“That double lead voice was a mistake on my part […] Marvin had cut two lead vocals, and wanted me to prepare a tape with the rhythm track up the middle and each of his vocals on separate tracks so he could compare them. Once I played that two-track mix on a mono machine and he heard both voices at the same time by accident.” (Sands qtd. in Edmonds 2001: 121–122)

Gaye liked this side-effect to such an extent that he not only decided to keep it, but pushed it to the extremes on his next album also titled What’s Going On. No longer content with the mere duplication of the single version, the artist multiplied his voice several times on the final mix of title track and the other songs on the album. After the release of What’s Going On, these harmonic, multilayered vocals quickly became Marvin Gaye’s hallmark style.

Although the singer and the engineer never planned to record them as such, the strange duet did not fall from the sky either. I would argue that the occurrence of the singer’s and engineer’s fortunate accident was due to an excess rather than a lack of talent. This mistake builds on Gaye and Sand’s respective expertise and skill sets. To use philosophical jargon: their fortunate accident was not random, it was contingent .

Marvin Gaye – who produced the album himself – and his team of musicians and engineers were engaged in many experiments with the sound recording technology available to them. They wanted to record an album that sound different from anything else on the market at the time. One of the biggest challenges that they faced was a way to make What’s Going On sound like one cohesive unit rather than a collection of songs. Gaye wanted to eliminate the cuts between the individual tracks so that the album flowed continuously. While conductor and arranger David van dePitte suggested the use of so-called segues to connect the individual songs, the sound engineers came up with a different solution:

“The studio technology was still pretty primitive […] To edit, you had to physically cut the tape with a blade. So when the basic rhythm tracks were done, Ken Sands and Cal Harris took the multi-tracks and edited the entire album together by hand. It was quite an accomplishment.” (Smith qtd. in Edmonds 2001: 167–168)

After they cut and pasted the entire album together, Sands and Harris overdubbed the strings and horns directly onto the master mix.

There is no causal relation between the engineers’ experiments and the accident that occurred during the “What’s Going On” sessions Nonetheless, I believe such innovations testify to an openness that is needed to recognize such fortunate contingencies when they occur. In a more traditional recording session, the creative potential of the same event would probably have been dismissed or even gone unnoticed.

Marvin Gaye’s extraordinary vocal talents were also essential to the occurrence of this particular accident. A lesser singer simply would not have pulled it off. Gaye originally intended to have The Originals – a male vocal group that he occasionally wrote and produced for – to record “What’s Going On”. Like many other Motown acts, such as The Temptations and The Four Tops, the members of The Originals all covered a different range in the spectrum. Gaye’s own voice, however, could cover the entire range. By multilayering his voice, multitrack recording rendered other singers obsolete. Gaye did not need anyone else to record complex harmonies any longer. Through the doubling, tripling and sometimes even quadrupling of his voice, multi-track recording made it possible for the artist to sing the different voices on What’s Going all by himself.

“His multitracked voices were startling. He’d become a one-man Moonglows, a one-man Originals, singing duets and trios with himself, juxtaposing his silky falsetto and sandpapery midrange, weaving the fabric of his voices into a tapestry of contrasting shapes and colors.” (Ritz 149)

Apart from the skills and talents of everyone involved, “What’s Going On”’s duet between Gaye and himself also presupposes the multitrack technology – an eight-track recorder to be precise – itself. It might sound obvious, but it is crucial to acknowledge that Sands and Gaye would have never stumbled upon it on a typewriter, or even a single tape deck. The mistake now known as What’s Going On is part of a complex constellation that consists of the artist, musicians, engineers, and technology.