Returning form a fab festival yesterday I got into an argument with Duijf (check him out with Tim Knol anywhere in Holland (Lowlands!) and Germany, visit www.timknol.nl for more info) about the drums on Tumbling Dice. He had read this interview [www.guitarplayer.com] and stated that you can indeed here the double tracked drums.

Well, indeed you can! After 25 years of listening to this track, once you know it suddenly is quite obvious that the drum is double tracked -the snare goes ta-dack instead 'tack', and several fills on the tom are a bit awkward.

Also, it is obvious now that the outro bit (you got to roll me) is a an entirely different take, now with Richards much less distorted, and Jimmy Miller on drums instead of Charlie. They did a 'Layla' on this!

Mathijs

A coincidence or not, but two weeks ago I had a friend (a jazz musician) in my house. And I happen to play this track and he said the same thing!

The interview was a great read, thanks for the link.

It's funny.

From the very beginning- from first listen to the single when it came out I had a strange feeling about the outro of the song. Somehow it didn't really fit together to me. I even had the impression then that the timing was a lil bit different.

However I learned long ago about Millers playing and that made sense to me.
But the double-track is new to me. I'll give it a listen!

Shows how stupid I am, as I have listened to this song for 38 years and it never occurred to me there was an edit until I recently read about Jimmy Miller taking over in the outro. I always thought Charlie's timing on some of the fills was just a bit funny, but it never bothered me. One of the charms of the song.

It's interesting that even well-known artists like the Beatles and Stones got away with fairly rough edits, bleed-throughs, etc. Hey, if the feel was right it didn't matter. AND IT USUALLY WAS!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-20 01:22 by 71Tele.

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71Tele
Shows how stupid I am, as I have listened to this song for 38 years and it never occurred to me there was an edit until I recenetly read about Jimmy Miller taking over in the outro. I always thought Charlie's timing on some of the fills was just a bit funny, but it never bothered me. One of the charms of the song.

It's interesting that even well-known artists like the Beratles and Stones got away with fairly rough edits, bleed-throughs, etc. Hey, if the feel was right it didn't matter. AND IT USUALLY WAS!

Indeed. All the anomalies of the songs are what make them alive. And I think sometimes people look on the Beatles and the Stones as gods that can do no wrong. So they get away with a lot of stuff that would feel unprofessional, maybe even embarrassing for other, less famous, artists.

About the drums on Tumbling Dice -- yeah, now that you mention it, the snares are "double" every once in a while. That's interesting. It never occured to me either, that it was double tracked. Had it been done today, of course, they would have edited every beat so they would have lined up and/or deleted one of the snares. (Even I do those things when recording music.)

Amazing indeed.. I have to take my hat of for Charlie's feeling for synchronicity
He knew every break etc in advance.

I wrote this a long time ago... All those "flams" give it away

explains why the song sounds so different live

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Mathijs
Returning form a fab festival yesterday I got into an argument with Duijf (check him out with Tim Knol anywhere in Holland (Lowlands!) and Germany, visit www.timknol.nl for more info) about the drums on Tumbling Dice. He had read this interview [www.guitarplayer.com] and stated that you can indeed here the double tracked drums.

Well, indeed you can! After 25 years of listening to this track, once you know it suddenly is quite obvious that the drum is double tracked -the snare goes ta-dack instead 'tack', and several fills on the tom are a bit awkward.

Also, it is obvious now that the outro bit (you got to roll me) is a an entirely different take, now with Richards much less distorted, and Jimmy Miller on drums instead of Charlie. They did a 'Layla' on this!

Mathijs

Damn, Mathijs, I thought you knew EVERYTHING.

"No Anchovies, Please"

Were they using 16 track tape then? I guess they could have doubled the drums. For some reason I thought they were still using 8 track tape then. Perhaps the Sticky Fingers sessions tracks that made Exile were 8 track.

Oh yeah - nice heads up on the link!

