The Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand" Isolated Rhythm Track

Here's another interesting isolated track video, this time it's the song that broke The Beatles in the United States nearly 50 years ago - "I Want To Hold Your Hand." What you'll hear is the band's rhythm section of John Lennon's rhythm guitar, Ringo Starr's drums and Paul McCartney's bass.

These parts were all recorded onto a single track of a 4 track tape recorder, which was quite an innovation back then. As a matter of fact, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was the very first song the band recorded on a 4 track, having done their previous recordings on 2 track machines. Listen for:

1. How tight the band is. You can tell they did their 10,000 hours before they hit the studio.

2. How Lennon's rhythm guitar pushes the song along. This is the perfect example of the rhythm element and how it works in to propel a song.

3. How good the track feels, especially during the bridges. Ringo's playing has always been extremely under appreciated.

4. How bright the snare and hat is, but it works great in context when the other tracks are added.

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Natural Reverb And The Water Tank Studio

We all love reverb, especially the natural kind. Live chambers like the ones that Capitol Records Studios are known for are beloved and high on the list for every software reverb programmer's to try to emulate. Walk into any large room, hall and gymnasium and the first thing many musicians and engineers do is clap their hands and marvel at the echo. We're naturally drawn to the beauty of the sound.

To prove my point, here's a video from the BBC about an old empty water tank in Rangely, Colorado that sounds so good that a group of musicians got together to save it and then install a small studio so they could record inside.

How To Get The Most From Your EQ

One of the things that beginning engineer's soon learn is that you can't get the most from your EQ unless you know what to expect when you use it. Here's a chart from the 3rd edition of The Mixing Engineer's Handbook that breaks the audio spectrum into ranges and describes the effect of boosting or cutting in each.

You can read more from The Mixing Engineer's Handbook and other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

The Beatles "Abbey Road" Isolated Vocals

One of the things we loved about The Beatles is their vocals, especially their harmonies. Here is the isolated vocals of side 2 of the vinyl of Abbey Road. You can hear the boys at their vocal peaks, with beautiful in-tune vocals. After listening through, it's easy to see why this is one of the best albums ever recorded. Here are some of many observations.

1. Listen for how the vocals are strategically doubled in various parts for more strength.

2. The famous Abbey Road Studios reverb is set fairly long, but is very unobtrusive, a trademark of the studio. Also listen to how it's raised at the end of certain phrases, or dropped out in certain sections for contrast.

3. There's lots of interesting things that trickle into the mix, like the headphone leakage, finger snaps, and even a few comments.

4. At 3:00 you can hear the tambourine enter on the same track, but you also hear sound effects and piano in certain places as well because they'd run out of tracks.

New Music Gear Monday: The AirTurn Digit iOS Controller

iPads have quietly changed most musician's lives. It's hard to see a stage anyone without at least one for reading music, charts, lyrics, cues or set lists. The problem is that changing the page on an iPad is similar, too similar in fact, to turning the pages of a book. It still requires you to reach out and swipe. Wouldn't it be great to be able to change the page with just a footswitch?

Now you can with the AirTurn Digit, a new Bluetooth controller that works with your iPad, but your iPhone or Android phone too. In fact, Digit can be used to control a number of Bluetooth enabled devices like cameras, Macs and PCs (depending upon the app).

You can use it as a handheld controller, or plug two pedals into it and turn your pages back and forth or up and down. I think this could be really cool for a club band to control effects or lights as well as the above mentioned applications, and although I don't see any applicable apps on their site at the moment, you have to think that this will happen over time.

The AirTurn Digit sells for $79.95, and the BT two pedal setup sells for $129.95. A four pedal version is also available.

Yes "Roundabout" Isolated Guitars

Staying with our Friday isolated tracks theme, here's Steve Howe's isolated guitar tracks in "Roundabout," one of Yes's most famous tracks. The song is off of their breakout album Fragile, which catapulted the band into a worldwide headlining act. It's a long song with a lot of parts, so here are just a few of the things to listen for.

