10 Recording Bloopers That Made the Album

Nice…I never noticed any of these…pretty interesting that this stuff happens, especially for such big acts.

I'd not noticed most of these, except for the You one.

The thing that never made sense to me there is that Thom could, at the time, totally hold a high note that long (cf: Some version of Creep where he holds out the last note of the bridge section for ridiculous amounts of time)!

My pet theory's always been that they recorded it after doing a bunch of other stuff, and he was tired and couldn't quite make it that day.

Great post!

Not musically-based, but in the video game Oblivion, there was a section where you're talking to a gossipy woman, and one of her lines went something like this: "Did you hear what happe- Ah, wait. Can I do that one more time? I'll get it eventually… … …Did you hear what happened?"

A pretty serious miss on the sound designer's part!

Cool list, makes you wonder who's listening to a final version before giving it the go-ahead.

This reminds me of the bit from Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything where he introduces a segment called "Sounds of the Studio," asking listeners to try and find all the engineering mistakes on the album (bad editing, tape hiss, etc.). I've never listened closely enough to the rest of the album to see if I can hear them in the other songs…

There's a super squeaky bassdrum pedal on a ton of James Brown stuff as well. Once you notice it, it's all you hear…

Nope, don't believe the one about Dark Side of the Moon. 1) Too creative to be an accident. 2) Don't believe that Floyd would have left it uncorrected.

I discovered the clicking in Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" a long time ago.
It's a good album, but the mastering is poor as hell… there are some very annoying high frequency harmonics in the vocals all over the record…

Oh for gods sake.

How can you sit there and complain about music that has been incredibly successful? Maybe you may have missed the point here, maybe we all actually like the "wrong" natural sound that these songs have.

Music isn't about seperating all the channels and having deadly silence in between vocal parts, its about the whole sound. How it feels when all the layers play together, a bit of over spill from the metronome isn't going to make me shout:

"oh my god, they are recording this with real people and i can hear the other muscians in the background, shock horror"…

The example you used with the Police, both endings are equally perfect - why you think the second sample must mask some sort of mathamatical formual with the previous sample is beyond me.

Music is what feels good to the ears, and what flows, it's not the caged structured metal box you seem to think it should be.

All the songs you chose have been very successful which proves that you don't need to over produce a song, as can ruin the original sound and make it too clinical, you want to avoid this.

If I were to pick some badly produced songs, I would of started somewhere that actually needed the attention, ala Sean Kingstons awful over use of a vocoder??

Interesting blog, but I totally disagree!

afanku

Perfection is boring.

The Pink Floyd thing is deliberate, and mimics tape stretch as much as anything. Curiously enough it's a mechanical effect - slow the tape platter with the palm of the hand on playback for mi

The thing is, Pink Floyd were notorious for their perfectionism — they threw out the entire original first version of "Shine On your Crazy Diamond" because some drum reverb leaked into the tracks; it was pretty much unnoticeable. Also keep in mind the subject of Dark Side — instability and madness.

The Clapton sounds like a mannerism to me, a deliberate slur or semi-stutter.

The Lennon is pretty demented, though. Then again, Lennon liked to do that sort of thing, and certainly wasn't averse to doing things in a lo-fi manner.

I agree with the above commenters about the Floyd; I always liked that sound. Seemed to be part of the overall feel of the work to me…

I tend to agree with the first point in the conclusion: this highlights how even professional, highly-produced recordings have errors on them, and that those little things didn't hurt their success (and probably weren't even noticed by 99% of the audience). And no matter how much capability you have at your fingertips, eventually you just have to stop polishing and be done with it.

That said, this is a fun game :)

There is a interesting sound in Rod Stewarts "Every picture tells a Story" where someone in the background gets so into the sound that he yells "yeah". Rather than taking away from the song, it emphasizes the spirit of the song. I think it happens right after the lyrics "Maggie, I wish I had never seen your face."

