Not every Sound Engineer embraces AI Digital Extraction and Re-Mixing and Bob Gaudio indicated he didn’t like some of the mixes we tried for the Snapper Music Box Set back in 2020 (he may well have changed his mind if he has since sampled some of my ‘amateur’ creations of the 60s tracks on You Tube) but one producer/engineer who is probably amongst the most respected in the industry today is Mark Linett. He has been working on the surviving Beach Boys Tapes for decades and has used all sorts of innovations to create ‘best mixes’ in STEREO . In interview he describes this evolution ….”The first job I was given was Pet Sounds [The Beach Boys] on CD. This is when CD was starting and after that, I was given the task of putting the whole Capitol catalog on CD. The next thing was a box set called Good Vibrations. It was a 5 CD box set tracing the Beach Boys’ entire career with outtakes, bonus tracks, all kinds of stuff like that. Then somebody got the idea of doing a big box set of the Pet Sounds album and I did the first true stereo mix of that. It had never been done in anything but Duophonic up to that point, largely because of the way things were recorded in the ‘60s. Then, in around ’66 or ’67, bands or artists started being interested in doing stereo records, but if you came from the era of AM radio and pop records and 45 RPM singles, it was mono all the way.
Your typical recording would be that you had the track in mono but then you’d bounce that to another machine and just keep doing that until you had everything you wanted and then mixed it to mono. The Beach Boys records were like that. Brian let the engineers spread the basic track out and do four tracks and then we’d mix that to mono onto one track of a four track, or he took it over to CBS Recording that had the first eight track in LA, bounce it over there and then he would have seven tracks to do vocals.
So, the problem for doing a real stereo mix was that what you wound up with at the end was a mono track on the master tape, and whatever number of vocals. So, the question was, how do we sync all these different tapes up and it really wasn’t something you could do until digital recording came and by the time I did it, we had Sony Dash machines.
So, to do that record, I had to transfer the three-track backing track (I was using a 48 track Sony) then manually sync the overdub reels by playing with the varispeed speed and manually dropping it in using the mono track as a guide and try to get that phasing with the three track combine. When I got it close enough, so it would phase for 20 or 30 seconds, I would dump the whole thing over and then I would move the vocals (because you’ve got drift) using those two band tracks, then keep moving the vocals to keep the band in phasing and wind up with a master that had somewhere between eight and twelve tracks that I could then mix from.
I did it again 3-4 years later when we did a 5.1 mix, but by then we had DAWs (I used Nuendo for that one). Now we have Time Shift, I can sync up a bunch of tapes in half an hour, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do that.
I’ve been using various AI extraction programs a lot recently to deconstruct the originals. Right now, I could deconstruct a mono band track or the component parts of a three track recording and I’ve got more stuff I can move around. It becomes really useful for things like mixes of The Beach Boys stuff, which I’ve done recently, because you’re trying to do something in 12 speakers. So, if I’ve got a mono backing track, you have the bass in the centre and the drums here… a little bit of spread makes a big difference rather than still dealing with the question of ‘where do I put this mono track’? It’s not too bad in stereo, but in surround it gets tricky.”
He even uses IR to recreate the ‘studio sound’. In the realm of audio, "IR" refers to an impulse response, a sound-file that captures the unique sonic characteristics of a specific environment, piece of equipment, or acoustic space. It essentially acts as a digital snapshot of how a sound behaves when it interacts with a particular object or location.
BUT there are no multi-tracks surviving of the Four Seasons from the 1960s and I am playing with an AI extraction site that enables just a fraction of what is possible. But two things Mark Linett and I have in common are an in-depth knowledge of the artists work and a thirst for simply using the creativity the extractions allow.
As he says….”My attitude is similar to a lot of people. I would never want to go back to tape or, more importantly, big format consoles, and not mixing in the box. It’s certainly a little bit of laziness and a certain amount of market reaction in the sense that it’s now expected that if you do a mix and the producer or the artist says, ‘I like it, but get the tambourine out here’, or, ‘turn it down’, and you can do that in 15 minutes. So that’s a convenience because it used to take half a day to recall a mix and it was never the same anyway. But mostly, it’s because it allows for creativity in ways that were all but impossible. We’re in the digital age and mixing in the box there’s so many things that you can do – sub buses and side chains and, so forth that would be impossible on an analog console. But, above all, you can just put up a session and just mix. You don’t have to get hung up on the technology, or the method, you can just use the creative part of your brain.”