1. Listen to the acoustic guitar harmonics on the left and electric guitar fills on right during the first verse.

2. On the second verse, the acoustic guitar harmonics are replaced with a strum.

3. A slightly out of tune electric guitar takes over in first chorus.

4. Check out the mis-fingerings at 3:08 and 3:17, something that we'd probably fix if the song were done today.

6. Listen for the chair noise on the second intro at 5:15.

7. On the last verse the electric guitar doubles the bass.

8. Check out the strumming guitar on outro at 7:50, along with tapping on the body for a rhythm percussion effect.

9. The ending guitar line (the same as the intro) at 8:18 is doubled.

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The Tale Of Two Nine Inch Nails Masters

Here's an except from a story I posted on Forbes that looks at the strategy behind the dual master release of the latest Nine Inch Nails album. Keep in mind that it's written for an audience that's not audio sophisticated.

"Don't look now but Trent Reznor has done it again. Always ahead of the pack in some way, Reznor just took a stand in the the so-called loudness wars by releasing the new Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, with two different masters; the standard compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life master, and a less compressed "audiophile" version.

For those of you not aware of the battleground, the loudness wars are basically a result of the insecurity of record execs, artists, producers and audio engineers everywhere that if their song is played right before or after another that’s louder, the listener will somehow deem it inferior. As a result, there’s a constant battle that rages behind the scenes in mastering facilities everywhere in an effort to make every song sound as loud as possible, even to the point where a mastering engineer (the specialized boffin who puts the final audio sheen on a song mix) will get the job based on being able to make the song louder than a competitor.

This is a battle that’s been raging since the 50s, and has resulted in mastering engineers usually violating their own collective good taste and judgement in making songs as loud as possible just to keep working. After all, lose a loudness shoot-out to a competitor and you might not get chance at the next record that needs mastering." Read the entire article on Forbes.

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Mix Comparison: From Rehearsal To Master

Here's a video that came from The Music Producer's Handbook that shows the differences in how the mixes sound from rehearsal, basic tracks, all overdubs, final mix and mastered track. The song is "Feedback And Distortion" which I produced for the second SNEW album called We Do What We Want.

You can hear that the rough mixes are fairly close to the final mix, but the final mastered track (done by the great Eddy Schreyer at Oasis Mastering) is definitely a lot louder.

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A Revolution In Speaker Technology

The Ionic Speaker

Speaker technology as we know it has been around for about a hundred years, yet it's never really had a revolutionary product that's changed the basic electro-mechanical engine that's been used since the beginning. Sure there's been lots of evolution, as speakers of all sorts continue to be refined, and there's even been a couple tries at using lasers and even plasma to try to take speaker technology into the 21st century.

But now it looks like there may finally be something on the horizon that can actually change the way sound is reproduced for the better that can actually be manufactured. Enter the "ionic speaker," a transparent disc created at the materials science laboratory of Harvard University.

This is not actually a speaker or even an electronic device, it's a "reproducer" that consists of a thin sheet of rubber sandwiched between two layers of saltwater gel, which makes it as clear as a piece of glass. A high-voltage signal runs across the surfaces and through the layers that forces the rubber to rapidly contract and vibrate. What's different here is that unlike traditional loudspeakers, it's not electrons that are moving, but ions. That means that there may even be bionic applications for the technology (as the in the body as a reproducer) as well.

And by the way, the reproducer covers the entire audible range from 20Hz to 20kHz.

This won't be on the market soon, as there's still a lot of research as to the best materials to use for audio, but it's a magnificent and exciting start. It sure would be nice to rid ourselves of the clunky boxes we call loudspeakers for a newer and better technology.

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New Music Gear Monday: Shure KSM9HS Microphone

Anyone who's ever been in the music business has used a Shure SM58 on a live gig somewhere along the line. That workhorse of a mic has been going strong for over 50 years and can still be found working reliably on stages all over the world. The 58 sounds good but there are times when you really need a "premium" sounding vocal mic on stage, and one of the recent go-to units has become the Shure KSM9 condenser mic. Another version of this mic has been released though, that may end up being more popular than its predecessor.

