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Post by mattjessup on Dec 20, 2009 0:45:17 GMT
at last i get to duet with the l8 gr8 Freddie mercury, its only a short clip, VOCALS,,,,,FREDDIE MERCURY PIANO.......MATT JESSUP www.myspace.com/mbkcjessupselect "tribute to freddie mercury", ;D
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 20, 2009 1:39:49 GMT
So go on then Matt, take us through how you put it together
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Post by vortex on Dec 20, 2009 4:25:48 GMT
Singstar
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Post by mattjessup on Dec 20, 2009 12:32:03 GMT
illegally,.........i have the 24 track master stored as audio files, it was just a case of playing along with the original in cubase, then muting what i didnt want to hear, its quite a treasure chest, theres a count in , freddie swearing at the end, Roger commenting on the amount of compression on the gong, and brian may mucking about on the guitar, and i think 4 different lead vocal takes, its not the best quality recording, some of it in isolation is quite bad, but it mixes really well,
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 20, 2009 18:42:13 GMT
Thought as much I have it too
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Post by mattjessup on Dec 20, 2009 21:26:17 GMT
yea!! i think it was originally released to certain colleges for Pro Tools education, Naturally. it escaped,
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Post by vortex on Dec 20, 2009 22:34:05 GMT
ooh anyone want to send me an christmas present?
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 21, 2009 12:36:39 GMT
24 x 6 minute 24bit wav files weighs in rather heavy on the old byteage Joe. You would need a DVDR at least. It's fascinating at first, the off mic chatter, Freddie's "Oh fuck it" at the end of the piano take etc. It's also an eye opener to see how they managed to cram in so much on 24 track, vocal overdubs on unused drum and guitar tracks. The vocals themselves are everywhere, and practically impossible to mix back to the way they sound on the record. Remember, in those days the whole band and all the studio personnel stood at the desk with a group of faders each all mixing together in a choreographed ballet on the fly. 3 tracks of bass seems a bit excessive, especially when you consider that there are only three tracks for drums with the overheads being in MONO!!! The only stereo miked track is the piano. Sounds lovely on it's own, very '70s, super dry and warm as fuck. There's tons of bleed through though, (bass in the drum mics, drum overheads in the piano etc) but I love that because despite the ridiculous amount over overdubbing on the track, it shows that the band played the bare bones together in the studio, live. There was a huge leak last year of a lot of classic '60s and '70s material that had escaped from the pro tools education project. It's a great pity in a way because now, the door will be firmly shut to prevent any more leaks. I would definitely love to work through the 16 track of 10cc's "I'm Not In Love". I konw someone who owns the original 2inch tape but refuses to transfer it... grrr! I do have a photo of the tape box though with the tracksheet: You have to be careful about these multitracks though because sometimes (to me at any rate) it feels a bit wrong listening to all the bits and pieces. By that I mean, illicit but not in an exciting way, more like prying where you shouldn't). From a technical point of view it can be fascinating but ultimately, you're only likely to listen to them once. I think it's kind of accepted that multitracks are private and are often kept out of view by the people that own them. Louis Gordon for instance told me he has the multitrack to Foxxy's "Burning Car" on his studio computer. Would he give me a copy? "Come on Lou, I'm your bro for fuck's sake"... nope! Would he even play it.... let us bring it up on the desk and have a fiddle?... not a chance, no matter how pissed we got at the Railway Hotel. "You don't want to know Brooksie... it's all smoke and mirrors" See what I mean?
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 21, 2009 12:44:35 GMT
I did manage to find an out take of an earlier version of Bo Rap that's quite interesting. This version isn't the same one as the final multitrack so perhaps you haven't heard this one Matt? I think we can get a way with this short clip Oh and about the recording quality Matt. The 24 track is as good as it gets for the day mate. As you rightly said, when mixed it sounds fine. Listening to the individual tracks does reveal some noise but that's because those quiet bits would be masked by other tracks in mixdown therefore cancelling them out to a certain extent. We're FAR too spoiled in this digital age Check out some of your portastudio tapes from the '80s mate, (if you dare... mine make me shudder). You'll think the Bo Rap 24 track is whisper quiet after that Attachments:
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Post by mattjessup on Dec 21, 2009 15:18:50 GMT
god my old fostex x 15 tapes, managed to get 11 tracks out of that. but the noise n hiss no please dont take me there,,,,, just in passing, i have a friend who right now is sending me on a cd rom the audio files of Peter Gabriels games without frontiers, should be interesting, and shaun you're quite right, i had to send bo rhap on a disc by snailmail,
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 21, 2009 17:47:06 GMT
You could have downloaded the Peter Gabriel loops yourself mate, they're freely available (and legal) from: www.realworldremixed.comBear in mind that the Gabriel stuff is not contiguous wav. It's short loops chopped up which you need to re-assemble (unless your friend has already done that for you). Shock The Monkey is up there too I believe.
