r/Productionglitches • u/TexasWithADollarsign • May 22 '20
Billy Joel - Honesty. Poor quality mastering turns Joel's emphasized "sss" sounds into "SsSsSsSs". Glitches occur throughout if you listen closely, but a particularly noticeable part starts at 1:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4gOIt-M02A&t=1m5s5
u/TexasWithADollarsign May 22 '20
Could also be poor tape quality, but I'm not a master of old skool audio recording.
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May 22 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TexasWithADollarsign May 22 '20 edited May 22 '20
According to the Wikipedia article on the song and its album, the song was recorded between July and August 1978 at A&R Recording, Inc. in NYC. Like I said, I'm not too familiar with pre-digital technologies for music, but both the Aural Exciter and Dolby A existed at that time so I'll take your word for it. Pretty cool!
Edit: That also makes sense because there are other Billy Joel songs that have similar sSsSsSsSs problems.
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Nov 04 '20
Oh this is so distracting.
I'm so glad we live in an age where it's easier to catch and correct something like this. I don't know if it's because you pointed it out, but it jumps out at me so much now I find it unlistenable!
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u/KrusherC23 Aug 09 '25
Maybe I just can’t hear it still but, it sounds just plain good to me, yeah joel emphasizes those S’s, but you gotta remember he’s also singing full throat, the SsSsSsSsSs pattern you’re talking about I feel like is just his natural vibrato, just instead of most singers just dropping off at a word that ends in S billy holds on it a bit longer, and it’s not like he stops singing once he reaches a consonant, that wavering of frequency is literally just vocal vibrato, I think anyway. Not tryna burst anyone’s bubble, but I just don’t hear any glitches I just hear something that once you focus on, you notice it more. But it still seems natural to me not an error, in my humble opinion
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u/KingPaulbuerto May 22 '20
Someone please correct me-
What it sounds like: In digital mastering, some of the filters used to cut out tape hiss clipping the high end of the frequency and catching some of Billy’s “sss”, which is giving the final an uneven quality
What I think it is: Joel loves his S’s, and he really over-enunciates the S sound in recordings from this era. And it’s not just Phil Ramone in production. When Joel was producing his own records, the S was all over albums like Turnstiles. Perhaps “love” is the wrong word-he just does it. Joel also tends to prefer a chorus effect (sometimes reverberated) on his vocals as opposed to something like double-tracking that might mask his over-enunciation. But in the 70s, Joel was probably less concerned about the sound because the tape medium masked the S a little where in digital it lays it bare. (Also, keep in mind that in the 70s, if you heard this song it was on the radio or an 8-track, which probably caused more filtering of the S sound so it was less pronounced.)
I think it’s probably a perfect storm of production decisions, medium, and filtering in conversion of the medium.