There’s an old saying - well it’s actually my saying and there’s no doubt about the fact I’m knocking on a bit - anyway, the sad old show business anecdote I’m claiming is: “great songs are 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration”. I dunno what it means, but in reality, the line between composing, producing and arranging a "Timeless Worldwide Smash" is a very thin one.
 | | Big George demonstrates the Theremin |
On 'Good Vibrations' everything you hear came from the mind of a 23-year-old Brian Wilson. He wanted it to be a song that would last for ten years. Forty years on, and counting, it stands head and shoulders above every other record as the most creative 3 minutes and 35 seconds of pop music ever produced. Breaking every rule in the compositional book, it is a masterclass of pure unbridled genius, and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at its unique arrangement. But before we do, what exactly are the normal rules of engagement when it comes to song writing? THE VERSE: The part of the song which tells the story. Most songs have three verses, a few may have four (although in the 60s Bob Dylan had songs with dozens of verses). You can get away with a single verse repeated over and over again - the Red Hot Chilli Peppers 'Roller Coaster of Love', and Nirvana's 'Something in the Way' are just two that did. THE CHORUS: The part of a song designed to get your friendly postal delivery person whistling. There are many devices to achieve this desired effect: easy to remember lyrics, constant repetition, but sometimes a little brainwashing can help. Musically lifting the chorus can be the spark to its success. One method is to drone a high root note string sound playing all the way through the chorus, a favourite of the Pet Shop Boys. THE BRIDGE OR TAG: This links the verse and the chorus together. The best example is demonstrated in every guitar shop in the country every single day: namely Wonderwall by Oasis. It has a perfect, if a little long, example of a bridge: "And all the roads we have to walk are winding..." Another trick Noel used in this song was sticking two verses together at the beginning of the song. THE MIDDLE EIGHT: A third melodic part of a song, which, if used, is more often than not placed after the second chorus to break up the song pattern. It’s the bit where James Brown screams "Take it to the bridge" (some might say they’re the only intelligible words in James’ set). It's called a middle eight because on the whole the section lasts for eight bars. Having said that, there's no law saying it has to be eight bars in length, but I would hazard a guess that half of all songs have a middle eight, and of those, half are eight bars long. IF you’re not sure what a middle eight is, listen to the bit in Billie Jean which goes "People always told me, be careful what you do..." it’s a middle eight that lasts for eight bars. A KEY CHANGE There are two kinds of key change. The most abused is “the truck drivers key change”, where the song is just moved up a a couple of frets on the guitar. A classic example is Whitney Houston’s version of 'I Will Always Love You'. The other example is harder to spot, but subtly a lot more effective. One of the best is The Beatles 'Penny Lane' which starts in the key of B but drops to A for the chorus. You don’t notice the shift, but it’s pure genius. THE CODA: If you want a cool ending on a song you stick a coda on the end. It can be the chorus hook repeated continuously, or a new complementary section.
One of the most exciting codas used in popular music is the end of Elvis Costello's 'Accidents Will Happen' - the bit that repeats the words "I Know", ad infinitum. INTRO You’ve got to have a good intro, something to wet the appetite, a vamp, a chug, a little tune, a fat drum fill. You need an intro! So they’re the rules, lets break ‘em! At this point I must mention 'Bohemian Rhapsody' - right, mentioned it More than mere classic The Beach Boys record 'Good Vibrations' however, is more than a mere classic, it's the Holy Grail of pop. It’s the winner of the “nothing sounds like it” prize and the “a young man at his peak” award. Recording commenced mid-February 1966 at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood, towards the tail-end of sessions for The Beach Boys' most influential album Pet Sounds (although ultimately, it wasn’t finished in time and wasn’t included on the album). Brian had recently stopped touring with the band as he wanted to concentrate on writing and recording, and he was terrified of people laughing at his voice on stage. He was initially replaced by Glen (Like a Rhinestone Cowboy) Campbell, then a few months later Bruce Johnston took over permanently. The band were in Europe and Japan whilst Brian entered the studio to cut the backing tracks After a shaky and uncertain start, 'Good Vibrations' took six weeks to complete and was recorded at five different studios, using a 4-track machine bouncing to a stereo mix and back onto one of the early 8-track monsters. Slice During the creation of this masterpiece, Brian would slice the tapes with a razor and stick different recordings together to get the best performance from the ensemble of top line session players. They were known as the Wrecking Crew and included Hal Blaine on drums (who has played on more top ten hits that anybody else by a mile), Ray Pollman on Fender Bass, Larry Kneckel on Hammond Organ and Paul Tanner on Theremin (an instrument that I session on too, although I’m not in his class) Pop songs usually have a basic groove running throughout the track, not so 'Good Vibration's. Brian Wilson wanted to create a pocket symphony, using dramatic changes in mood and texture equal to any old symphonic masterpiece. 