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If they could have done that at the beginning....we had a The Shadows at their very best for about 60 years ago.
No, I love the shads as they where, have been, are and will be.
The magic was there and "stayed" in the past, The charm was there too in 70's-80's and 00's.

Nowadays tracks are sometimes overproduced for some "artist" who can't sing 3 notes in a row in tune, in time etc.
A decent HI-FI.....no MP3 via Blue Tooth, that's the modern norm for the most part of the young consumer-market.
My nephews looked and ROFLOL .... 78,45,33, Tape Reel,Multi Track , cassette,VHS,DAT, Mini-Disk,Laser Disk,CD, DVD Blu-Ray???? oh Thank god you've HD's too....

I reckon sounds familiar by most of us?

Cheers Rob

I cannot hear these glitches you talk about, but then, I am not a guitarist or have this
ear to hear this minor things, I just love The Shadows, but, since this has come up here,
then I want to ask you about 'Stars Fell On Stockton' . After 25 second, is there some glitch,
or...

flingal64 wrote: I want to ask you about 'Stars Fell On Stockton' . After 25 second, is there some glitch,
or...

Yes at 23" there is a fluffed lead guitar note. And there are oddities in the bass line at times, effective though it is. But, as many have already said, this is part of the magic of recordings made in those times. You are hearing a real performance in real time, captured for posterity. It's got energy and skill. It doesn't offer perfection, it offers the excitement of live music making and reminds us how darned good the Shadows were.

MikeAB wrote:All good stuff - could notes actually be 'dropped in' anyway in 1961/2?

Mike

Simple overdubs were certainly possible. Think of the added bits layered onto Wonderful Land or the last note of Man of Mystery.

remember they were using 2 track until late 1963 so they were limited to how much they could add, you could 'bounce down' the tracks to free up one but you would lose sound quality.
Not sure The Shadows ever used this technique but i know The Beatles certainly did, frequently after 1965.

MeBHank wrote:

MikeAB wrote:All good stuff - could notes actually be 'dropped in' anyway in 1961/2?

Mike

Simple overdubs were certainly possible. Think of the added bits layered onto Wonderful Land or the last note of Man of Mystery.

The last note / chord of Man Of Mystery is an edit rather than an overdub. There is no reverb tail on the ensemble-recorded basic track; it ends with what in the movies or TV they'd call a smash edit.

JimN wrote:The last note / chord of Man Of Mystery is an edit rather than an overdub. There is no reverb tail on the ensemble-recorded basic track; it ends with what in the movies or TV they'd call a smash edit.

I'd always been so concerned with trying to emulate the pick technique and sound that I'd not noticed that. It now makes sense to me as to why there's not even a snare hit alongside Hank's last note/chord as happens with the second one at the start of the recording (a feature most people haven't noticed or ever tried to replicate - not even The Shadows did it!).

There are more glitches in the early Shadows numbers than I have had hot dinners. Mustang, Theme from Giant, FBI and Kon Tiki come to mind immediately. But Hank somehow managed uncannily .to maintain the integrity of the tune usually by fingering the correct notes but missing the string with his pick. So you still get the notes but in the background. This is best illustrated I think by Mustang, where Hank missed a whole stack of notes, and probably FBI, where, in both, unless you listen carefully, you might miss it. There might be lots of missed notes but I can hear very few wrong notes. Kon Tiki in the double stop middle verse is he nearest. None of this detracts in any way, for me, from the finished article. Popular myth at that time was that the Brits insisted on getting everything spot on, but the Americans went for feel, and so if there were small mistakes, but the take felt right, they would let it go.
I'm still slightly intrigued by the suggestion of overdubs, during or after the take. Man of Mystery might be an example where it appears to be that the last double stop was added. Forgive me for not keeping up. I can either play the Am tremelo dive right at the end of the last verse or the last double stop but not both, one immediately segueing into the other. Maybe it's a combination of me and 12 gauge strings. And lets not forget Gonzales and its 54 or was it 76 takes before they got it right. Surely one of the takes before that figure would have been near enough to overdub if correction had been possible.

The only 'glitch' I've ever noticed in Wonderful Land is the missed second note (F) of the outro. I presume no one minded too much; it was No. 1 for two months...

franz wrote:And lets not forget Gonzales and its 54 or was it 76 takes before they got it right.

59 takes were recorded of "Gonzales", but take 58 was chosen as the master.