I’m so stoked to have found your channel. I could listen and discuss the siblings for the rest of my life. I was in junior high school when Close to You hit the charts. I fell in love with them and have been a devoted fan since. I learned to sing and play drums to these records ❤
I just heard an old interview again where Herb says" When I listened to the demo it sounded like this chick was sitting next to me".My take is if he said lap one time or next to me the next time it means the same thing.Karen sounded like she was really there in person on the songs that had enough lyrics to listen to.Thanks for explaining all of this technical stuff to the fans.No wonder some ppl answer differently and the same ppl say it a different way later.It actually makes sense and sometimes how could they remember exactly how each song was mixed even if it was done a couple of years earlier.That is alot of music to keep straight in your memory bank.
I'd love to see the Carpenters back catalogue remastered and re-issued. Remastering techniques are light years ahead than what they were even a few years ago. I have some Judy Garland material which sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Upgrade the Carpenters albums and it would sound like Karen and Richard were singing and playing right next to you! P.S. I can't remember what I had for breakfast most days let alone what I did 50 years ago which would explain many of the contradictory stories, I'm sure. :)
'Your wonderful parade' is my favorite track on the album. BTW, even though their debut album isn't highly praised, I prefer it over their albums of the later Seventies (Horizon, etc.)
Thanks for putting this up and also for using TH-cam for this as well. Much appreciated Chris. As people know, I'm kind of the opposite as I prefer writing things out over talking in a video as I can edit what I write a lot easier than a video if something doesn't seem quite right. We're all different and what works for one may not work for another. On the Herb Alpert question, I always saw the comment of "and you sing too" not really as a question from Herb to Karen but as Herb trying to say that both Richard and Karen could both sing and then Herb's comment of "she sounds like she is sitting on your lap" as kind of an extension that Herb thought that not only could Karen sing, but she had a possible special quality to her singing that Herb noticed after closing his eyes while listening. I understand and I really appreciate you bringing up that Karen's singing was fairly sparse on the demo tape and the four songs that were on the tape, the first one being "Your Wonderful Parade". But I know some people I feel have taken Herb's first comment about Karen's singing a little out of context. Richard and Karen were the first brother and sister duo that could both sing. And on a different note, Les Paul would play guitar while Mary Ford would sing and play guitar. And Mary's voice would get overdubbed. With Karen and Richard, both being able to sing was a bit unusual during the time period. Richard on "Your Wonderful Parade" and Karen on "All I Can Do" and "Invocation" with the harmonies and "Don't Be Afraid". You hear the "sitting in your lap" more with "Ticket To Ride" and later songs done with Karen. Definitely an interesting question there that I hadn't thought about before. Definitely an easier question to ask than to answer. Question 2 on the "B'Wanna She No Home" song and a stereo / mono issue. Ray Gerhardt was losing his hearing is a big part of that. Many songs recorded by the Carpenters had layers upon layers of vocals in the choruses and such. Most of the material was recorded almost in a mono state even though recorded with stereo recording equipment. But with the lush harmonies and such usually dominating the songs in the central region, trying to move stuff left or right of the central mass of sound would throw the song a bit off and the instrumentation would sound a bit out of place. It would kind of be like if you went to a live show and you had the big chorus up there on stage singing and some guy sitting in the back row of the theater playing an oboe that would sound so out of place when hearing it. Most of the Carpenters music was recorded in stereo but kind of a limited mono type of stereo to avoid losing sounds or having sounds out of place in the final mix. The lush vocals are wonderful, but with that wall of sound there, it creates other problems when trying to mix the song together. And with someone having hearing loss, better to be safe than sorry I guess. Also too, Richard and Karen always tried to use a different mix for singles on the radio and such than for the mix on an album cut. There is more room on an album whereas on radio, everyone is trying to get their song heard and if that song is too long, others complain about it being too long and the song gets dropped from a radio playlist that opts for a shorter song that allows more songs (and commercials) to be played. At the time, The Beatles' Hey Jude was 7 minutes long which was the equivalent of playing three or four other songs in that same time period. To please more people, radio stations preferred playing shorter songs but then too, were you going to upset Beatle fans and not play a 7 plus minute song if requested? But as far as Passage and the B'Wanna single differences, they always tried to do a radio track for the single and a different track for the album as with in Close To You with the single fading out opposed to where it has a pause and then the drum and the comeback on the album version. They always tried to treat the single as being more radio friendly. And sometimes, deadlines draw near and you may grab the wrong mix at the last minute and not realize until listening later... Then a book about a Legacy emerges where someone says that different things happened at different times for different reasons. And the way to find out about the different reasons is to ask specific questions (and sometimes they get explained in a book or possibly still missed again until someone asks). But they used the one mix for the single version and a different mix for the album version because they did it that way as usually a song would be shrunk down from an album for radio and a single version. A lot of times stuff just happens because it happens the way it happens. I know doing the Complete Singles 3 CD set that a couple tracks ended up being the album version instead of the single version. Just one of those, oops, it happened like that things. As far as the original CD mixes and such... Many of the later Carpenters albums were done using a 24 track mixer (and a 24 track mixer routed into another 24 track mixer, shh). The original CD mixes used 8 bit recording then 16 bit (which 16 bit allows more simultaneous sounds, then 24 bit...). I remember back when when most that listened to classical music absolutely refused to buy CDs as the range and such of a CD was not anything near that of a record player at the time up until about the year 2000 or so. But I feel that Chris does better with videos whereas a hew others and me seem to be better on typewriters and such than that camera thingy. I pretty much agree with what you said just in my own way of writing it out was all. Keep up the great work. Thanks again Chris and hopefully you get to do more as the time allows. 👍👍
Really good video. I hope you can go deeper into it. Do you know of any good videos of how mixing engineers back in the day used to work? Im talking from like the 50s to the 70s?
