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Question: Favourite Part? :: Total Votes:28
Poll choices Votes Statistics
Part One of course 13  [46.43%]
Actually, Part 2 is very good 4  [14.29%]
I like them both equally 11  [39.29%]
They are both poor 0  [0.00%]
What is Hergest Ridge again? 0  [0.00%]
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Topic: Favourite Part?, 1 or 2??< Next Oldest | Next Newest >
trcanberra Offline




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Posted: Mar. 28 2008, 22:46

I find I like the second part best, suspect I will be in the minority here  :)
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Dirk Star Offline




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Posted: Mar. 28 2008, 23:20

Quote (trcanberra @ Mar. 28 2008, 22:46)
I find I like the second part best, suspect I will be in the minority here  :)

Well it`s fifty/fifty there at the moment so I guess you never know?

Actually part 2 is very good I agree.Although I do find it quite difficult to sit through that whole 63 million guitars section nowadays.It just comes over a little bit flat and to me now somehow.
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: Mar. 29 2008, 09:59

I like them both equally. Part I in the original mix, part II in the Boxed remix. :D

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Ugo C. - a devoted Amarokian
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moonchildhippy Offline




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Posted: Mar. 29 2008, 18:40

I like them both equally too, Part 1 has a more reflective feel and Part 2 the Thunderstorm /Martian section has me dancing around my lounge with wild abandon :)  :D .

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If you feel a little glum to Hergest Ridge you should come.


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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 02 2008, 14:29

I like both parts equally also.I must stress that the original mix is the better one to me (more guitars!!!;).Side one i find very moving, especially the acoustic guitar and oboe duet.On side two the first section is truely beautiful.The original version has a different keyboard sound here which seems to morph into the sound heard on the remix.It's a very strange album though.It got bad press at the time though and Mike himself didn't like it.He says in his book that it seems to have become a cult album loved by people who go up to Hergest Ridge and dance naked.Well i am going up to the Ridge this summer but i have no love of hyperthermia,and,despite being Pagan,i won't be dancing around naked!

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THE COMING OF THE GREAT WHITE HANDKERCHEIF IS NIGH.
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raven4x4x Offline




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Posted: April 02 2008, 23:39

Part One for me. It's all about the oboe. Is there a 'melodies hall of fame' so I can nominate this section? Plus there's the funky bass riff. I'm afraid I've never enjoyed the thunderstorm section, so Part One is very far ahead of Part Two for me.

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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 01:01

Part one.

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Sweetpea Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 03:59

Quote (Dirk Star @ Mar. 28 2008, 23:20)
I do find it quite difficult to sit through that whole 63 million guitars section nowadays.It just comes over a little bit flat and to me now somehow.

Sometimes I wonder if the hints of melody in this section are too slow in coming and too short-lived to make the payoff worth the steep listening investment. In the end, though, I still like the concept, and I suspect that all the "63 million guitars section" needed was some percussive accompaniment to really kick it into gear. Even though I voted for "Part One" as my favorite, I actually never skip any part of Hergest Ridge.

I've been listening to this album tonight and wondering why I don't play it more often. To borrow an Ebony-ism... it's quite of the wonderful.


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"I'm no physicist, but technically couldn't Mike both be with the horse and be flying through space at the same time? (On account of the earth's orbit around the Sun and all that). So it seems he never had to make the choice after all. I bet he's kicking himself now." - clotty
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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 06:08

What is the 63 million guitars section?

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We raise our voices in the night
Crying to heaven
And will our voices be heard
Or will they break Like the wind
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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 06:50

The bit about half way in on side 2 where there's the HUUUUUGGGGEEEE big chord(the humble E never sounded so cool)followed by hundreds of guitars hammering through a massive chord progression.You can't miss it.And yes it is quite of the wonderfull.Where's Ebony anyway?She's been very quiet.

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THE COMING OF THE GREAT WHITE HANDKERCHEIF IS NIGH.
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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 08:02

Are talking about what I heard others call the "thunderstorm" part?
There was a thread on that a month or so back. About 2/3 thru side 2 and about 7 minutes long? There are really only about 4 guitar parts there.


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And will our voices be heard
Or will they break Like the wind
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Ugo Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 09:09

Quote (Scatterplot @ April 03 2008, 14:02)
There are really only about 4 guitar parts there.

Yes, but each part was done at least 20-24 times, so that's 96 guitars. At least that's what David Bedford wrote. :)

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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 09:11

Listen to it carefully and there are actually about 60 double tracked guitars and bass guitars (according to Mike).There's the normal bits and then loads of double speed bits right up in the higher registers.That's why he has never attmpted to do it live.There's an interview in the articles section where Mike is expalining how he did it.Suffice to say there's a lot more than 4.Honest.

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Ugo Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 09:17

@ The Caveman: as I just typed above, the actual played parts are not that many... if they're not 4, they may be 8... but not more than that. What makes the section so intricate is that each part was played many, many, many times - at different speeds and with different instruments (including a bass). ;)

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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 09:23

I was actually typing my reply at the same time as you were (have you bugged my PC????that's happened before :) )So i wasn't contradicting what you'd said.Whatever the number it works to devastating effect! :)

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Dirk Star Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 09:49

Quote (The Caveman @ April 03 2008, 06:50)
The bit about half way in on side 2 where there's the HUUUUUGGGGEEEE big chord(the humble E never sounded so cool)followed by hundreds of guitars hammering through a massive chord progression.You can't miss it.And yes it is quite of the wonderfull.Where's Ebony anyway?She's been very quiet.

