Additional notes from Richard Carter
Notes On The Instruments
After much pestering from the likes of myself, Mike helpfully listed all of
the instruments he used, inside the booklet for Tubular Bells 2003 (but not
the
3CD 'Complete Tubular Bells' set), making my job a lot easier - thanks Mike!
Grand Piano - Mike Used
two grand
pianos on the album, an 8 foot Steinway, rebuilt on a 1920s frame,
and an all-original 1920s Steinway 6 foot piano, which is the one that can
be seen
on stage in The Millennium Bell video.
Electric Organs - Here, he uses
a 1970 Hammond L.122 (which Mike claims has been in his garage for
the past 10 years), a Lowrey and a Farfisa (I believe a Farfisa Professional).
Synthesisers - Mike's love of Roland synthesisers shows clearly, with him
using a JV880 for string pads, an XP50 pianos and percussion, a JV2080 'ethnic'
sounds, bass, and a JD990 for pads. He also used his Clavia Nord Lead for
bass sounds and some bass sounds from the Korg Trinity, his master keyboard
which
sits in front of the large plasma computer screen in his studio. Mike also
demonstrated his new found affection for software synthesiser: Native Instruments'
emulation of Sequential Circuits' Prophet V, the Pro 53, contributes buzzy,
cutting analogue sounds to much of the album, while Emagic's ES1 and
EVP88 are used for synth bass and wurlitzer piano sounds respectively.
Also used was an Akai S6000 hardware sampler and Emagic's ESX24 software sampler.
Bass Guitar - Whereas Tubular Bells
featured the growly tones of a Fender Precision Bass, prominent on
Tubular Bells 2003 is the thicker, more modern sound of Mike's Wal Custom bass
guitar.
Electric Guitars - For the recording
of this album, Mike once again used the 1965 Fender Telecaster with
which
he played all of the electric guitar parts on the original Tubular
Bells. Joining the Telecaster are Mike's usual partners in crime, the Fender
Stratocaster
(listed in the booklet as a '63, but which I've seen before called
a '62 - it could realistically be either), PRS Custom and also his PRS McCarty
thinline. His PRS Custom 24 is used to play sounds from the Roland
VG-8
and I suspect also synthesised sounds like the bass in 'Introduction'
and some
of the flute and whistle sounds.
Some guitars were played direct through Mike's Roland GP-8 guitar
effects processor, but he also used his Fender Twin Reverb and Mesa
Boogie
guitar amplifiers for
when a slightly less direct sound was called for.
Acoustic Guitars -
The steel string acoustic guitars which Mike used were a 1960 Martin
00.21
parlour
guitar (which I believe is used for the melody line in 'Peace'),
a 1985 Taylor K22
(a grand concert sized guitar with top, back and sides made of
Hawaiian Koa) and an Ovation Adamas (an electroacoustic guitar built mainly
from fibreglass
and carbon fibre).
Mandolin - Many of the mandolin
sounds on Tubular Bells 2003 come from Mike's Mike Vanden mandolin. Some, such as those towards the end of 'Peace', are speeded up
electric
guitars.
Spanish
Guitar - The Spanish Guitar parts come, once again, from Mike's
Ramirez 1A flamenco (1975) and 1A classical
(1974) guitars.
Piltdown Man - On the original Tubular
Bells, the Piltdown Man part was created by speeding up the tape while
recording, so that the pitch of Mike's voice was lowered when it was
played back. This
time, the pitch has been lowered digitally, and he has been joined by
a second, more feminine 'Piltdown Woman'. It has been said that this part
is in fact
Mike's sister Sally - I'm not sure where this information came from;
it seems likely to me that it's Mike again, this time pitched upwards (all
manner
of processing can be carried out on voices using modern equipment, such
as the processors from TC-Helicon, which can allow a voice to sound higher
pitched
without the usual 'Mickey Mouse' type effects).
Percussion - Acoustic percussion instruments used by Mike were a tambourine, triangle and cymbals. Electronic percussion came courtesy of a Boss Dr Rhythm drum machine (he doesn't specify which model - Boss have been producing drum machines in the DR series since 1979 - the original Dr Rhythm was the analogue DR-55, the latest is the digital DR-670), and the Roland XP50 keyboard.
The drums on 'Caveman' could well have been played by an uncredited drummer, Thomas Simmerl, who did some drum sessions for the album at Plan 1 Studios in Munich. An alternative is that it could be a set of cleverly programmed samples.
Tubular
Bells - After having synthesised/sampled bell sounds feature on Tubular
Bells 2 and 3, the real bells return for Tubular
Bells 2003. Used here is the same set (which Mike describes as being
like a 'toy' set of bells) which Mike sampled for Tubular Bells 2.
Notes On The Musicians
Sally
Oldfield - After her first appearance on one of Mike's albums for 25 years,
on Tres Lunas, Mike's sister
Sally returned for Tubular Bells 2003, to reprise her role as vocalist
on Tubular Bells.
John Cleese - Most famous for his
role in the ground breaking British comedy sketch show "Monty Python's
Flying Circus" (which ran between 1969 and 1974), as well as for his
parts in numerous films, including 'A Fish Called Wanda', the James Bond
films 'The World is Not Enough' and 'Die Another Day' and of course the
Monty Python films.
Mike had long been a fan of the Monty Python shows and felt that Tubular
Bells had a certain Monty Python-like quality to it, with the way hugely
contrasting
sections of music were juxtaposed carrying a feel of 'and now for something
completely different...'. Therefore John Cleese was, for Mike, a natural
choice as a replacement for the late Vivian Stanshall, who had contributed
the Master
of Ceremonies part to the 1973 Tubular Bells.
Other Notes
Despite
feeling that it was musically his best work, Mike had long been unhappy
with the quality of the 1973 recording
of Tubuar Bells. The recording had been done in a rush, with most of
Part One being recorded in a week's trial period which Mike had been allowed
in The Manor studio by Virgin boss Richard Branson. Part Two was recorded
under
even more difficult conditions, with Mike being able to use the studio
only in periods when no other artists wanted it, meaning that he often
could
only
work for very short periods, or late at night. Despite the fact that
the album went on to become a huge selling, classic recording, Mike later
complained
that the whole thing sounded out of tune, with there having not even
been time to tune the guitars, and that he felt the performances were rushed
and out of time. The desire to perfect Tubular Bells may be partly what
drove
Mike to create Tubular Bells II (1992) and III (1998), but he wasn't
able to re-record the original Tubular Bells due to a clause in his contract
with
Virgin which prevented him from re-recording the album for 25 years after
the release of the original album. Come the 30th anniversary in 2003,
with
the contract recently expired, Mike felt that the time was right to revisit
the work and finally do what he wanted with it.
The album was initially recorded into Logic Audio Platinum (v5.3.0) running
on a Dual 1GHz Powermac G4 (mirrored drive door model with 1.25 GB RAM, running
OS 9 - Mike says 9.4, which doesn't exist; the latest is 9.2.2), with Digidesign
Pro Tools (v5.3.1) being used for various pieces of editing, and to provide
the half-speed recording capability needed to create the double speed guitars
which were very much a feature of the original Tubular Bells. Material was
then transferred to a Fairlight Merlin hard disk recorder, from which tracks
were
mixed down, via Mike's Neve Capricorn digital mixing desk.
The track titles are
simply Mike's
working titles for the sections they refer to. The division of the
album into tracks was done as a result of popular demand rather than any
particular
desire of Mike's, and as a result Mike chose not to spend any further
time thinking up new names for all the sections.
© Richard Carter 2003 |
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