The KSM9HS is unique in a few different ways, but the big one for me is that it's a dual pattern mic, just like the condenser mics that you use in the studio. But here's where it gets cool. The two patterns are hypercardioid (great for feedback rejection) or subcardioid.

So what the heck is subcardioid? It's basically a cross between a cardioid pattern and an omni pattern, where it has greater back end rejection than your normal omni mic. The reason why this is cool is that it greatly decreases proximity effect, so you don't get as much bass boost when a vocalist eats the mic.

The KSM9HS has a street price of around $699, which is pretty expensive for a live mic. On the other hand, there are some vocalists that will find this mic to be a worthy match. Check out the video below for more about the KSM9HS and its subcardioid pattern.

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Paul McCartney "Maybe I'm Amazed" Isolated Guitar Solo

Here's the isolated guitar solo from one of my all-time favorite songs. It's "Maybe I'm Amazed" from Paul McCartney's first solo album. Paul plays basically the same solo twice in the song and you'll here them both back to back. Here's what to listen for.

1. I suspect this was played through some sort of Fender amp since you can hear the built-in reverb boing at the end of his phrases.

2. You can hear some slight mis-fingerings and undeveloped technique, but Macca makes up for it with an extremely lyrical solo melody. Most guitar players with better technique would probably just wail with a lot of notes instead, but this is a solo worth remembering. It's stands out as much as the rest of the song.

3. Listen to the string noise in between the phrases. We'd trim these in the workstation today so you wouldn't hear them, but you don't hear on the final record anyway.

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An Old High-Res Audio Format Returns

I recently wrote on the Forbes blog about the potential problems that Neil Young's Pono high-resolution audio service might have when it launches. This is nothing against hi-res audio (I'm an audio person, after all, and have recorded my share of hi-res over the years), just an observation that the public always goes for convenience and not quality when it comes to formats.

No sooner did the article post when I read a press release that audiophile music retailer Acoustic Sounds launched superhirez.com, a site that offers DSD (Direct Stream Digital) downloads, among other types. DSD, if you recall, is the technology used on the highly-hyped but rarely purchased SACD disc that was launched in 1999. Until now, no company has offered true DSD downloads to my knowledge.

Acoustic Sounds actually started as a specialty vinyl pressing house and gradually morphed into the largest seller of SACD discs in the world. The company also sells hi-res album downloads both in Apple Lossless Audio (ALAC) and FLAC as well as DSD.

Right now the company has about 30 DSD download releases for sale (although more for the other formats), with albums by Shelby Lynn, Nat "King" Cole, Counting Crows, and Norah Jones the most recognizable.

Of course, you can't just download a DSD album and expect it to play. You'll need some software first and it'll cost you around $130. That means your investment in the format is more than just buying the files, so you really have to be committed to the format.

That said, today there are more hi-res audio formats than you can shake a stick at, and I hope they all survive. We really need to preserve the best quality audio every chance we get, and there's still no other audio experience that sounds better. I'm pleased that there are at least some people out there who think highly enough of audio quality that they're willing to pay extra (at around $25 per album) for a superior product.

That said, I still think that our best chance for a common high-quality audio format lies with Apple's Mastered For iTunes (MFIT) program, which considers any file that's 24 bit as hi-res but prefers a 96kHz files sampling rate. During a brief visit with my friends at Oasis Mastering yesterday, they said that most major labels now order MFIT mastered files on their orders, which is a major improvement from this time last year.

In the end, Superhirez.com is definitely cool, but Mastered For iTunes is where the high-quality action really is at the moment. If you want to learned more about how to prep your songs for MFIT, check out the Lynda.com Mastering For iTunes course. You can get a free 7 day Lynda.com trial, which you can use for lots of other programs and courses as well, here.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

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