OFF: ABB, _Fillmore East, 1970_

[Paul Mather]

On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Hulsebos A wrote:

> Apart from tempo differences, it isn't. You'd have to be a very consistent
> musician, otherwise you'd wind up with _The Chipmunk Orchestra_ :-)

Actually, it's a bit harder than that.  Two separate performances are
unlikely to be recorded the same, especially if they are recorded years
apart using different equipment.  Even something simple like getting the
levels the same across all instruments isn't a given.  Suppose the
guitar is way up on performance #2 relative to everything else.  If you
don't do something about that in your spliced version, the splice is
going to be pretty obvious.  But, that's easy to solve (assuming you
have the original, unmixed tapes).  What is harder is the "ambience"
problems imparted by different recording equipment (mics, console,
etc.): splicing a recording made on a 48-track digital recording truck
with something made on a 4-track analogue deck is going to pose more of
a challenge, especially since more of the mixing will already have been
done on the 4-track during recording, due to limited number of channels.
Even the latent noise characteristics of the media used to record on
will be different across different time periods, and must be equalised.
Venue will also make a difference (e.g. inside a piano vs. inside a
studio:).

That's why it's much easier to edit down performances than to do those
gonzo splices that Zappa did.

> He took it even further: on Sheik Yerbouti, there's a (at least one) track
> where the bass and the drum tracks were taken from different recordings,
> for songs that had (up til then) nothing to do with one another......

"Rubber Shirt," IIRC.  "Yo Mama" is another cut-up, on the same album.
_Does Humor Belong In Music_ is pretty rampant with the stuff, too.  It
gets pretty ambitious (but a bit obvious:) on the _You Can't..._ series,
e.g. making Flo & Eddie play with the 1988 "big band."

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Hawkwind, _The 1999 Party_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time"
        --- James Marshall Hendrix