What an odd, odd, picture. I haven't listened to the video yet, but that seems out of character that Richard would strike a Christ pose like that. Maybe he didn't realize how it looked when he posed.
I wonder if Karen’s marriage was discussed? I know they were divorcing when Karen passed away. Her ex-husband seems to fallen off the earth. He’s never, as far as I know, spoke of Karen’s death. Be interesting to hear Richards thoughts, though I guess they be negative. My guess is the Carpenter family had the ex-husband sign an NDA to not discuss Karen publicly. But f he’s still living, he must be deep in his 80s.
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I’m so stoked to have found your channel. I could listen and discuss the siblings for the rest of my life. I was in junior high school when Close to You hit the charts. I fell in love with them and have been a devoted fan since. I learned to sing and play drums to these records ❤
Absolutely love this! Thank you for explaining these topics in such detail. We need a Carpenters podcast at this point!
I just heard an old interview again where Herb says" When I listened to the demo it sounded like this chick was sitting next to me".My take is if he said lap one time or next to me the next time it means the same thing.Karen sounded like she was really there in person on the songs that had enough lyrics to listen to.Thanks for explaining all of this technical stuff to the fans.No wonder some ppl answer differently and the same ppl say it a different way later.It actually makes sense and sometimes how could they remember exactly how each song was mixed even if it was done a couple of years earlier.That is alot of music to keep straight in your memory bank.
I'd love to see the Carpenters back catalogue remastered and re-issued. Remastering techniques are light years ahead than what they were even a few years ago. I have some Judy Garland material which sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Upgrade the Carpenters albums and it would sound like Karen and Richard were singing and playing right next to you!
P.S. I can't remember what I had for breakfast most days let alone what I did 50 years ago which would explain many of the contradictory stories, I'm sure. :)
'Your wonderful parade' is my favorite track on the album. BTW, even though their debut album isn't highly praised, I prefer it over their albums of the later Seventies (Horizon, etc.)
Thanks for putting this up and also for using TH-cam for this as well. Much appreciated Chris.
As people know, I'm kind of the opposite as I prefer writing things out over talking in a video as I can edit what I write a lot easier than a video if something doesn't seem quite right. We're all different and what works for one may not work for another.
On the Herb Alpert question, I always saw the comment of "and you sing too" not really as a question from Herb to Karen but as Herb trying to say that both Richard and Karen could both sing and then Herb's comment of "she sounds like she is sitting on your lap" as kind of an extension that Herb thought that not only could Karen sing, but she had a possible special quality to her singing that Herb noticed after closing his eyes while listening. I understand and I really appreciate you bringing up that Karen's singing was fairly sparse on the demo tape and the four songs that were on the tape, the first one being "Your Wonderful Parade". But I know some people I feel have taken Herb's first comment about Karen's singing a little out of context. Richard and Karen were the first brother and sister duo that could both sing. And on a different note, Les Paul would play guitar while Mary Ford would sing and play guitar. And Mary's voice would get overdubbed. With Karen and Richard, both being able to sing was a bit unusual during the time period. Richard on "Your Wonderful Parade" and Karen on "All I Can Do" and "Invocation" with the harmonies and "Don't Be Afraid". You hear the "sitting in your lap" more with "Ticket To Ride" and later songs done with Karen. Definitely an interesting question there that I hadn't thought about before. Definitely an easier question to ask than to answer.
