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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Chicago's "25 Or 6 To 4" Isolated Parts

A while back I posted the isolated vocals from Chicago's famous "25 Or 6 To 4," a perennial hit from their second album simply titled Chicago. Here's another shot of the same with more isolated parts, this time from the lead guitar, horns and vocals. Here are some things to listen for:

1. The horns are in stereo, and the stereo is spread out more than normal during some portions of the song.

2. The vocal reverb is pretty long, slightly delayed, and sounds really good.

3. The harmony vocals are incredibly tight, not only pitch-wise, but articulations as well. I would image the singers (Peter Cetera, Robert Lamm and Terry Kath) were more aware than most vocalists of their time about those things thanks to having horns in the band.

4. The sound of Terry Kath's guitar doesn't sound that good by itself as it seems distorted and muddy with little sustain, yet works great in the track (no shock there as it happens often). That said, it has some really nice short ambience on it.



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3 comments:

Thom Cadley said...

Bobby,
FYI, these are not from the original mix.
They are from the mix I did, (from a digital copy of the original multis), for the video game RockBand.
I didn't put them up on the web, somebody obviously knows how to strip them from the game!
Glad you like them though!
Cheers,
Thom Cadley

Anonymous said...

Man your work on those rock band game is awsome.

regards

will

Fred Decker said...

Bobby,

I love Chicago and have listened to this song many times. Isolated tracks offer a whole new experience. I am a fan of Terry Kath's guitar playing -- he was like the raging bull of guitar players in my mind -- and I like hearing his guitar in isolation. At times the guitar gets kind of blurred by other instruments.

I also agree with you about the singing -- it's remarkable!

Thanks for another great post!

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