The Doors - The Soft Parade

Mastered by Doug Sax and overseen by Bruce Botnick, The Doors producer/engineer

Hybrid Multichannel SACD

Part of The Doors reissue series proudly presented by Analogue Productions

The surround sound program on the Doors SACDs comes from the original 96K, 24-bit files mixed and mastered by Bruce Botnick for the DVD Audio Doors/Perception release. Those mixes were made from the original one-inch, eight track, 15 i.p.s. analog master tapes. For the SACDs, the mixes were then up-sampled without filters to DSD using the Weiss Saracon format converter and authored by Gus Skinas at the Super Audio Center.

About Soft Parade, Rolling Stone described two songs written by guitarist Robby Krieger, “Touch Me” and “Follow Me Down” as horn-string showpieces for the resonant baritone of Jim Morrison.

Described as among the cleanest, most solid and, above all, most recognizable sounds in rock, the distinctive Doors’ sound was no doubt due to the Morrison power, but the other Doors were equally responsible. Ray Manzarek brought virtuosic keyboard tapestries, Krieger gritty, expressive fretwork, and Densmore dynamically rich percussion grooves. 

Half of the songs on Soft Parade, The Doors’ fourth LP, were written by Morrison and the other half by guitarist Krieger. “Touch Me” became one of The Doors’ most popular singles. Released as a single in December 1968, the song reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in the Cashbox Top 100 in early 1969. It was the band’s third American No. 1 single.

Analogue Productions and Quality Record Pressings are proud to announce that six studio LP titles — The Doors, Strange Days,Waiting For The Sun, Soft Parade, Morrison Hotel and L.A. Woman —  are featured on 200-gram vinyl, pressed at 45 rpm. All six titles are also available on Hybrid Multichannel SACD! All were cut from the original analog masters by Doug Sax, with the exception of The Doors, which was made from the best tape copy.

This is no time to wallow in the mire. The Doors are on Analogue Productions!

Originally released in 1968.

Ray Manzarek, keyboards

Jim Morrison, vocals

John Densmore, drums

Robby Krieger, guitar

Technical notes about the recording process by Doors producer/engineer Bruce Botnick:

"Throughout the record history of the Doors, the goal between Paul Rothchild and myself was to be invisible, as the Doors were the songwriters and performers. Our duty was to capture them in the recorded medium without bringing attention to ourselves. Of course, the Doors were very successful, and Paul and I did receive some acclaim, which we did appreciate.

"If you listen to all the Doors albums, no attempt was made to create sounds that weren't generated by the Doors, except for the Moog Synthesizer on Strange Days, although that was played live in the mix by Jim, but that's another story. The equipment used was very basic, mostly tube consoles and microphones. Telefunken U47, Sony C37A, Shure 56. The echo used was from real acoustic echo chambers and EMT plate reverb units. In those days, we didn't have plug-ins or anything beyond an analogue eight-track machine. All the studios that we used, except for Elektra West, had three Altec Lansing 604E loudspeakers, as that was the standard in the industry, three-track. On EKS-74007, The Doors, we used four-track Ampex recorders and on the subsequent albums, 3M 56 eight-tracks. Dolby noise reduction units were used on two albums, Waiting For The Sun and The Soft Parade. Everything was analogue, digital was just a word. We didn't use fuzz tone or other units like that but created the sounds organically, i.e. the massive dual guitar solo on "When The Music's Over," which was created by feeding the output of one microphone preamp into another and adjusting the level to create the distortion. The tubes were glowing and lit up the control room.

"When mastering for the 45-RPM vinyl release, we were successfully able to bake the original master tapes and play them to cut the lacquer masters."

- Bruce Botnick, July 2012       Tell All The People

1. Tell All The People
    2.       Touch Me
    3.       Shaman's Blues
    4.       Do It
    5.       Easy Ride
    6.       Wild Child
    7.       Runnin' Blue
    8.       Wishful Sinful
    9.       The Soft Parade