Steve Wilson MIX Frank Zappa Inquiry

A Frank Zappa Steve Wilson MIX Inquiry

As the title suggests, a Frank Zappa Steve Wilson MIX Inquiry. If I may suggest a listing of 10 recordings or 2 LP, Live, Studio, Combination of Both. I gave this list about 5 minutes thought. Enjoy your reflection and opinions.

1 - Sharleena - The Lost Episodes
2 - Holiday In Berlin, Full-Blown - Burnt Weeny Sandwitch
3 Road Ladies - Chunga's Revenge
4 200 Years Old Alternate Take - Unreleased
5 Fifty-Fifty Over-Nite Sensation
6 I Promise Not To Come In Your Mouth -Live In New York
7 Sy Borg - Joe's Garage
8 The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution - Sleep Dirt
9 - Don't Eat The Yellow Snow You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Volume 1
10 - Drowning Witch - Ship Arriving To Late Too Save A Drowning Witch

 

Unfortunately it is not going to happen.
I believe Joe was on here specifically saying that there are no plans for any surround mixes....

Terribly disappointing to me, but such is life

 

If I was looking at this it would be actual albums, not compiles.
First off the line would be

We're Only In It For The Money (if possible)
Apostrophe
One Size Fits All
Joe's Garage

But sadly it seems it will never happen

 

Personally I think you made some fantastic suggestions. I was not under the impression that Steven Wilson only made surround sound mixes. Not that I would object to any form of surround sound mix but Steve Wilson has done Stereo Remix productions.

I want to clarify that it should be clear that the Zappa Trust has predominantly used existing Frank Zappa original and remixed Masters in their posthumous productions but if fans looks closely there are certainly enough of productions that show that there are some posthumously mixed projects where several mix engineers have worked on Zappa Masters.

There is always a history lesson with who worked for Frank and decisions they made in their life. Unfortunately there are also some engineers that did mixes of Frank Zappa's works, where they hijacked the master tapes, where neither they nor their estate returned the masters to the Zappa Trust. There is a big difference of what an engineer does when he Mixes as opposed to stealing and not returning masters to the owners of the master tapes. I don't feel the need to mention names, one that I am specifically thinking of is deceased but while some alumni have glorified some of these mixes, honestly some of these engineers were hi-jack thieves of the highest regard. Maybe one day their estate will return the masters to the Zappa Trust. To the best of my knowledge there are still some Masters that may have amazing potential that are not in the hands of the rightful owners.

The history of talent and trust necessary to be hired by Frank Zappa or The Zappa Trust. There are very high standards. Unfortunately some of Frank Zappa's employees were not good citizens of the composers work. Some of them were downright Treacherous Ctetins.

I will say the Zappa Trust are doing an amazing job with their business relationships. Should they ever engage in a relationship with Steve Wilson I have nothing but Good Will towards the feasibility of such.

 

I believe Wilson has done stereo remixes, but generally as a set up for the surround mixes.

The other thing about diving into the Zappa vaults would be the crazy way that Frank put his albums together.... with a lead break from this concert, a rhythm track from that session, a vocal over that...
I imagine it would be a very long process just getting all the right sections to recreate the albums, before mixing even took place lol

 

NO MORE ZAPPA REMIXES. I mean why??? Thank you though...

 

The feasibility of producing may be open to a set of variables at a given period of time. We can look at the history of 5.1 Surround Sound and Quad used in Audio and Film productions that had already been put into the marketplace at a given period of time. New productions do take place and the surround sound format is not quite as dead as DVD-A. A variety of visual/audio and audio formats will present themselves.

As time moves forward different production opportunities present themselves. I chose to bring up Steve Wilson because of his history in the last decade or whatever but I'm not focusing on DVD-A, Blue Ray surround sound projects we have seen but more-so any possibility.

 

Rather have more of Zappa's tasty quad experiments to be honest.

And thats speaking as a Wilson fan First and foremost, but also as a Zappa fan.

Quadophilliac was fantastic and only scratched the surface of my remembering of sleeve notes is good

 

Nothing wrong with FZs Quad Mixes. I have the ones releases on DVD-Audio format. A neighbor I grew up with had a an early 70s Quad System, he was a big Doors fan and I remember hearing The Best of The Doors Quad Vinyl on Elektra.

I have nothing against FZs mixes but as time goes by with technology, be it two channel or multi-channel, fidelity improvements move forward. If an analogue 8,16,14,48 track master is laying around so much can be done with new multi-track hi-resolution environments. That's not to say something could not be done with FZs 5 track masters one day.

I am not trying to push the thread into fans whipping up the money grab roto blender angle because anybody knows multi-channel and remix in general are for niche markets with limited feasibility of production.

I bring this all up because at some point in time something is bound to come along, it could be as simple as a new surround sound track used in a film production to some Dolby Atmos, Quantros, Cincos , next mileneos codec..

Edit: I was at a friend's house recently and we watched the Frank Zappa and The Mother's of Invention - Freak Out(Classic Album) documentary directed by Matthew Lomgfellow. We watched and listened in Dolby 5.1 . Amazing film and loved how it sounded in 5.1

 

Because surround sound.

 

Wilson is a big fan of Zappa from what I’ve read.

