You are quite right, Trevor Bolder did miss his cue on Jean Jeanie! pleased they left it in cause it sounds awesome!
Paul McCartney will leave mistakes in his music too on purpose proving it is played by humans.
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Fleetwood Mac - Ugh.
- Thread starter honeyiscool
- Start date
Paul McCartney will leave mistakes in his music too on purpose proving it is played by humans.
Listen to Little Richard on Jenny Jenny. The force of his singing is over the top. On the last chorus he runs out of breath -
It’s a mistake but the take is electrifying and his exhaustion on the last chorus lends to the emotional (raising of the spirits) impact. Jenny wore him out!
Something created did not go according to plan but on playback the producers went - now that is a great piece of art
It didn’t cross anyone’s mind that it didn’t meet some schoolly notion of correctness ie: anti- art.
It’s a mistake but the take is electrifying and his exhaustion on the last chorus lends to the emotional (raising of the spirits) impact. Jenny wore him out!
Something created did not go according to plan but on playback the producers went - now that is a great piece of art
It didn’t cross anyone’s mind that it didn’t meet some schoolly notion of correctness ie: anti- art.
Ha ! - I play in a Mac tribute band. I only just heard that 'mistake' just now.
Nice one. I won't play it like that though as it doesn't sound right.
Yeah, it's a G instead of an F, but I suppose if you're trying to get the whole thing in one take, it's pretty small potatoes.
Or hear Paul McCartney's voice die on the chorus of "If I Fell" at 1:44. I first heard this just about a year ago. It's an amazing screw up that George Martin could have easily fixed with another take. But they didn't and that song is an absolute gem.
Actually that was "fixed" Paul's voice cracking only occurs in the stereo version. In the Mono version it's fine. That was back when no one cared about the stereo mix because no one owned a stereo player, they were all mono.
If your profile age is correct, and assuming it is unlikely that you were mixing many albums at 9 years old, It's quite possible you did not use the same equipment.
I don't think it's a big deal in any case. What is a big deal is that they did not have enough COW BELL in this album, what a horrendous oversight.
Agreed, but song is not on Rumours. It's on the white Fleetwood Mac LP. Just sayin'.
This doesn't really have anything to do with rules. That's a bit of a red herring. The real issue, I tend to think, is just that to some folks (including me), that bass note at 0:12 sounds weak. Not because it breaks some rule, but just because it doesn't sound that good.
To me that note at 0:12 seems pretty obviously a clam, not a grace note or a passing tone. The nicest way of putting it is that it's a less-than-convincing musical choice. I don't quite get the scramble to figure out some way of justifying it. It's just not that good a note in that moment. That's not the end of the world.
But also I don't much care. It's such a relatively small thing that it doesn't drag down the track at all, and the bass is strong throughout all the rest of the song. No point in making a mountain out of a molehill ... but also no point in acting as if the molehill isn't there.
I can safely say that I have NEVER used recording gear of the caliber that Fleetwood Mac was using. But if you've ever recorded 24 track to 2" tape, or 12 track to 1" tape for that matter, you can punch in and out to correct clams. Is this not everyone else's experience? My profile age is correct: I started recording analog about 30 years ago when I was 20. You couldn't seriously have thought that I was asserting my recording experience began at 9 years old, so that must have been a good-natured attempt at sarcasm.
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Of course you could punch in and out on tape! (I'm 62 BTW.) But of course it was destructive, and some punches were harder to get than others. I remember a number of times wanting to fix a note and the engineer telling me," No, I can't get in to fix just that note; I need you to do the whole phrase over."
Just as many don't want to be.
I do the same thing, listen to it on known reference system, like my car stereo.Hi,
Forgive me for jumping in late on the conversation and reading only half of the replies.
As many times as I've heard this track I've never noticed that "poor choice" with that note. But now that you've brought it to my attention I can't "un-hear" it. Who knows why they left it? I can only speculate. And we love to speculate, don't we?
It's possible that upon playback they listened to a big pair of studio monitors cranked way up and just didn't really notice it enough to force another take. I've been in recording sessions where the client would want to listen to the playback on smaller speakers at lower volumes because they could hear better. Or maybe it was late, or they were up against a deadline, and they just wanted to get it in the can. Maybe they were partying too hardy and loved it the way it was.
Wasn't it Rick Ocasek of The Cars who would take the recording out to his car stereo and listen to it? If it sounded good on his car stereo then he would be satisfied.
Anyway, an interesting bit of musical trivia.
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
Right, and then so you'd do the whole phrase over. I don't remember this ever once posing an unsolvable problem for me though.
As you said, "to some folks it sounds weak." That's an opinion and you are entitled to it. I don't hear it as weak at all. I listen to the same passage and think grace note, specifically an acciaccatura:
"Acciaccatura
Acciaccatura (Invalid Link Removed: /əˌtʃækəˈtjʊərə/, US: /-tʃɑːkə-/; Italian: [attʃakkaˈtuːra]) comes from the Italian verb acciaccare, "to crush". In the eighteenth century, it was an ornament applied to any of the main notes of arpeggiated chords, either a tone or semitone below the chord tone, struck simultaneously with it and then immediately released. Hence the German translation Zusammenschlag (together-stroke).[4]
In the nineteenth century, the acciaccatura (sometimes called short appoggiatura) came to be a shorter variant of the long appoggiatura, where the delay of the principal note is quick. It is written using a grace note (often a quaver, or eighth note), with an oblique stroke through the stem. The acciaccatura in the Classical period is usually performed before the beat and the emphasis is on the main note not the grace note. The appoggiatura long or short has the emphasis on the grace note.[citation needed]
The exact interpretation of this will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but the following is possible:
Whether the note should be played before or on the beat is largely a question of taste and performance practice. Exceptionally, the acciaccatura may be notated in the bar preceding the note to which it is attached, showing that it is to be played before the beat.[citation needed] (This guide to practice is unfortunately not available, of course, if the principal note does not fall at the beginning of the bar.)
The implication also varies with the composer and the period. For example, Invalid Link Removed's and Invalid Link Removed's long appoggiaturas are – to the eye – indistinguishable from Invalid Link Removed's and Prokofiev's before-the-beat acciaccaturas.[citation needed]"
I don't know it's what John McVie intended, you don't know he fumbled. It's all "Monday morning quarterbacking". What I do know is that Fleetwood Mac, and John McVie, had been seriously successful artists for such a long time that the idea of cutting corners on the white Fleetwood Mac album is ridiculous. If it had been deemed "wrong" by John, the other members, or Keith Olsen (producer), it would have been corrected.
Greg
