Wall-Of-Sound-Best-Of.mp3
Wall-Of-Sound-Best-Of.mp4
Wall-Of-Sound.mp3
Wall-Of-Sound.mp4
Wall-Of-Sound-intro.mp3
[Intro]
Found
(Wall of sound)
Wrecking crew
(Coming through)
[Verse 1]
Just for the record
(Wanna make a record)
Sound — Powerful
(Bound to be wonderful)
[Chorus]
Oh, oh, oh, found
(Wall of sound)
Wrecking crew
(Coming through)
[Bridge]
Get down
(Down, down, down)
Get up
(Yeah, yeah, yeah)
[Verse 2]
Press it to vinyl
(Take a cover still)
Gotta take a chance
(To make the kids dance)
[Chorus]
Oh, oh, oh, found
(Wall of sound)
Wrecking crew
(Coming through)
[Outro]
Get down
(Spin us ’round)
Found the sound
Get up
(Yup, yup, yup)
Spin us ’round
(Round and round)
ABOUT THE SONG
Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” was a revolutionary music production technique developed in the early 1960s to create a dense, orchestral, and powerful sound that would play well on the AM radios and jukeboxes of the era. He often described it as a “Wagnerian approach to rock & roll,” producing “little symphonies for the kids”. The technique was achieved through a meticulous process of layering and reverberation, primarily at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles with engineer Larry Levine and a group of session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew.
Key Elements of the “Wall of Sound”
* Dense Layering of Instruments: Spector used a large ensemble of musicians (sometimes 20 or more) crammed into a relatively small studio space. Multiple instruments often doubled or tripled the same parts. For example, he might use several guitars, two basses, two pianos (acoustic and electric), and various percussion instruments (shakers, tambourines, etc.) all playing in unison. This blending of tone colors created a rich, thick texture where individual instruments became indistinguishable, merging into a single, massive sound.
* Natural Reverberation: The sound from the studio was fed into a purpose-built echo chamber (a highly sound-reflective basement room with speakers and microphones). The signal would reverberate off the hard walls, be captured by the microphones, and then be mixed back into the main recording on tape. This added a lush, spacious, and dramatic depth to the recording.
* Mono Mixes: Spector was an auteur who insisted on releasing his records in glorious mono. He felt that a stereo mix allowed the listener to control the balance and potentially ruin the carefully constructed sonic “painting” he had created.
* Mixing for AM Radio: The compression effect caused by the dense layering and heavy reverb ensured that the records had a powerful presence and clarity even when played on low-fidelity, small-speaker transistor radios and jukeboxes.
Famous Examples
Key recordings that epitomize the “Wall of Sound” include:
* The Ronettes – “Be My Baby”
* The Righteous Brothers – “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'”
* The Crystals – “He’s a Rebel”
* Ike & Tina Turner – “River Deep – Mountain High”
* Darlene Love – “Today I Met The Boy I’m Gonna Marry”
The “Wall of Sound” profoundly influenced numerous artists and producers, including Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who adopted similar layering techniques for Pet Sounds, and artists like Bruce Springsteen and ABBA, whose producers cited Spector as a major inspiration.
From the album “Amplification“