Demos & Isolated Tracks

[Captain Awesome]

A friend just posted this on FB, and it got me thinking about these:



I love listening to (relatively) unprocessed tracks, especially isolated vocals. As a musician, it's cool to hear how things started out (when they tracked it) vs. what we're used to hearing as the finished product. It's also crazy to hear how "plain" some of the vocals sounded, and how average a lot of the vocalists really are when they're stripped down. On the other hand, sometimes they drive home how friggin' amazing some of them are, too.

I've seen a few sites like http://multitrackmaster.com/ and http://www.studiomultitracks.com/ where they have isolated tracks you can listen to, and I can lose hours just listening to this stuff.

Of course, some of them are more "WTF" than others, like the DLR "Runnin' With The Devil" one:



And Linda McCartney on a brilliant version of "Hey Jude" (the really good stuff starts around 2:30):



Anyone have any good ones to pass along?

[iceman]

Well this is more of a nugget than an isolated track but I just found it a little while back I've been looking for a place to stick it so here it is. In 1970 the Allmans were playing…well read the description on Youtube, it's kind of amazing. Anyways this was recorded the night Duane and Clapton first met. There's more of it out there.

[iceman]

More in the spirit of the thread:

[Captain Awesome]

Came across this one:



which led me here:



It's cool to hear the session musicians (the Wrecking Crew and others) work their magic, and to hear Brian calling the shots when he was all of, what, 24?

[TahoeJ]

^^ That second beach boys clip is impressive. Very cool to hear them working through the song.

Part of the reason Nirvana's Nevermind is held in such high regard (within the music industry, not just mainstream) is because of how little it was processed. As demonstrated by Iceman's post above. There's a couple of 20th anniversary articles around from last year talking about how obsessed Cobain was with nailing a song in a single recording instead of chopping pieces together.

This thread is kind of like the anti-AutoTune. God, I hate that shit.

[butterscotch]

^^ That second beach boys clip is impressive. Very cool to hear them working through the song.

Part of the reason Nirvana's Nevermind is held in such high regard (within the music industry, not just mainstream) is because of how little it was processed. As demonstrated by Iceman's post above. There's a couple of 20th anniversary articles around from last year talking about how obsessed Cobain was with nailing a song in a single recording instead of chopping pieces together.

This thread is kind of like the anti-AutoTune. God, I hate that shit.

Interesting perspective on Nevermind. I recall reading that Cobain hated the way Butch Vig made his guitar sound on that album.

A quick search yielded this: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/m...ver_heard.html

Edit: ok, not Vig but a guy named Andy Wallace.

[TahoeJ]

Interesting perspective on Nevermind. I recall reading that Cobain hated the way Butch Vig made his guitar sound on that album.

A quick search yielded this: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/m...ver_heard.html

Edit: ok, not Vig but a guy named Andy Wallace.

Yeah, the article I'm thinking of was in GQ - the Oral history of Nevermind. It's not available online for some reason (too bad, it's a good albeit long read). Was pretty interesting and they covered how much sparring there was between Cobain and the producers. He was pissed, but ultimately the others were happy with how little it was actually over-produced compared to other albums around that time. They also discuss that embarrassed quote and how it can be taken out of context. Anyway... that was all about the instrumental aspects and they left his voice clean for the most part, which almost never happens anymore (sadly).