'Good Vibrations' is in the key of G flat major (six flats) which is a nightmare key to play in. The lead singer is Dennis Wilson, who was Brian's brother (Carl was the other brother who sang lead on 'God Only Knows', which, as it happens, was the first pop record to use the word God) The song starts without an intro, straight in on a verse, with his voice pre-empting the musical backing, descending from the relative minor: E flat minor into gorgeousity. Atypical The atypical structure and sound of 'Good Vibrations' is due, in part, to the way the track was recorded but more influential on the sonic soundscape was the unconventional and dangerously exotic instrumentation. This was a period in pop history when records were either guitar, bass and drum combos or traditional orchestrated arrangements for vocalists. To start with there is no six string guitar on 'Good Vibrations', but the blend of solo cello, electric and string bass, coupled with the unpredictability of a Theremin, alongside a honky-tonk piano and jaw's harp takes the song in directions that 40 years after the event, still seem excitingly new. The radical changes in instrumentation from one section to another, bass, drums, vocals dropping in and out without warning, choruses flowing from fully developed backing tracks to almost a cappella! The beat itself, a standard four-in-the bar with a triplet feel (1 2 3 / 2 2 3 / 3 2 3 / 4 2 3) it’s known as a shuffle beat or 3’s over 4’s. Other songs with the same feel include 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World' by Tears for Fears and 'When The Going Gets Tough' by Billy Ocean. If you want to feel the triplets on 'Good Vibrations', focus in on the prominent triplet figure played by the cello, which chugs away on the root note of the chord throughout the chorus. Arrangement So, let's take a closer look at the arrangement of 'Good Vibrations'. I’ve mentioned the very first thing you hear is the angelic voice of Dennis Wilson who was in fact the only member of The Beach Boys who actually surfed, and it was his idea for the band to sing songs about his sport in the first place, back when they called themselves Carl and the Passions and the Pendletones (after a woolie jumper). He begins the song singing the word 'I' a triplet quaver before the downbeat. The first eight bars of the verse feature a heavily phased organ stabbing the chords on the beat, amplified through a rotating Leslie speaker. This is accompanied by the tight compressed bass playing super-cool triplet figures. The next eight bars have broken but rigid drum fills in tandem with a tambourine splash and a descending French horn placed exquisitely in the distance. The 16-bar chorus was edited into the multitrack master tape during the construction of the track and like all the other edits on the track is masked by monumental reverb decays, which were added at the mixing and sub-mixing stages. Rhythmically, the chorus is straight down the line, but instrumentally it goes crazy! A throbbing cello stretched over a thumping bass, drum and backbeat tambourine framework topped by a Theremin (the invention of Leon Theremin, who at one stage of his life was kidnapped by the KGB from New York and imprisoned in a Siberian Goulag). Vocals The chorus vocals are split into four x 4-bar sections. The first being “I'm picking up Good Vibrations”, the second adds an “oo bop bop” figure, the third adds a gorgeous high “oo bop bop” harmony and the fourth section goes up again to an almost impossible harmony. The harmonic structure of the vocal parts may not be what the dusty old Profs teach at the Royal Academy of Music, but the power they deliver is equal to anything scratched on a piece of parchment by any of them dead composers! Often song arrangements add something to the second verse to sweeten the pace of the song. So what does 'Good Vibration's do for the second verse? Nothing! The second verse and the second chorus adhere to the exact same patterns of instrumentation and harmony as the first time through. There are only two verses before the song thunders into the left field. A honky-tonk piano playing half-time accompanied by an on-beat bass drone, a different tambourine (shaken this time, as opposed to whacked!), a jaws harp and a counterpointed theremin part low in the mix, holding court for eight bars. All followed by a four-bar vocal crescendo ”aaaah” with the third and fourth bars adding “Oo my my my” taking us into the middle eight. Middle eight And what a middle eight! It modulates from the relative minor to an E flat major (which theoretically shouldn’t work in pop, but this song transcends theory). Out of nowhere appears the only sleigh bell in recorded history that doesn’t sound like Christmas and it underpins the four separate, divine interweaving parts of “I don't know where but she sends me there...” Then, after a down beat but uplifting, half-time middle eight like this, most composers / arrangers / producers would explode into a big splash hook-line section, not Brian Wilson! He slows the track even further by means of the most savage edit in the track, moving into a 23-bar section of church organ. Split into six sections of four bars (don’t worry my maths is fine, just give me time to explain). The first section is vocal-less, the second adding the line “gotta keep those loving good, vibrations happening with her”. The electric bass leading into the blissful vocal harmony third section and the fourth section adds a harmonica, well why not! But the surprises don’t end there? Over the course of these four bars the vocals simply fade out, which on any other record would’ve been pop record suicide The next section is vocal-less, with just the church organ, tambourine, bass root and harmonica, as is the first two bars of the sixth and last section. On the third bar there's a crescendo vocal “aaaah” which stops with everything else on the down beat of the last bar, with delicious, distorted, ultra-analogue spring reverb to near-silence. Bosh! the next surprise: an eight-bar coda of “Good good good, good Vibrations” only this time there are no “Oo bop bop” just straight root-third and fifth block harmony. Once again, all these vocals fade out in time for the final two bars of the section leaving the cello and bass prominent, before the final piece of singing on the track. Namely eight bars of rapturous barber shop-type vocal harmonies. There are no words, just “dos”, “bas” and “oos” Unexpected And as if this wasn't unexpected enough, the final playout is then heralded by two bars of just cello and very prominent theremin before the drums and bass kick in for the final two-bar fade-out with full instrumentation 'Good Vibrations', with its complex vocal arrangements, unexpected instrumental landscape and dynamic crescendos and decrescendos, all combine to set this record apart from every other pop single in history. In short, if there's an instruction manual for writing and arranging pop songs, this one breaks every rule. Now go and listen to it again! | 
