Musical Overanalysis

tape

When listening to Welcome to The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, I noticed the distinctive hiss of a tape recording. Although tape was still relatively common in 2006, I found it to be a bit of a strange choice for a band with so many members, and a song with even more instruments. So, I decided to listen to the song and see if I can decipher which instruments are on which tracks. Although it's possible the band may have recorded onto 24- or 32- track tape, I think I can fit the entire song onto 16 tracks.

The piano was recorded in stereo. The drumset is on its own stereo pair; the military drums were probably also recorded on their own stereo pair. The vocals are in stereo, and I think the backing vocals were also recorded on a stereo pair. The bass seems to have been recorded mono, panned to the center. The guitars may have been recorded mono, but I think they were on stereo pairs and reverberated such that the right track guitar bleeds a little into the left track and vice versa. That leaves one more mono track free for the vocal overlap near the end of the song.

#emo #MCR #tape