Are you sure the "cut" on the high A in Roadiohead's "You" is really a cut? It sounds to me like Thom might have let his voice break and wobble a bit on purpose. It's a legitimate vocal technique — for one thing, it lets you hold high notes longer. It creates such a good effect in that moment and Thom is such a consumate and skillful singer that I have a hard time believing it was a mistake. Then again, as a singer myself, I worship Thom Yorke so maybe I just don't want to admit anything less than perfect intent! ;-)

Sorry. The Rod Stewart recording sound is in "Every Picture Tells a Story". The line is "But the slit eyed lady knocked me off my feet
God I was glad I found her" then in the right channel … we hear "yeah!". Rocking baby.

Note: I'm a fan of music and modern tonal melody, but by no means an expert or audiophile.

On the vast majority, I agree with you. On a few, I questioned it but gave you the benefit of the doubt.

On the rest, since I don't know the tracks well enough to place a context, I'm of the opinion that they're deliberate (1) or worth commentary (n-1),

Incubus - MFTVM
- Sounds normal in what context I have, and a deliberate edit
- On re-re-re-re-review, yes it definately seems edited, but the tonal shift seems necessary to demonstrate the emotion.

J/L
- Sounds like the guitar just changed chordes (mostly)
- The singer dropping an octave actually sounds in place
- finally noticed the guitar changing chords, agree it's an edit, but again, it stresses the intent of emotion, not the actual original sound, and I can see it justified

C/A
- Sounds like it's revving up a beat, and building the underlying rhythm — I don't know the song/record, so I couldn't prove that.
- Still, it sounds like a deliberate edit, but I'll give it's quite possibly incompetance.

P/Fl
- I admit it sounds like a recording error, but I could also buy that their pianist slipped on the pedal — but I'm more willing to believe oversight in this one. — Either way, re-record would've been my choice.

You left out a classic example (that admittedly most people have never heard). Its The Smashing Pumpkins' "Soothe" off the b-sides compilation "Pisces Iscariot". Billy Corgan recorded it in his apartment in Chicago and in the middle of the song you can hear a bus stop to pick up passengers outside the window!

I heard a rumor that event was alluded to in his lyrics to another song with the line "the hiss that we had missed".

I swear I can hear autotune on most modern vocal recordings, not just in sudden pitch changes, but in vocals that are absolutely uniform and precisely on pitch for a long period of time. ("long" being relative, like over half a second.)

And there is something strange, unnatural, maybe chorusy, that happens in the tone of corrected stuff. There are a lot of nuances in flapping vocal cords, and there's a lot of math in changing flapping at 421 times per second to flapping at 420 times per second. Some of the nuances are lost.

Talented and natural beats untalented and fixed, every time.

I'm showing my age (thank me for planting the redwood trees) when I insist on bringing up the passage in "Angel Baby", where Rosie stops singing for the standard eight-bar bridge, and the piano player — perhaps Rosie herself — either falls asleep or trys to bring the song to a close before realizing that she needs to come back and finish the thing. Whatever the reason, the piano playing falters. It's a classic moment.

I hear autotune blips like the one from that DC clip all the time, and it annoys the hell out of me. Whether it's more annoying on an obviously (usually) good vocalist or obviously terrible one is up for debate though…

An example of some lousy editing just recently: Kins of Leon - On Call
Horrible clipping of the echo in the lead singers voice after almost each line in the choris.

I'm on call, to be there. (MAJOR CLIP)
One and all, to be there. (MAJOR CLIP)
And When I fall, to pieces. (Major CLIP)
Lord you know, I'll be there waiting

The song is great except for this one tiny little extremely avoidable decision.

Since you took the time to write it, I figure you desergve to know I'm talking about you behind your back. Reposted from alt-country.org in a thread discussing your list:

Thanks for the reference, I'm just testing out a theory about recording engineers.

Ya see, when it comes to music I think people can be basically divided into two different types: those who listen to the music, and those who listen to the lyrics. My theory is that those who are more mathematically inclined are those who listen to the music –in other words they are artisans; those who are more artistically inclined tend to listen to lyrics.

