I never promised you a rose garden.

I did, however, promise people with good ears a lot of fun finding the edits in Lynn Anderson’s 1970 mega-hit song.

The following is from my friend Chris Sotelo, an audio engineer (among other things) who knows an awful lot about analog recording techniques. I’ve posted the song below so you can listen along as he picks out the tons of tape splices and other anomalies in the recording.

Have fun!

Moot

ROSE GARDEN

I think it is interesting what one can do with 30 inches per second tape (while the world thought 7 1/2 IPS was fast), razor blade, splicing tape and great session musicians.

Listen closely…..

Rose Garden (<---If the player doesn't work, use this link)

Grab your headphones, plan to stay there a while and let’s critically listen
to this recording.  Keep your hand [or cursor ] close to the pause and rewind buttons at all times.

Here are the timings of the edits.

0:04
0:07
0:13
0:25
0:29
0:40
0:42 (tape flutter)
0:48
1:03
1:13
1:21
1:37
1:42
1:52
2:00
2:06 (tape flutter)
2:08
2:20
2:34

What a painstaking process to produce a hit song.  But that’s what it is all about.

Chris