Question 2 on the "B'Wanna She No Home" song and a stereo / mono issue. Ray Gerhardt was losing his hearing is a big part of that. Many songs recorded by the Carpenters had layers upon layers of vocals in the choruses and such. Most of the material was recorded almost in a mono state even though recorded with stereo recording equipment. But with the lush harmonies and such usually dominating the songs in the central region, trying to move stuff left or right of the central mass of sound would throw the song a bit off and the instrumentation would sound a bit out of place. It would kind of be like if you went to a live show and you had the big chorus up there on stage singing and some guy sitting in the back row of the theater playing an oboe that would sound so out of place when hearing it. Most of the Carpenters music was recorded in stereo but kind of a limited mono type of stereo to avoid losing sounds or having sounds out of place in the final mix. The lush vocals are wonderful, but with that wall of sound there, it creates other problems when trying to mix the song together. And with someone having hearing loss, better to be safe than sorry I guess. Also too, Richard and Karen always tried to use a different mix for singles on the radio and such than for the mix on an album cut. There is more room on an album whereas on radio, everyone is trying to get their song heard and if that song is too long, others complain about it being too long and the song gets dropped from a radio playlist that opts for a shorter song that allows more songs (and commercials) to be played. At the time, The Beatles' Hey Jude was 7 minutes long which was the equivalent of playing three or four other songs in that same time period. To please more people, radio stations preferred playing shorter songs but then too, were you going to upset Beatle fans and not play a 7 plus minute song if requested? But as far as Passage and the B'Wanna single differences, they always tried to do a radio track for the single and a different track for the album as with in Close To You with the single fading out opposed to where it has a pause and then the drum and the comeback on the album version. They always tried to treat the single as being more radio friendly. And sometimes, deadlines draw near and you may grab the wrong mix at the last minute and not realize until listening later... Then a book about a Legacy emerges where someone says that different things happened at different times for different reasons. And the way to find out about the different reasons is to ask specific questions (and sometimes they get explained in a book or possibly still missed again until someone asks). But they used the one mix for the single version and a different mix for the album version because they did it that way as usually a song would be shrunk down from an album for radio and a single version. A lot of times stuff just happens because it happens the way it happens. I know doing the Complete Singles 3 CD set that a couple tracks ended up being the album version instead of the single version. Just one of those, oops, it happened like that things.
As far as the original CD mixes and such... Many of the later Carpenters albums were done using a 24 track mixer (and a 24 track mixer routed into another 24 track mixer, shh). The original CD mixes used 8 bit recording then 16 bit (which 16 bit allows more simultaneous sounds, then 24 bit...). I remember back when when most that listened to classical music absolutely refused to buy CDs as the range and such of a CD was not anything near that of a record player at the time up until about the year 2000 or so.
But I feel that Chris does better with videos whereas a hew others and me seem to be better on typewriters and such than that camera thingy.
I pretty much agree with what you said just in my own way of writing it out was all.
Keep up the great work. Thanks again Chris and hopefully you get to do more as the time allows. 👍👍
I want to thank you for your very true comments on the Bible that you used in your example of seeming conflicts. God bless you!
So glad you are doing these!
Chris, thank you so much for this! I'm very much looking forward to more.
Really good video. I hope you can go deeper into it. Do you know of any good videos of how mixing engineers back in the day used to work? Im talking from like the 50s to the 70s?
Always wished that Bwana had wider stereo. This clears up some of the reasons. I guess some of the instrument tracks could be re-recorded.
Longshot, but any connection with bandleader Billy May, who did that stunning orchestration of I Can Dream Can't I from the Horizon album?
I like your Bible analogy.
Interesting insights thanks for sharing 🌟
this is awesome. will you do one on her solo album? and are their outtakes of Karen's vox on the masters?
Really Good Video 👍
What an odd, odd, picture. I haven't listened to the video yet, but that seems out of character that Richard would strike a Christ pose like that. Maybe he didn't realize how it looked when he posed.
I wonder if Karen’s marriage was discussed? I know they were divorcing when Karen passed away. Her ex-husband seems to fallen off the earth. He’s never, as far as I know, spoke of Karen’s death. Be interesting to hear Richards thoughts, though I guess they be negative. My guess is the Carpenter family had the ex-husband sign an NDA to not discuss Karen publicly. But f he’s still living, he must be deep in his 80s.
Richard paid him off and no one ever talked after that. A good example of when hush money can work, both ways. Richard never trashes the guy.