vic wrote:
Let's hear how the Moody Blues do it when the songs call for full orchestration.....when only the best is good enough. Granted...few groups can afford that outfit behind them. But that's what these songs sounded like when released way back.
I'm not sure they did sound that way back then actually. Question was a big hit in the UK and I can still remember the TV performances of that song (the girls got all swoony when Justin Hayward sang the quiet bits - but this being TV it's possible they had some guy off camera holding up a "go weak at the knees" sign). What I distinctly remember is a lot of the lines the orchestra is playing in this yotube vid being played originally on bass or guitar.
Not that this is any kind of artistic travesty in itself, they're perfectly entitled to reinterpret and rearrange their own material.
What I'm saying is that the song doesn't rely on the string parts. Another example would be a clip that I recently posted of Lisa Hannigan performing "Black Eyed Dog" at a Nick Drake tribute show. There's a great string arrangement there, but again the orchestra is actually playing one of the original guitar parts and the song doesn't rely on that arrangement.
This is quite an interesting discussion for me because my judgements of music and the performance of music are very much rooted in the notion that a good song is a good song and if it's a good song then you don't need all the whiz-bang stuff (see a post to GFSA by Singemonkey that made the same point about something he saw Neil Finn doing solo on TV). However I think a case is being made here that in some cases orchestras or synths or massed vocals or some effect or other can be not just production gloss but can be integral to the composition.