 

Ironically, the one FZ album I'd love to hear remixed is the one that will never happen: Thing-Fish. I'm not saying it would salvage its reputation, but the original mix is definitely not helping anything.

And this is aside from Steven Wilson, and also I'm not sure why I'm going on about Thing-Fish (an album I've struggled to appreciate), but I'd welcome another complete fantasy "will-never-happen" project of a Thing-Fish archival release. I'd like to hear a compilation of only the album's new material (not the previously released songs with Thing-Fish overdubbed) remixed, perhaps with some related live material included. Oh, and a guitar solo or two from the period. I suppose what I'm saying is that if Thing-Fish hadn't included all of that overdubbed material, had a guitar solo or two, and was mixed better (less vocal reverb, for one) it would be looked upon more fondly, at least to those who already enjoy his 80's output. Of course, it wouldn't be Thing-Fish or a "musical" anymore, but...

 

Oh. I forget about surround sound. Is that still around?

 

This is either an obnoxious troll response or you just woke up from a long Rip Van Winkle Sleep. There is more surround sound being produced today than at any time in the history of recorded audio. While surround sound productions for music goes through periods of niche market trends the use of surround sound music in film production has and will continue to grow. If there is an audit of surround sound in film, in all probability 2022 has more films with surround sound than at any other time in the history of recorded audio technologies.

As I stated a few comments up I was at a friend's house recently and we watched the Frank Zappa and The Mother's of Invention - Freak Out(Classic Album) documentary directed by Matthew Longfellow. We watched and listened in Dolby 5.1 . Amazing film and loved how it sounded in 5.1

Maybe it's time to take a little rest from the Hoffman forum again. Personally I have only so much interest in human behavior on social networks. Not that I am upset by your commentary , whatever rocks your boat but for a long time I thought the Hoffman Forum was a fairly intellectual place with many users with interests in all forms of Hi-Fifelity. After a while you see more and more behavior common of any social network.

Surely there are all forms of opinions wherever anyone is walking in life. No one needs to like everything but I'd rather politely not engage with this behavior. Or maybe you just needed to joke around a little, poke some fun at a topic about surround sound or try to push my buttons personally. Whatever your intent was is fine. No ill regards on my part. Have a great time angling. Peace.

 

He mentioned once on a podcast that he would like to have a go at a surround mix for Joe's Garage as he is a fan.

 

Bingo! All jokes aside and in all honesty though I do not think the Zappa catalog will be tinkered with any further. His catalog has been a source of controversy since 1986 when Zappa himself chose to remix. We have slowly since 2012 been getting things back (close to at least) to the original recordings that most Zappa die-hards (myself included) have been wanting in the masses. His catalog can be considered a little different than most others. Artists like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, even Zeppelin have a lot more fans overall and many are a lot more casual. Casual fans tend to be more open to things like re-mixes and surround sound. We never know and I could be wrong, but I think any Zappa that deviates more from the originals than what was out on early CD's will not be released.

 

I am not interested in the catalog being remixed, a small sampling, a minimal select choice, done more-so to give a modern remix engineer an opportunity, to put a stamp on the tracks for a modern listening perspective.

Even if you don't ever get that, with all the vault tapes, many are recorded by a field engineer, how that field engineer mixed at the time of the show. While Frank remixed many field recordings for release, or still waiting on a build reel there are so many tapes that a combination of using the field mix, in many cases with new mixing and mastering, any combination has yielded many really fine posthumous listening experiences.

Now as far as critical analysis of Frank Zappa's mixing choices, each master was done at a given period of time, with Frank's ears and technology at that period of time. If anyone has ever been in a studio or spent time at a live show with FOH engineers, you could get a general perspective how delivering sound changes from album to album, venue to venue, tour to tour, studio and field technology. Engineer to Engineer.

A digital reverb added at one period of time, a plug in delivered at another. Possibilities Unlimited but some things such and instrumentation on specific tracks, that you can never change a mix , what's on that isolated track unless some frequency stripping techniques are used , from a mix perspective, you get what you get from that isolated track with it's instrumemtation. FZ did remove bad notes, cut tape, use EQ but today technology can remove things or tweak things in specific frequencies more than any time in engineering.

For a long time I had wondered if you can technology strip several instruments from 1 track, place each instrument on each of their own new digital workstation tracks, apply plug-ins to each stripped track and then mix. If there were only 8 tracks from field mixes or studio mixed from 24 , 48 or 96 lines, could we get 24, 48 or 96 digital workstation tracks, apply studio techniques and new mixing to a Noah's Ark load of digital workstation tracking. Progress

 

Very true. It seems that Frank felt he owed the fans new versions of many of his old releases. Considering that his master tapes were not in the best of shape (and some still are not) and given the opportunity to "spiff them up" he surely did. Much of the reverb was added to hide tape flaws, especially on those up through Uncle Meat.
As a Zappa nut since the late 70's I actually have no problem with what he did. I am glad to have multiple LP copies of everything up through the 1980's, the original CD issues, and the 2012 issues where they resort back to the originals (approx 22 of the 60-something).
Anyway if SW does remix, it likely would be a select one or few. I guess the possibilities are endless on what "could be".

 

Who's Steve Wilson?