretty close here.

Christopher Goosman

> Just a theory. It can be more easily heard on the remix because the high end
> has been cleaned up. It wasn't too obvious before because the high end was
> compressed down.