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Post by vortex on Dec 21, 2009 19:15:06 GMT
Don't forget Bowie's space oddity available on iTunes though I suspect the multitracks have been sanitised.
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 21, 2009 19:41:05 GMT
Don't forget Bowie's space oddity available on iTunes though I suspect the multitracks have been sanitised. Ah! Not so Joe. I suspected as much myself at first but seeing as though Amazon had the whole thing up for £1.69, I just bought it to check. Hmmm, lots of vocal ad libs on the three tracks including a lot of messing about and talk of little mouse farts? It appears to be a genuine 8 track copy in all respects, (good on 'em) ;D Pity the bass & drums are on the same track but I assume that's original bouncing too I'm off to do a "Major Tom In Dub"
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 22, 2009 14:35:48 GMT
Well here's Space Oddity dubstyle: What a phenomenal bass player #glen# Click Here To Download The DubAll analogue outboard to get that real '70s dub feel... one for the smokers ;D
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Post by vortex on Dec 22, 2009 19:16:31 GMT
You old Pro! That really cool. It really runs off with the trippy elements of the song. I felt high just listening to it. Now how did you do it?
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 22, 2009 22:00:46 GMT
Haha thanks Joe. I really wanted it to sound like it was done "back in the day" like a proper old fashioned dub track where the only things added were effects and all the instruments were original to the recording, (not like modern remixes where new music is added). How did I do it? The multitrack is an 8 track of contiguous files so I converted the mp3's to 24bit 48khz wav files and lobbed them in pro tools. The mix was then sent to my analogue desk where I mixed it in traditional style using outboard effects, (tape echo, spring reverb and a host of other odds and sods). A live mix no less... the only way to put real energy back into mixdowns is to mix on the fly IMO. Playing the "studio" as you would a live instrument. A couple of tricks apart from the obvious panning, EQ and effects. The drums and bass were on one mono track. So, I filtered the sub bass up to 200Hz and processed that through a big fat fuck off bottom end compressor (for that reggae bass sound) and added reverb to the mid and top end (what was left after the bass filter). Two types, a big plate for the intro (as on the original take but using stereo) and a room reverb to simulate stereo overheads)... what was nice about the drum verbs was that the bass guitar remained more or less mono and unaffected as it was routed out to a separate channel, (a bit like how sub woofer crossovers work). There was a bit of cheating going on though. I prepared all my mutes in pro tools before the mix so there's a bit of automation. Riding the faders and auxiliaries live is one thing but stabbing the mutes in and out bang on the beat as well is pushing things a bit. Mind you, I did practise the mutes on the desk live first on a track by track basis to find out what worked and what didn't so although I ended up automating them, they were still real and from my mind so to speak
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Post by Tokyohunter on Dec 23, 2009 12:20:06 GMT
Excellent Shaun! This is straight into my best selection playlist. How long did the whole process you described take start to finish in hours? I played Matt's Bo Rap too of course, and once again highly skilled performance.
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Post by Dubsounds on Dec 23, 2009 14:17:52 GMT
Glad you like it Bern.
I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the original multitracks, removing a bit of mains hum from the guitar amp and de-noising etc, (all stuff I'm familar with from my audio restoration work). Despite the small amount of tape hiss, the recording quality of each instrument, particularly the vocals and drums was top notch. You can hear things like Bowies chair creaking as he leans to the mic on the vocal tracks so given the limitations of the analogue tape and it being recorded in the late sixties, I was very impressed with the engineering on the whole.
The next step was to put a noise gate over the vocal tracks to remove any spill from Bowie's headphones. I also took out his nervous warming up chatter and unintended noises such as the creaking chair. You have to be really careful doing this because you want to retain the breathing and lip sounds so some manual muting was in order (a bit painstaking). If you want an analogy, the process is very similar to that which you use for your image enhancement work Bern.
Once I had a squeaky clean multitrack, (I estimate the cleaning of the eight mono tracks took about 4 hours) I was then ready to start the creative side of things. I think that part took about two hours in total. Setting up my mutes, getting my tape echo speed in synch and multitracking it so I could get stereo delays (the Roland is only mono as are most tape echoes). I had to do the echoes in three passes as the tempo changes throughout the song from approximately 66 to 69 BPM (real musicians... ;D). Once that was all done, I just ran everything through the desk and did about four live takes of the mix and once I nailed it that was that.
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Post by mattjessup on Jan 9, 2010 11:01:33 GMT
sorry i.ve been away for a while, love the oddity shaun,
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