"In My Life" Beatles - Isolated Vocals

Here's the isolated vocals to one of my favorite songs, The Beatles "In My Life" from their Rubber Soul album. I'm pretty sure the isolated track is taken from Beatles: Rock Band, but that still doesn't diminish how cool it is to hear the vocals pretty much stripped away from the backing track. 

That being said, the backing track was extremely basic anyway (it was Take 3 of 3), with just guitar, drums and bass without any sweeting except for the piano solo. Here are some things to listen for.

1) Once again, the vocal blend of John, Paul and George shines. In my experience, vocal blend takes longer to come together than instrumental blend, and it's a big reason why you don't hear this kind of vocal sound much anymore. Unless you're singing together night after night, as the boys did in their years in Hamburg, you won't sound like this.

2) The interesting thing is this kind of blend can be rather forgiving in terms of singing in tune. Even if you're a little off, it's not as noticeable as when you have no blend at all. Listen to the first set of "oo's" behind Lennon's lead vocal. It's a little shaky but you don't notice unless you listen really hard.

3) I love the piano solo in that the tape was obviously slowed down, which made it sound like a harpsichord, so the part could be easily played (especially the run at the end of it). Producer George Martin originally played this solo on the Hammond organ, but didn't feel that the sound worked for the song so he replaced it with piano.


Sorry everyone, but every time I embed one of these great videos, EMI takes them down, even though it can be argued that they're being used for educational purposes under Fair Use. 

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Are Music Game Sales Coming Back To Earth?

Last week's video game sales report had many in both the gaming and music industries thinking what was once thought to be unthinkable - music games have finally run their course. Not a single music game could be found on the top twenty in the game charts, a far cry from when Guitar Hero and Rock Band ruled.

In October 2007, when the Guitar Hero craze was at its height, Guitar Hero III moved 1.4 million copies in six days, then sold another 1.9 million the next month. Compare that to September 2009, which saw the launch of both Guitar Hero V and Beatles Rock Band, where the combined sales of these two games sold just a tad less than 1.1 million copies over nearly a full month.

But there’s another completely new game missing from the October charts that's a big surprise to many people — Activision’s DJ Hero. During its five days of availability, the game sold a mere 120,000 copies across all four platforms. Considering how widely anticipated and marketed this game was, its feeble sales comes as a surprise. So why did a game that supposedly had so much going for it meet with such weak sales? Many theories abound but it seems like industry insiders agree on a few things:

• It isn't a great party game. It's a game for single players. The DJ culture is not collaborative in the first place, so the game isn't conducive for multiple players.

• It's expensive. As Ken Kuchera states in his post on ars technica - "The Renegade Edition of the game was $200. The standard edition, $120. That's a tough sell in a market where price point is so important. For $80 more you can get yourself a Wii or an Xbox 360 Arcade model. Right now at GameStop you can spend $20 less and pick up a game, a guitar, a microphone, and drums with the $99 Rock Band 2 Special Edition. The music is more accessible, you can pay with friends, and you get more hardware for less money. The turntable included with the $120 DJ Hero release is a high quality accessory; you won't feel ripped off if you buy the game. The trouble is that at that price, with only one accessory, not many people are going to be willing to find that out."

• You probably don't know the songs because they're all mashups. DJ Hero has name artists, but they were free to chop up the tunes they worked with at will. Innovative maybe, but not exactly what the average game player wants. What fun is playing a music game if you don't know the songs?

• Does the average person know how a turntable works? Everyone knows how a guitar or piano is played even if they can't play it. Not so with a turnable.

• None of the famous DJ's are even featured on the box. Why spend money on big names if you're not going to take advantage of their brands?

Game revenue has become an important income stream for many artists, so a slowdown in sales of music games is the last thing anyone needs. Are we witnessing a true waning of interest in the genre, or is the market just waiting for a new evolution in music gaming? Only time will tell.

The Beatles: Rock Band Introduction At E3

Yesterday Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr introduced the new Beatles: Rock Band game at the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles. While I've been hard on Rock Band and it's players in past posts, I must admit that this looks pretty cool. Plus, there's empirical evidence everywhere that the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games have actually driven kids to learn to play instruments, which is a good thing culturally and musically.

Enjoy this sample of the game (the graphics are great!).