Numero Cinco
New Member
Okay, so this has been covered years before I arrived, but here goes:
Since I have learned from this website—in addition to much else—that at the beginning Herb Alpert's "Tijuana Brass" was a sound, not a group (which in the early years had not yet been formed)—I have to wonder about those tracks on Volume 2 (like "Swinger from Seville" and "Milord") that sound like live performances before a tequilla-drenched audience. My hunch is that "the live performance" ambience is studio wizardry, mixed into the tracks (as was the case with "The Lonely Bull"). The problem with that theory is that these are not generic crowd noises; sometimes "the crowd" is singing the tunes, off-key but in and around the key ("Milord" and, most memorably, "A-mer-i-ca"). So what did Herb do? Hire actors or studio vocalists? Gather his family and technicians, pump some margueritas into them, record and then overdub them?
Since I have learned from this website—in addition to much else—that at the beginning Herb Alpert's "Tijuana Brass" was a sound, not a group (which in the early years had not yet been formed)—I have to wonder about those tracks on Volume 2 (like "Swinger from Seville" and "Milord") that sound like live performances before a tequilla-drenched audience. My hunch is that "the live performance" ambience is studio wizardry, mixed into the tracks (as was the case with "The Lonely Bull"). The problem with that theory is that these are not generic crowd noises; sometimes "the crowd" is singing the tunes, off-key but in and around the key ("Milord" and, most memorably, "A-mer-i-ca"). So what did Herb do? Hire actors or studio vocalists? Gather his family and technicians, pump some margueritas into them, record and then overdub them?