SHOULD WE RECONSTRUCT unreleased studio takes with the technology & material we have?

[millerTEK]

We know with new audio technology, the Deluxe release source material, and surround release channels and material- we have been provided the ability to use these resources to separate isolation's and create new remixes and other creations from our work. So has anyone considered this....

After reading all the written documentation accurately describing various takes and overdubs that were recorded on certain days and their sound - and realizing that material has STILL not been released in any official or unofficial form - I believe with all of these recent releases and using current audio technology, we now may have the capability to RECONSTRUCT UNRELEASED items of importance.

For example - look at Yesterday. We know that song had a simple progression of 2 Takes on 6/14/65. Both of which have been released in their original forms - notably Take 2 exists without the Strings. So - with technology and surround mixes released - we could now isolate that strings overdub and RECONSTRUCT the 6/17/65 Overdub that has never been released.

Look at Martha My Dear - another item recorded with Take 1 released without the overdubs that came later. Well you can ISOLATE the strings and brass overdub added later form the surround sound release. Now you have RECONSTRUCTED that overdub.

So to look at lots of older songs which the Beatles perfected the backing tracks first and then took the backing track 'marked best' and added vocal overdubs next, we can now RECONSTRUCT the unreleased TAKE that was a backing track marked best.

Possibilities are endless...

I find that thought exciting as we know Apple will never release everything recording on the studio tapes - and so maybe RECONSTRUCTING those unreleased studio takes and overdubs would be a constructive addition to Beatles recording history. On the other hand - these recordings need to be reconstructed as accurately as possible to provide audio material based on source material known so far...and that requires some responsibility to separate these creations form Fan Made remixes vs RECONSTRUCTIONS.

Just a thought!

[miggynav]

I think csnyfan has started doing this in the last year or so for some of the tracks from the SD sets.

[Choking Smoker]

It's been done quite a bit already and I'm all for it.

[MP3J]

As a start for any project like this i'd love to see ALL and EVERY Beatles song broken down into stems as far as possible

[robbmacc]

Yes, if the reconstruction is faithful to what was done during/in/for the original take.

In other words, no "take 6 but I thought it would be cool to add maracas that have been mixed out since take 3," unless it's clearly labeled as a "fan (re)mix" etc.

If that makes sense.


(BTW, the maracas reference above was something I made up, I had no particular song in mind and find csnyfans' work to be some of the purist. See next response.)

[Ants]

This was done by csnyfan for the Complete Recording Sessions project in the old Bootlegzone, and is still being done (extremely well) for almost every SDE release.

Usually, it's very faithful: we have the take as it was originally recorded (thanks to the Rock Band multitracks, 5.1 mixes, etc.).

Other times, some stuff is missing (because it was mixed out on every release, like guide vocals, etc., so it's not possible to retrieve it at all), or there's some more stuff (which was recorded later, but is "locked" with the live basic track or is difficult to isolate/remove).

Some more stuff usually means that it's like listening to a later take (for example, csnyfan reconstructed the basic live take of Hello, Goodbye, but with maracas too, which were added at a later stage, because they were impossible to remove from the track).
If something is missing (like some drums sections in Long, Long, Long, as they were mixed out), well... I guess we can't have everything.

Personally, I'm very happy to have these, as long as elements that don't belong to those takes are not included (vocals/instruments from other performances, bits and pieces taken from another part of the song, ...).
When I see a new (well done) reconstruction being uploaded, it's like getting a previously unbootlegged track.

[masterjedi]

Yes please! Csnyfan and LR are already doing a great job of this.

The difficulty arises from the fact that we don't REALLY have the multitracks for very many tracks. 5.1s almost always have the channels intermixed, and the Rockband stuff is often a mess to unravel. So, often you are left with some leakage from later takes, or artifacts from the extraction process. That said, there are a few which are perfect, and of the rest, many are highly enjoyable to listen to and reveal elements that go unnoticed in the final mixes.

[RalseiDeltarune]

Lots of people have done this, with varying degrees of success. That being said, I'm not against the idea of outfakes; sometimes you just gotta scrape the bottom of the barrel, Especially if you're gathering stuff from Revolver and Rubber Soul. I do think the overdub reconstructions are kind of annoying, but it doesn't bother me, really.

So yeah. I think we should if we have to.

[Bianju]

The overdub reconstructions are very helpful for remixes. I think a good way to start any remix is to understand what the basic take is and how the overdubs interact with the basic take.

[Onkster II]

I think the even better thing to do is take songs that never made it out--namely, a number of select bits from the GET BACK tapes, among others--and mix them to become fully-fledged Beatle tracks.

(My hope is that the ex-Beatles and their helpers have been doing this for some time, to present us with the impossible--one final Beatles album.)

Number one candidate for this treatment: All Things Must Pass. I know people have tried it before, but...it still could be done better! I wish I had the time...