Now, these aren't binary types, rather they are analog. That is to say there is a whole universe of grey in between the two where listeners fall. Some people like both equally, but lacking the passion of those that prefer one over the other.

It is my contention that audio engineers always tend to be of the "music first" variety, while lyricist/songwriters tend to be of the second category.

I couldn't give a rat's ass about the sound quality generally. By that I mean if I bump the guitar body while recording and it's a great take, I'll ignore the bump. It doesn't bother me. Some of my favorite albums have plenty of bleed (dogs barking, kids laughing, phones ringing, cars driving by, mic stands getting bumped, whispers of "my leg is asleep", lip smacking in the mic, hiss in the background, "pops" in the mic) and it doesn't detract from the experience for me at all.

These same noises drive audio engineers batshit, because to them music is about sound, whereas to me music is about meaning.

I'm not saying that objectively one is better than the other, but only that it is experiencing music in two completely different ways.

This is a cop-out. There are “perfect takes,” for sure, but for a professional (or a self-described genius like John Lennon) there’s no such thing as a take so perfect it can’t be recreated.

This makes me think he is an audio engineer. I'll never be able to play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" they same way as I played it in my kitchen the day I recorded it as a demo. I tried for two days in the studio to recapture the same feeling and couldn't get it, so what you hear on the album is me in my kitchen. An audio engineer wouldn't be listening to how I sang the words, or even what the words were, as long as they were on pitch, in time, and at the right level. But saying that any take can be recreated screams "Audio Engineer."

More evidence

This is another cop-out. Mixing engineers have their own version of the fourth wall, and Pensado broke it with this mix. Honest or not, the bleed reminds listeners of the technology used to record, and that distracts us from Aguilera’s performance.

Really? I've never noticed the bleed (though it wouldn't have bothered me if I did). The fact that this guy did tells me he wasn't listening to what the song was saying, and wholeheartedly believes her grammy winning vocal take should have been retracked.

Recording and mixing engineers traditionally build a vocal track by “punching in” (re-recording a rough spot) and “comping” (building a single vocal track from the best parts of multiple takes.)

Only engineers who insist on tracking the Vox seperately do this, usually erasing the vocal scratch track in the process (and much of the energy and spontaneity in my opinion). If I have a bad spot in a vocal I retrack the whole song. If I can't get a better take then I leave the flub in, because to me, it's about how honest and real the song is, because it makes what I am trying to communicate more apparent.

To a commercial audio engineer this approach is all wrong. It needs to be tracked in its most listenable and pristine iteration, no matter if it's ten takes in and all conviction has gone out of the song, as long as the nice clean hook is there.

And from another user on the same board:

I just dug up my Tape Op interview with Ethan Johns and there's an interesting quote (it's long):

"Tape Op: I remember trying to track n a smaller room, and trying to do all the instruments live and then the bass plays and the snare goes, "shhhhh." Do you find that using a larger room and being able to pull things apart a little bit helps some of those problems?

Ethan Johns: Well, again, I don't really see those as problems, because you're controlling things for the sake of controlling things. I don't think people really care about that. I could be wrong and maybe there are a lot of engineers out there today who would think I'm nuts for thinkg along these lines…It's the way I like to hear things. I like to capture a moment and if the snares are rattlin' a little bit I can't think of any music fan that's going to be listening to a record and go, "Oh my God, what a terrible job, you can hear the snares rattling!" That's what happens - drums rattle."

Just weighing in on your Pensado/Aguilera comment…. completely disagree. There's a time and a place for everything in music, and the parts of her heart and soul present on that vocal track outweigh anything that could have been done technologically to 'fix' it.

@ jjtcorsair ("perfection is boring")… right on.

Great post overall… thanks for the fun soundbites!

I've got a great one that always makes people chuckle when I point it out to them.

In the first verse of High Plains Drifter by the BBoys on Paul's Boutique - I believe it's MCA that commits a nice little vocal, tounge twister gaffe.

