To end the week where the resurfacing of the 60's generation featured, quite unintentionally it should be said but just occurred through the current and planned releases for September 2013. This Friday's post looks at the growing enthusiasm on YouTube for the posting of 'isolated' tracks from top artists. It's always intriguing to find out just what they were up to back then, and in most cases it's pretty damn amazing.
So what was once the hallowed knowledge of only those involved in making the music, their techniques are being now laid open to us all by various methods.
Sometimes original tapes are accessed and broken down channel by channel,
or to varying levels of success by software such as Audacity being able to separate the sounds from one another,
or as in the case of The Beatles, the job's been made considerably easier by accessing the left or right channels of the remastered original stereo recordings.
Anyone who has the stereo recordings of their albums will immediately notice how the 1960's stereo was created by separating certain instruments to the left or right hand channels of the playback, although with Beatles albums it was only ever 'Abbey Rd' originally made in stereo.
The Beatles had always been a Mono recording band but the remastering of their recordings by George Martin and team were to place the instruments of these once mono recordings into a stereo path just as they would have been done by the late 60's.
Consequently this has made the job of isolating the vocals and instruments a lot less complicated task for anyone with some smarts.. and the software.
So lets go back nearly half a century to the grandfather of all psychedelic recordings "Tomorrow Never Knows" and hear some of these isolated tracks. (There is some bleed from the backing on the tracks.)
First off just the vocals by Lennon. This is referred to as 'Take 1' and wasn't used as the final version but it's so near to the original it matters little.
Now here's part of the track with just Ringo's superb drum beat and McCartney's pulsing bass line, this would have been constant throughout the 3 minutes or so.
Now the Tape Loops which you may be surprised to hear runs nearly all the way through the recording. It's said these were constructed by McCartney, and with his interest in John Cage and other avante garde composers of the time it would seem most likely.
To put all that in context John, Paul, George and George Martin talk about the making of the piece.
And finally for those who have to hear the full recording after all that, here is what is said to be a "Lost Music Video from 1967" to go with the final track.
It's doubtful this was actually recorded as a promotion or planned to be used but does have some authentic shots of Lennon and McCartney around 1967 (although used before) and it does have that 60's avante garde/abstract feel about it. It's likely this was put together some time after the making of "Tomorrow Never Knows" which was for the 1966 'Revolver' album.