So if an Engineer with such a creative perception were to tackle the Four Seasons surviving 2 track STEREO Masters, what would he do and what results could we get?
The problem of the ‘ping-pong’ STEREO Mixes of the Four Seasons tracks since their first recordings has been obvious since the first CD issues and are particularly noticeable on headphones with the group firmly set in the far corner of the right Channel. As I have said this stems from the use of 3 and 4 track recording and the ‘bouncing’ process previously advised. But the surviving tracks do offer some opportunities for better ‘Mixes’. Whilst the surviving Vee-Jay ‘Delivery Tapes’ remain a pristine source in terms of Dynamic Range and Frequency Response, those STEREO Masters need correction using the same DES tools and mixing.
As in my Part 4 project on the ‘Dawn/Rag Doll’ albums my review of the subsequent mixing of the 1965 to 67 albums shows a continued discrepancy in the STEREO images on their albums. ‘Entertain You’ has most instruments in the left channel and the Seasons in the right with space between. Again another example of poor 1960s pop mixing technology, some would argue due to Bob Crewe’s ‘bouncing’ process previously described. But that contradicts what was achieved with so many mixes on the ‘Dawn’ album. On ‘Entertain You’ only ‘Little Angel’ achieves the desired balanced mix and this may be due to the harmonic vocal arrangement by Massi and Calello…….so all of the backing and lead vocal were on one of the 4 tracks available ? ...probably!
At the same time the single of ‘Girl Come Running’ was recorded and issued. The STEREO version of this with balanced instruments and vocals would not be found and issued until 1968 for the Edizione D’Oro [when Bob Crewe reviewed the Multi-tracks before they were lost by Bell Studio] This remains a different Take to that used for the 45 MONO release and the STEREO version from 1968 has become the ‘defacto’ version.
All of the ‘Working My Way Back To You’ album still has the unbalanced STEREO mix approach and this has been the starting place for my next project of Re-mixes using AI stems, with several You Tube uploads to date from my ‘I’m Gonna Change’ DES Project using the latest sound tools.
Whilst ‘New Gold Hits’ album was an assembly of mixes from several studios from late 1965 [at Stea-Philips to Mirasound ] and from (probably) 8 track to 16 track there are only two tracks mixed with centred vocals. ‘C’Mon Marianne’ is OK although the extreme width of the instruments from the vocals needs adjustment for a good headphone mix. However by far the best mixed track since the ‘Dawn’ centred mixes is ‘Goodbye Girl’…..simply superb work by George Schowerer.
Some earlier mixes simply need the group vocals moving centrally such as ‘Let’s Ride Again’[with maybe a few spatial tweaks to the sound stage]…...but some would maintain that ‘Beggin’’ is the definitive ‘call and response’ STEREO version….so why change it?. I will extract the stems and just see how it was constructed instrumentally with the vocals.
‘Tell It To The Rain’ needs major re-construction as basically all of the instrumentation is in the left channel.
All of these tracks would benefit from ‘forensic’ examination
So where did the Four Seasons move to next? Whilst Frankie Valli clearly stayed at Mirrasound for the Timeless album session, Bob Gaudio it seems moved the Four Seasons to another studio for the recording of what was to become The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album . This was HIS production and Bob Crewe had NO INVOLVEMENT and Gaudio presented the completed album to Philips. There is no Studio Credit on the album and no clear answer on the internet. Well the clue is perhaps in the Master Tapes. The Safety Copy Master Box in the FSP storage has a hand written note that says the ‘original’ was returned to A&R Studios and an A&R Note exists indicating the Mix Dates which coincide with other paper records re the Master Registration Dates. Bob Ludwig is credited on the album along with Roy Cicala and Shelley Yakus on the Mastering and Engineering and all were at A&R Studios 101 W. 57th Street NYC in mid to late 1968. The other notable change is that the sound quality of these masters [even on the surviving tapes used for the Snapper Music Box Set [Discs 16 and 17] ]is excellent.
The Valli SOLO and Timeless albums are another story and whilst some Masters are lost such as ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ 45 version, the tracks recorded at Mirasound are generally adequate in STEREO.
So it remains for someone to decide if having the pre 1967 ‘poor’ STEREO set of Bob Crewe’s presentation of The Four Seasons is adequate or if it would be a good investment to accept that AI can achieve ‘the way they should sound’ . In the meantime my own DES(AI) Remixes remain the best sounding versions of those tracks I have generated since the advent of the Moises software since 2020.
Next Time…….The STEREO version comparisons – ORIGINAL v AI DES
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