Creating the Motown sound

[scanspeak]

https://youtu.be/TysRGMSjtpQ

[DWSheffer]

Thanks for posting.....was interesting to watch. Overall I think they did well, but I thought the drums were lacking the "correct" sound. The guitars did quite well though, IMO anyways.

[jobucats]

Wonderful!

[soulwally]

Yes I posted this a couple of months ago. I thought it a fascinating programme and they did a fair job

[thanxal]

I would love to see them try to recreate the foot stomps from WDOLG! Why is it singers today so over-sing songs? Too much vibrato and too much slurring of the notes. Ella is the purest singer I know of. By the 60s there certainly was more vocal embellishment, but they were still "straight" vocals. No-one today sings without all sorts layers on each note and just extreme over-singing. The instrumental recreation was interesting to hear.

[jobucats]

I would love to see them try to recreate the foot stomps from WDOLG! Why is it singers today so over-sing songs? Too much vibrato and too much slurring of the notes. Ella is the purest singer I know of. By the 60s there certainly was more vocal embellishment, but they were still "straight" vocals. No-one today sings without all sorts layers on each note and just extreme over-singing. The instrumental recreation was interesting to hear.

Here's my two cents worth. "Why is it singers today so over-sing songs?" I believe it's because today we are able, through so many venues, to hear so many excellent singers that now vocalists feel they need to add "extra" in order to stand out from the crowd. It's about who can improvise the best. In many churches, for instance, when does the crowd goes crazy? It's when that vocalist starts doing his/her vocal acrobatics....my, my, my that girl [[that guy) can really sing!!! To each his own; however, some people look at a good singer as one who can sing loud and improvise the notes. To others, it's who can just sing the loudest [[forget about the notes). I've always felt that when most singers sing "And I'm Telling You", it's about who can holler it out the loudest as being the best singer. That's my 2 cents worth. I now step off my soap box.

[bob_olhsson]

Motown producers wouldn't let singers become self-absorbed. It was about sharing the song with the listener so that they could enjoy singing along with the singer as they played the record over and over.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Motown producers wouldn't let singers become self-absorbed. It was about sharing the song with the listener so that they could enjoy singing along with the singer as they played the record over and over.
This is something I've come to appreciate when it comes to Motown. There was that sort of mind set about not letting the singer roam wherever they felt the spirit moved them. The one artist who really illustrated that for me is David Ruffin. David was an incredible singer, but I could hear a distinct difference between what he did with the Temptations and what he did as a solo artist, especially on his first solo album.

Smokey and Norman Whitfield made sure the singers adhered to the melody line and David's performances on songs recorded with the Temptations reflected that. David could give you chills even when giving you a very crisp, "economically" lean vocal- no frills, no loops. "I Wish It Would Rain" is one of his best; David communicated sheer desolation without having to sing all over the map. On the first solo album, I felt some of the producers working with him may not have wanted to step on his creativity [[or they didn't have Norman Whitfield's force of personality) so they allowed David to sing however he felt. I'll never forget a comment I read about Norman Whitfield that whenever he heard a singer going off on a riff that didn't mean anything, he'd reel that person back in. He wouldn't allow it. It took me some time to gradually understand exactly what that meant. On the "My Whole World Ended" album, I noticed David was going into much more whoops and loops and riffing than he ever had on a Tempts performance. Interestingly, on David's second album, "Feeling Good", the producers seemed to reach a great balance between giving David freedom to sing as he felt but also having him stick much closer to the melody line.

The difference can be measured exactly by what you said: I could sing along with a lot more of the tunes from the "Feeling Good" album than I could on the "My Whole World Ended" LP. "Ended" was David unleashed and unshackled!