I'm not an expert on such things nor do I have perfect pitch. I think I hear what you suggest as a the harmony being "off."
Well, I don't even have good relative pitch (the ability to identify intervals between two pitches, which can generally be learned and improved, while 'perfect pitch' is the ability to identify the absolute pitch w/o any reference, and is apparently something you have or do not have) - but I'd agree that it sounds 'off'. But that is assuming intent. It kinda sounds to me to be one whole step lower than we might expect for a 'pure harmony'. It could be what they were going for, but I'm going to guess 'sloppy'.
... IIRC, recording went from mono wire recording to dual track for stereo then 4 track, 8 track and now 32 track (maybe more??) ....
Hah, with digital, I don't think they even count anymore. The only limit is computer memory, stack as many as you want.
Now each track is "adjustable" so that an error can actually be tweaked a bit to get the harmonies perfect. Also IIRC, the earliest layering was done without multi-track recording (see the movie "The Buddy Holly Story").
Les Paul was doing it with multiple disc cutters, before Bing Crosby connected him with the people at Ampex, and Les started playing with their tape heads and created 'simul-sync' (using the other track's record heads temporarily as playback heads, so the record/playback sound was in sync - normally they used separate playback heads a few inches away so they could optimize each for the task). If you look at an old high quality tape recorder, you can see the separate record and playback heads.
And then of course, use the delay between the heads for echo effects!
Or create 'reverse echo', where the echo comes before the sound (!) - Led Zeppelin created this effect by recording the vocals, and then playing the tape backwards and recording the echo onto another track of the tape. The sound engineer told them it wouldn't work! But when it is all played forward again, you get ... (
way way
way down down
down inside inside
inside....)
Used intentionally, phasing was critical in such hits as
Small Faces - Itchycoo Park - YouTube
Absolutely loved the phasing in that tune (and still do!).
And when they came out with effects pedals that made a controlled phasing sound, some of them were called 'Flangers' - because the intentional way of creating the phased sound in a recording studio was to sync two tape recorders, and then manually drag your fingers on the
flanges of the tape spools to force the tape to slightly slow down and become out-of-phase. Good times!
-ERD50
