Patrick Healy wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 4:15 pm
I'm assuming none of the alternate takes exist any more?
No. Nothing at all from that day except the two edited mono mixes.
rtbcIII wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 4:24 pm
I guess they just didn't have time to rehearse it as much as they needed to. That may have been a good thing though.
Have always thought that was one of the secrets of their success - they barely had time to use the loo at EMI in those days, let alone second-guess themselves. Problems needed to be solved in minutes, not hours.
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Yes, 100% Who was it who said "If you've spent more than five minutes writing a song then you've just been jerking off". A slight exaggeration maybe, but the principle holds true for both writing and recording. If you want to capture lightning in a bottle, you've got to be quick. Look at all those BBC recordings. Some of them are simply astonishing, and yet they just rattled them off in one take probably.
Engonoceras wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 5:15 pm
MasterJedi did a remaster of this that masked the edits and tonal changes very well. Not 100% perfect but much better.
The best unfutzed transfer I've heard is on the CD version of the "Million Sellers" EP linked below. It jumps out of the speakers for sure.
hxxps://we.tl/t-h4FdAp2x2n
Maybe someone could use that as a basis for a new remaster that fixes the edits and tonal changes. I think everyone else is using the awful "Past Masters" transfers or vinyl transfers. But, I don't know if the above is a true mono transfer using a true mono tape head OR a mono tape transfer using a stereo head.
Thanks for the link. The bigger problem is that one of the edit pieces takes is not only slightly slower tempo but recorded with a different drums and guitar sound. When I did the stereo demix I tried to address this change in tonal balance by EQing each instrument separately, but it still doesn't quite work. They must have had a repositioning of the microphones for one of the takes.
The original mono releases on vinyl were far less dodgy sounding. Norman Smith was not an idiot, he would never have let the atrocious Past Masters version "pass". He would have redone it. I am almost certain that the splices came apart at some point post-60s and had to be re-cemented, and the tape has not sounded right ever since.