SH Spotlight Hey gang, guess what? Some of your most favorite albums in the world use tape dubs as masters..

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Steve Hoffman, Jul 19, 2022.

  1. FlorentinePogen

    FlorentinePogen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin, Texas
    Unrelated to Abraxas, but I wonder how Brian Wilson managed to record Pet Sounds at a bunch of different studios and come out with one tape. Was that a wall-to-wall dub in order to accommodate all the instruments, etc.?
     
  2. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    8 channel at Columbia Hollywood. Plenty of room.
     
  3. FlorentinePogen

    FlorentinePogen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin, Texas
    Pretty sophisticated for '65, no? Sounds like it was expensive.
     
  4. paulisme

    paulisme I’m being sarcastic

    Location:
    Charleston SC
    Considering the number of tapes used for multitrack recording combined with all the bounces for really ambitious records like Sgt. Pepper’s, one more tape generation doesn’t seem like a big deal.
     
  5. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Eh, not really. Music would be recorded at Gold Star or Western, dumped to one channel of the 8-track from the 3-track with 7 channels left for vocal overdubbing.
     
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  6. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Les Paul had the first in 56-57.

    Atlantic in 58.

    Motown and CBS in late 64.

    Most other studios 66-67.

    But completely irrelevant to the crossfade topic at hand.
     
  7. cs2003

    cs2003 Forum Resident

    I would say a worse idea is overdubbing during the final mix ie -
    The Beatles - Revolver LP or
    Elvis - Suspicious Minds single.
     
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  8. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Well, yeah, many hit records are like that ("She's Not There" Zombies, "Bits And Pieces" DC5, "Help Me, Rhonda" BB's, "Locomotion" Little Eva, "Chapel Of Love" Dixie Cups, etc.) Whatever it takes to make a hit.
     
  9. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Didn’t happen on Revolver.
     
    Onder likes this.
  10. cs2003

    cs2003 Forum Resident

    I'm sure Mark Lewisohn said they did in his recording sessions book.
     
  11. Sex Lies And Master Tapes

    Sex Lies And Master Tapes Gaulois réfractaire

    Location:
    Nantes, France
    :laugh:
     
  12. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    For what song?
     
  13. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    Dub music or voices on to a finished mono or stereo mix for Revolver? No.
     
    Onder likes this.
  14. nosticker

    nosticker Forum Guy

    Location:
    Ringwood, NJ
    The only thing I'm aware of is the BBC broadcast that was flown into the mono mix of I Am The Walrus. Is that what's being discussed?



    Dan
     
  15. JosepZ

    JosepZ Digital knight of the analog masters

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    Maybe he's mixing up the 1st mix of Tomorrow Never Knows with I Am The Walrus in his head?
     
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  16. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Don’t know, but TNK didn’t have any overdubs during mixing, period.
     
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  17. TheHutt

    TheHutt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    No, that's an obvious edit (and pretty botched on the mono version, too).
     
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  18. OnTheRoad

    OnTheRoad Not of this world

    Quote from Wiki....

    Jeb Wright of Classic Rock Revisited, lead guitarist Billy Gibbons explained: "The two songs "Waitin' For The Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" were written separately during sessions that were not too far apart. We were in the process of compiling the tracks for the album Tres Hombres, and that segue was a fortunate miscalculation by the engineer. He had been attempting to splice out some blank tape, and the result is that the two come off as a single work. It just seemed to work."

    So...a fortunate mistake. :thumbsup:
     
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  19. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    So much so that when a Nashville DJ played only one without the other, his phones lit up with angry callers.
     
  20. cs2003

    cs2003 Forum Resident

    The comment was made by Mark Lewison and might have also been said by Giles Martin. I thought this was common knowledge and a reason why Revolver couldn't be completely mixed in 5.1.
    Cant remember where I read it or which song it was about.
     
  21. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Completely untrue, and not stated by Lewisohn.
     
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  22. cs2003

    cs2003 Forum Resident

    From an interview in Record Collector Magazine No. 94 (June 1987) with Abbey Road recording engineer Mike Jarrett who was responsible the first Beatle CD releases in 1987.

    MJ: I prepared digital stereo master tapes for CD production from the original stereo tapes of those albums. George Martin came in to listen to the results, and with "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" he thought that the quality of the CDs would be improved if we went back to the 4-track tapes and remixed. So I transferred the original 4-track tape onto a digital multi-track machine, and alongside I put the original stereo mix, so George had a reference of what he had done originally. The remixes were then done from these digital tapes.
    RC: Why was "Revolver" left alone?
    MJ: Mainly because the master tape sounded
    so good. A remix of that album would have been slightly more difficult, as some effects on certain tracks were mixed live onto the original master tape.

    I'm still sure that ML and GM have repeated this.
     
  23. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Lewisohn hasn’t. And it’s not true. The tape loops are on the 4-track.

    There are two mono mixes and one stereo mix. The loops fade in and out slightly differently, but they are in the exact same places on all three mixes.

    Nothing was overdubbed during mixing.
     
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  24. cs2003

    cs2003 Forum Resident

    I'm not taking about any specific track. I remember reading a ML interview or book where he says that the were overdubs onto the album master tape or some mixes.
     
  25. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    He didn’t.
     
    Onder likes this.

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