The lyric is:

Pulled over to the river to take a rest
Pulled out a pair of pliers and pulled the bullet out of my chest

Only listen to how he says it on the song…. he clearly says PLAIR of pliers rather than pair of pliers.

Pretty funny.

I think most of these clips were indeed mistakes, but it was either "Oups! Doesn't matter" or "Oups! Hey, that sounds pretty cool!"

Modern music technology makes perfection possible. That doesn't necessarily mean that perfection is desirable.

Take Ozzy Osbourne as an example. Compare "Blizzard of Ozz" from 1980 (approx) to the latest "Black Rain" album.

On Black Rain, everything is perfect. The guitar sound is thick and heavy, and the songs are full of perfectly timed special effects. The result is anonymous and lifeless (except that Ozzy's singing can still lift anything to near greatness…)

On 'Blizzard, a young Randy Rhoads plays far from perfect. He really struggles with the timing on the fast solo parts and the guitar tone is rather thin and buzzy. There are a few overdubs and the odd rather amateurish special effects. The result is (IMHO) the greatest rock'n roll album of all time…

The one I never hear mentioned is Fleetwood Mac's song "World Turning". Halfway through the song there's a pause as all instruments go silent for a beat before resuming- and in that instant, someone belched.

I haven't seen anyone mention Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis. It's the bestselling jazz record ever, but the first side of the recording plays back nearly a quarter-tone off-pitch.

Here's a good one for ya!
Pink Floyd was amazing from the David Gilmour days on… Before that, they were spacy and without a defined direction.
I consider their work to be very well produced, etc.

However, I discovered a bloop on Momentary Lapse of Reason:

New Machine - second verse should be…

Sometimes I get tired of the waiting
Sometimes I get tired of being in here
Is this the way it has always been?
Could it ever have been different?

David sings the last line of the verse like this:
Could it HAVE ever have been different?

The vocal flow sounds like "could it've ever've been…"

I had to re-listen to it a lot to understand the anomaly.

Rock on David!

Sorry mate,
At least your Incubus example seems way off. Where you are hearing a cut, I am hearing a sound coming from the singing, from his mouth. I am pretty sure the "cut" you hear is the sound of the tongue touching the top of the mouth. How do I know? Because I have heard that same sound nearly every day of my engineering career. You are hearing something distracting where there has not been any vocal editing, but actually there should have been to prevent the distraction. Which kind of proves the opposite from what you are trying to say…

Things are often not what they seem…

Great post… I didn't think anyone else paid attention to this kind of stuff. It's both comforting and disturbing to know you crazies are out there.

Here's a more recent example of audible edits in modern recording: On Wilco's "Sky Blue Sky" album, track #7, "Please Be Patient With Me". You can hear a breath edit right after the third verse, after the line, "It doesn't mean that I don't care…" Clear evidence of vocal compositing (though I still love the record).

Keep listening!

Nice collection of blopers. Part of the stuff is very hard to hear. I guess that my ear isn't professional …

Fun blog, I have to say, listening to music, things like this hardly bothers me but it's fun when someone figures these things out.

btw, in your list I miss 'life on mars' by bowie, when it fades out in the end you can hear the studio phone ringing. In a documentary about the song however they explained that the take was so near perfection that they let that one slide :D

My only contribution to this very cool list is the song "Missing You" by John Waite (a song I loathe, by the way).

You can tell that the song, at least the longer, 'LP" version - is mixed at slightly various speeds….and the segues were so clunky and obvious.

Great post! I really like your blog!!!

Take Five by Brubeck has a really obvious edit between the end of the sax melody and the beginning of the drum solo….

Another one for you. At 2:44 in Pearl Jam's "Given to fly", there's a loud, sharp sound overload, almost like a whistle. I'm guessing it's acoustic feedback but can't really be sure. It bugs the hell out of me every time I listen to the song. Whenever I point this out to someone, they can't hear it…

"I feel like I'm eating crazy pills!" :)

Further clarification, it's in the middle of the word "sometimes" in "and sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky…"

yr probably the type of guy that worries about continuity in films too…

BTW, speaking of "Roxanne"….

