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cosmonautroger · 2 months

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Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells, 1973

#Mike Oldfield #Tubular Bells #1973

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kidpix-album-covers · 6 months

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Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (1973)

(requested by an anon)

#mike oldfield #tubular bells #rock #progressive rock #1970s #1973

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sphoricus · 6 months

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10/26/2023

On this playlist, I want to celebrate some long songs, songs over ten minutes (though most will be much longer). I’ve seen songs like the following shunned for their length, which I find simply deplorable. These songs are just as beautiful as any other pieces of music and are equally worthy of celebration. Songs like these come in all sorts of forms, but I am most used to them being from ambient and progressive genres, so feel free to add some of your favorites! Because they are typically viewed in a different light, I am going to exclude classical works in this playlist.

“Station to Station” by David Bowie

“Black Unity” by Pharoah Sanders

“Close to the Edge” by Yes

“Tubular Bells” by Mike Oldfield

“Autobahn” by Kraftwerk

“Discreet Music” by Brian Eno

“The Heavenly Music Corporation” by Fripp & Eno

“In a Silent Way” by Miles Davis

“Long Season” by Fishmans

“Machine Gun” by The Peter Brötzmann Octet

#music #playlists #daily playlist #daily playlists #music recommendation #music recs #david bowie #pharoah sanders #yes band #mike oldfield #kraftwerk #brian eno #robert fripp #miles davis #peter brötzmann #fishmans

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evvywevvy · 5 months

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listening to tubular bells and my neighbor's dog is barking. is there a way I can tell him the whole thing isn't like the exorcist part or convince him to give it a chance or

#tubular bells #mike oldfield #dog #dogs #progressive music #music #taste #dog music

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bandpicfolder · 8 months

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Mike Oldfield at home in Buckinghamshire, 1 April 1980, by Peter Stone. Credit the photographer if reposting.

#mike oldfield #prog #upload #bw #peter stone #NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE

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dompauljones · 8 months

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Whatever the hell this canvas was (fyi majority drawn last month on a car ride across the entire goddamn country while being somewhat carsick💀💀)

Closeups cause tumblr crunched up the image so bad the first time 🫶🫶🫶

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libroseitm · 4 months

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Wanted to listen to tubular bells while I'm drawing but got distracted by this comment 😂

#Youtube #Funny comments #Tubular bells #Classical music #Mike Oldfield

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severalpossiblemusiks · 3 months

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So I recently bought Mike Oldfield’s 1973 debut album, the legendary “Tubular Bells”, and listened to it, loved it, and like any normal human being, researched the album through the world’s best resource, Wikipedia.

This album is insane… so I must ramble about it.

First off, Mike Oldfield was only 19 when he went into the studio to record the album. And he only got into a studio because he had a tape recorder full of demos (which featured a crude form of overdubbing that he achieved by removing the tape eraser head) that future Virgin Group owner Richard Branson heard and went “yup I like this, I’ll finance your studio time”.

So Oldfield went into the studio, initially only for one week to record what was then called “Opus One”. Flash forward to 6 months later, Oldfield walked out with “Tubular Bells”.

What went down in the studio was something else. Oldfield had two producers, Newman and Heyworth, and between the three of them they basically had the run of the studio. The three of them would drink in pubs during the day and record at night. Oldfield requested various random instruments to be brought in so he could play them, many of which he taught himself to play while with other bands and musical projects in his teens. Oldfield had a massive amount of detailed specifications plotting out the songs’ course, and as he played almost every instrument himself, overdubbing was the key to the album: Oldfield played 15 instruments with over 270 overdubs that took Oldfield, Heyworth, Newman, and two other guys to mix, all of them on the faders at the same time, and they had to restart the entire mixing process if any of them make the smallest mistake.

Other studio trucks included Oldfield using just one guitar for the album, and simply using different amps and distortion and recording/playback speeds to achieve the different sounds. Similarly, when Branson pressured Oldfield to provide some vocals so he might be able to get a single out of the albums, Oldfield proceeded to get—quite literally—roaring drunk and then screamed into a microphone for 10 minutes, making himself hoarse for the next two weeks. The voice lines were recorded at a higher speed, so when played at “normal” speed, the vocals sounded primal, and ended up being slotted into a drum-heavy section of the album which was called “Caveman”, and the vocal lines being called “The Piltdown Man”.

Oldfield also got into contact with another guy recording in the studio at the time, Vivian Stanshall, a comedy rocker, who became the “Master of Ceremonies”, providing the spoken word introductions of the instruments around the halfway point of the album (aka near the end of Part 1). He struggled with remembering the instruments and timing his lines, so Oldfield wrote him a detailed script with names and time signatures to assist him. It was during these sessions that Oldfield named the album “Tubular Bells”, because he liked how Stanshall introduced the instrument.

As to the Tubular Bells themselves, Oldfield doesn’t quite remember how he got a hold of them, either requesting them specifically, or he saw them being used in a different musician’s session and wanted them for his. Also he couldn’t get them to ring loud enough for his liking with the hammers provided, so one of the producers found him a claw hammer, which range the bells loud enough, but also ended up cracking the bells in the process. This incident later inspired album artist Trevor Key to make the iconic “bent bell” that dominates the album cover.

Stanshall also featured in an ultimately deleted musical section, where Oldfield and Newman and Stanshall walked around the studio, playing the Sailor’s Hornpipe on guitars and mandolins while Stanshall “narrated” their tour of the studio, which was being recorded on multiple microphones placed throughout the building. It was ultimately mixed in favour of a shorter version of the Sailor’s Hornpipe. The extended narrated version features on some remasters and special editions of the album.

This album also kickstarted the now multi-national business empire of the Virgin Group, as Richard Branson, who funded Oldfield’s studio time, was having difficulty finding a label to distribute the album, as many label representatives felt the instrumental would not do well. Branson then basically said “screw it, I’m making my own record label”. The subsequent success of the album helped grow Virgin Records into the massive company it is today.

The album initially sold slowly throughout 1973, and then completely exploded due to the first few minutes becoming the main theme of “The Exorcist”, which only happened because the director scrapped the originally planned soundtrack, went to Atlantic Records (which Branson convinced to distribute the album in the States), picked a random record (you know which one) and gave it a listen, and absolutely loved it. The section you know as “The Exorcist Theme” opens the entire album, and was written in 15/8 time (Oldfield basically played it in 16/8 but just ignored the last beat), which helps contribute to the eeriness of the theme.

Also the final mix was so complex sonically that standard vinyls wouldn’t hold the fidelity, so they had to press it on extra-thick vinyl usually reserved for classical music recordings.

Also Branson wanted to promote the album with a live show, which Oldfield was hesitant against. It took Mick Jagger giving Oldfield a pep talk and Branson bribing Oldfield with a Bentley originally owned by George Harrison to get him to go forward with the live show. Although Oldfield was worried the complex studio effects wouldn’t translate well into a live setting, it worked out incredibly well and Oldfield admitted he was himself blown away by the live performance, which featured Oldfield and 20 other musicians plus a 12-person choir.

So yeah that’s Tubular Bells, one of the weirdest, yet greatest, albums of all time in my opinion.

#Mike Oldfield #Tubular Bells

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thelastrenaissance · 1 month

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