Congratulations to The Caveman for correctly answering the 63 million dollar question. :p And one big E chord you say!? Well I`ve just put three fingers down on EG#B on the old Farfisa here and I have to say that sounds close enough to me.All I have to do now is sample that another 63 million times,throw it into the fruity loops beat slicer and I`m halfway to a masterpiece.Maybe I`ll throw a few random D`s in there as well just to mix it up a bit.You`ve got to try and throw those muso`s a few leftfield curveballs once in a while just to keep them on their toes.

I always think this section is Mike`s attempt at symphonic guitars myself.And that the reason why he kept overdubbing himself so much here was that he was secretly hoping that eventually he would sound like an electrically charged version of the RPO.Consequently of course he ended up using that much master tape on it,I guess he had to leave it in wether he was satisfied with it or not.

Maybe I`m being a little harsh on it though.It does have something of a naive charm to it and I`ve always quite liked it I`ll admit.Despite the fact that I`ve never really felt that it fitted in with the rest of the album.Or even side two alone for that matter.It`s not a section of music that I tend to skip that much.Although of course the great advantage with the old vinyl version was that you could see that great gargantuan black band of grooves a mile away.(insert sound of stylus being lifted here)
















(and then plonked back down again here)...I actually quite like Sweetpea`s percussion theory here.It always sounds like it needs a kick in there to me.And it needs some space and room for those rhythm`s to breathe a little bit.A bit more orthodox perhaps,and maybe totally against what Mike was originally striving for.In retrospect though I think that it may well have turned out as a completely different wall of sound alltogether.A wall with a few more windows in it for a start.

Now that I think about it there are a couple of sections here where Mike plays a number of different stabbed phrases on the offbeats isn`t there.Maybe just to break up all that doo dada doo stuff I suppose.Man that is so crying out for a 140bpm trancenstein`s monster it`s untrue.Get a little bit of that whole "going in and out of  the nightclub toilets"effect slapped on it and those kids wont know what hit them.It would certainly show those Chemistry Brothers a thing or two that`s for sure.

Scatterplot I remember reading that thread and I loved that little sample Korgscrew put up on there fantastic stuff.I could certainly pick out those guitar parts a lot easier on Korgscrew`s version and I think it kind of unmuddied those old 70`s production waters for me a little bit.I always used to get the "thunderstorm" section confused with the start of Ommadawn side 2 concerning the whole overdubs thing.I think that`s why I still refer to it as the 63 million guitar section I still can`t get away from that somehow.
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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 11:25

The orginal mix is odd though.Past the BIG F*CK OFF E ™it goes really muffled.Night club toilets perhaps?On the same mix there is percussion.The humble nutcracker.You can here it clicking away all out of time.I reckon he shouldn't bothered though.
 I think it does sort of work in context of the side.The perceeding sections get progrssively more paranoid sounding and then come to a head weith this.Has anyone else noticed this?


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Scatterplot Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 11:55

Yeah, I was listening to it very closely thru headphones and pausing it as I wrote my reply that day, as each new instrument or vocal was added. Although I really don't care for that section much, I enjoyed dissecting it. I did agree with the idea someone proposed that maybe MO might have recorded the foundation keyboard part slowed down.........my thinking was a primitive sequencer. But on top of that I counted a rhythm guitar, 2 maybe 3 lead guitars, a bass, keyboard imbellishments and varying intensities of female backing vocals. I don't want to debate it, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I believe I'm right. With just that many instruments I listed, it would have been a very clever studio job in 1974. Either way it worked. I just.....have listened to it so much since 1974(I was 13 then and I'm 46 now)......more than Dark Side Of the Moon or anything else. My fav. album next to several other MO or -other deleted artist names-. I've worn out many copies. I do think it could easily have been done live(just the thunderstorm part by itself). That would have been cool. "My" official version is the 100% organic  Porky cut. The CD I bought in the '90s will be in a box somewhere buried forever. The CD is not Hergest Ridge to me. It's Hergest Ridge's master tape(some tracks, probably edge tracks went bad to to edge curling or it was iron oxide shedded off)salvaged and modified. So later, some parts were added that buried other parts, like the acoustic guitar at the beginning of side one was buried deep, and additional female vocals were added. Some on here have referred to "the mix" being changed later.....after 1974. IE, certain tracks recorded in 1974 might have been "turned up/changed/altered/turned down" on a later date. Presumably 1976 since the term "boxed version" has been used so much. Whatever the date, if you listen closely, the added parts were not recorded in 1974. The sound quality of the added parts is different. Higher quality recordings overdubbed onto older, salvagable tracks. Not recorded the same day, week, or year. I just hear things as they are, having been involved in several studios including my own. I hope I dont piss of any Tubularians, but we all have our own perspective, thats why I love this website. The "interaction" revolving around someone we all seem to hold dear, or admire greatly.
    Thats about all I can say about 34 years of HR listening. I've listened to it more times than "Trick of the Tail" or "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Close to the Edge" or "Seventh Sojourn" combined. I love it to death. But I'm done dissecting it. I love it too much to treat it like a frog in anatomy class anymore.
Jimbo


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We raise our voices in the night
Crying to heaven
And will our voices be heard
Or will they break Like the wind
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The Caveman Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 12:44

You're right.No point going round in circles and let's just enjoy thew music. ;)

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THE COMING OF THE GREAT WHITE HANDKERCHEIF IS NIGH.
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Taynie Offline




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Posted: April 03 2008, 15:59

I was 17 when first I heard this piece of music. The first few bars into side 1 made my hairs stand up on the back my neck, and blood to my cheeks.  The music still moves me in a way no other piece ever has.  It's a personal thing isn't it that's hard to put into words.

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30 replies since Mar. 28 2008, 22:46 < Next Oldest | Next Newest >

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