Is it me, or is the tape machine winding up to its proper speed (15 IPS?) at the beginning of the song?

Our errors and omissions are what makes us stand out as individuals. These exapmles where wonderful in the fact that we are not perfect. I am an amateur trying to just record the sound the way the musician wants it to be heard. Thank you for these bloopers and keep them coming because if treated as a learning tool (like I am sure you meant too) they teach that none of us our perfect. The best part of what we do is that if we do it right it should be like we were never there. I live for the day when I can record a song and capture the true feeling and intensity that makes all this time and effort worthwhile.

I love these tracks even more now…all of 'em.

yeah, i guess around the time radiohead were doing 'the bends,' john leckie showed thom yorke all the places various vocal edits were made on 'plastic ono band,' and i think specifically on "working class hero." thom said it was majorly disillusioning.. yeah, that specific cut always stood out so much to me - it's incredibly obvious.

wooo…. I really like this guys blogh. oops sorry that h key on my keyboard is just to close to thr g key.

Great BLOG.

"even the pros aren't perfect" … yeah, right…

Come on, Man… You forget that the engineer is subservient to the artist, music, producer etc, etc. Spend a little more time in the hot seat and you'll see what I mean.

Somebody made a decision to move forward during the session… that's all.

You have to pick your battles. The only place I would have put my foot down is on the Auto-Tune thing. You're right about that. Most people don't know how to use it.

peace

Radiohead are at it again on their latest realease, In Rainbows.

Reckoner, a song already awash with percussion, has a tambourine blooper. At 0:31 listen for the out of place and possibley dropped tambourine ala The Beatles!

Interesting stuff. The Clapton "powpower"- when making our band demo years ago, I remember hearing the same faint pre-echo preceding every song, it sounds like the same cause, just louder. Must be an reel-to-reel analog tape thing…

Green Day's Long View has a mysterious shout in the middle of it after Billy Joe says " …Call me what you will." It's real obvious. I've always wondered what the hell it was though.

My all-time pick for most noticeable, most distracting, and hardest to get anyone else to hear or identify occurs in the left channel of the Smashing Pumpkins song Hummer at about 5:57. It's a tone of about a half second that's completely out of place. Billy's like Floyd. Not really the kind of guy to let something like that go, so I can't really explain it.

Go here : http://www.eastern-crates.com/slide-hampton-vaclav-zahradnik-big-band-bs/ and listen to track B2

(or just use this link :
http://www.eastern-crates.com/files/vzbs/3.m3u )

and listen to that (great) track up until 7:36, there is a absolutely horrible tape-cut there.

Not quite as noticeable as the tambourine in the Beatles song, but on U2′s Achtung Baby, at the 3:10 mark of "Ultraviolet/Light My Way", Larry drops a drumstick. There's about 5 seconds there where it's pretty noticeable that the drums aren't what they should be… From what I've heard, Larry badly wanted to fix it, but the rest of the band liked the raw nature of it and insisted it be left in!

Check out the reverb on the vocal in On Call by Kings of Leon when Jared sings '..be there…'.
It cuts out really unnaturally and it just jumps out as being wrong.
This is inexcusable for a modern band on a big label, surely they have a producer good enough to sort that out?
This song was really big in the UK as well

Awesome blog, and very interesting finds, but I have to disagree you with on one of them. In the Incubus clip you posted, the change is not accidental. The singer sings it the same way live, and unless I'm mistaken I think the clip was all in one take.

You are all morons missin the point and hearing things that arent there. Please feel free to post your flawless recordings.

On one of Velvet Revolvers newer singles “The Last Fight” at about 3:07 Scott Weiland sniffles… must be dippin in on that rock star lifestyle again… REALLY easy to pick out.

Btw, the high note on Radiohead's 'you' is actually a top b.