I just listened to the track and can still barely detect the double-tracking. It's more apparent to me in the cymbals--extra ssss--than the snare.

keith's "main" guitar does shift once the outro starts, to the right-hand side. Then an O/D comes in loudly to double it from the left, but is much cleaner than the guitar which starts the song.

mick jagger is listed as playing guitar on this track--anyone hear it?

in the outro, a short slide lick (keith?) ends in such a way as to make me used to think that there was something wrong with my tape. It sounds like the tape is winding down, but just on the guitar. It took me a few years to recognize that that was impossible!

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Mathijs
Also, it is obvious now that the outro bit (you got to roll me) is a an entirely different take, now with Richards much less distorted, and Jimmy Miller on drums instead of Charlie.

Is it still double tracked? So, do the drums go from 2 × Charlie to 2 × Jimmy?

Drums sound doubletracked in the ending as well. Could be 2x Jimmy or Charlie + Jimmy.

The bassdrum pattern in the bridge doesn't sound like something Charlie would do, though. But then again: we don't how the outro was put on tape.

Obviously the first take (with Charlie) wouldn't have ended at the breakdown: that's no way to end a song for the Stones. So there must have been something on there. We don't know what they kept from the original take.

Miller said that it was a punch in. Which would mean that Charlie did play the outro but obviously was not happy with it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-20 16:52 by skipstone.

From the interview with Andy Johns:
Charlie said, “Well I've never done that before.” I said, “Let's just give it a shot to thicken it up.” So he played the double-tracked drums up until the breakdown and then Jimmy Miller doubled his drums in the end.

Thus, according to Andy, it was 2 × Charlie and (on the outro) 2 × Jimmy.

Ah, thanks. The article doesn't load properly on my computer for whatever reason.

In my interpretation, though, it's not 100% clear that it's 2 times Jimmy.

It says:
So he played the double-tracked drums up until the breakdown and then Jimmy Miller doubled his drums in the end.

This should probably be interpreted as:
So [Charlie] played the double-tracked drums up until the breakdown and then Jimmy Miller doubled [Jimmy's] drums in the end.

Or, less likely, it could be interpreted as:
So [Charlie] played the double-tracked drums up until the breakdown and then Jimmy Miller doubled [Charlie's] drums in the end.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-07-20 18:56 by FreeBird.

During the "Say now, baby, I'm the rank outsider" you can clearly hear the two snares.

Very interresting.
Thanks everybody.

rb

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LieB
From the interview with Andy Johns:
Charlie said, “Well I've never done that before.” I said, “Let's just give it a shot to thicken it up.” So he played the double-tracked drums up until the breakdown and then Jimmy Miller doubled his drums in the end.

Thus, according to Andy, it was 2 × Charlie and (on the outro) 2 × Jimmy.

That's strange!
Because I've read other recollections (I even think one from A. Johns as well) and the story was different. Only Miller playing the outro.

Well, here's a similar but seemingly different article:
[www.goldminemag.com]

Quote

Obviously it was going to be great but it was a big struggle. Eventually we get a take. Hooray! I thought, ‘Let’s kick this up a notch and double track Charlie.’ ‘Oh, we’ve never done that before.’ ‘Well, it doesn’t mean we can’t do it now.’ So we double-tracked Charlie but he couldn’t play the ending. For some reason he got a mental block about the ending. So Jimmy Miller plays from the breakdown on out that was very easy to punch in. It was a little bit different than some of the others. That song we did more takes than anything else.

So according to that article, there should be a (single tracked) take with Charlie drumming the entire song. How exactly the outro was double tracked is still not entirely clear to me, but my bets are on 2 times Jimmy. Can any drummers say anything useful about how difficult it is to play along to someone else's prerecorded drumming track for double tracking purposes?

I clearly hear it. Thing is, regarding a double tracking of one take, there are 2 points in the song where I hear the snare crack to be slightly off, implying 2 different takes to my ears. Then again, my ears ain't what they used to be.

If you listen closely at the end of the guitar solo if definatly sounds as though there is punch in. Half way through the fade out you can hear a cowbell being hit or perhaps a miss hit on the snare.

NickB

You can't always get what you want.....

www.myspace.com/thesonkings