Hi people, first of all I would like to say that I don't started this topic as an attempt of revolution or nothing like that, just curiosity. A few days ago I was revising the Jazz album to change some things on it's sound. When I was working on the instrumental version of Bicycle Race, I discovered some things and that took me to other thoughts.
To start, this pointless mix has something very strange: Freddie counts "One, two, three, four..." and the piano starts. The first thing is that the original song doesn't has that piano at the beginning, it's only acapella vocals. That means that the piano was taken from the ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES. Yes, they had them but didn't remastered the songs.
The second thing is that when Freddie says "Four...", if you listen carefully you can hear the piano starts very low when he says it, and then starts again for the song. AND! If you listen more carefully, immediately after the "Three" you can hear the piano very low too! My conclusion is that the beginning counting was took from another song or something strange(also you can notice it has a very loud hiss, and when the piano song starts the hiss changes).
And where the "SSS" of the three opening "Baaaaay-SSSicle" should be, you can hear the "SSS". Mmmh... very strange.
Nothing else. If they've done this mix, it means that they had the multitrack tapes and not only stereo master tapes. So why didn't they released every track truly re-mastered? I don't understand.
The best part of me makes me think they hadn't the original tapes from all Queen songs, and that's the reason they haven't done it.
The worst part of me makes me think they haven't done it because on the next remasters they'll have a new opportunity to make the songs sound much better mixing them from the original tapes with the corresponding technology, and people will buy again all the discography. This is a real remaster, very superior backing track than the album version.
By the way, I was thinking that the multitrack stems we all have from the Rock Band games are from the same songs from which they included the instrumental versions (SevenSoR, TieYMD, IiLwMCar, BohRhap, YMBF, BycicleR, DSMN...). These means that:
-They didn't made the instrumental versions with the aim of "Hear this, hear that...", they've done them because already had to use the multitrack tapes for the games, and they filled some bonus tracks slots.
-They don't give us the songs we request for the game, they give us the songs from which they found some multitrack tapes during the "Bonus Track Filling Operative".
-Is pure coincidence.
What's your thought about this?
Here I uploaded a cleaner version of Bicycle Race Instrumental. You can find the whole Jazz album revisited by the same way right here: link
You make some pretty good points here. While possibly reading a bit much into things, some of the stuff about the multitracks and master tapes is quite possible
ciber_mato wrote:
So why didn't they released every track truly re-mastered? I don't understand.
They definitely did.
Compare the first verse of It's Late to any previous version. The mic popping has been corrected.
All kinds of flaws on the early albums have been removed - mostly little clicks from edits. A lot of work did go into these remasters. It wasn't just a simple EQing job.
I basically say it because the instrumental tracks sounds much better that the album remastered ones. Maybe I'm confusing the two concepts. As I understand, a remix is what they've done with Jealousy, adding the bassdrum, which didn't correspond there, or manipulating things into the song which not correspong to the original.
Honestly, it sounds to me they took the definitive stereo tapes for the majority of the songs, SSoR still sounds like an old vinyl at first, TYMD still sounds opaque... It's not to kill their work, but they didn't corrected the Father to Son heavy clipping problem, Dreamer's Ball backing vocals saturates too, the last verse of WATC, the hiss on every song. Maybe I was expecting that those issues don't appear.
If the way to remaster is doing it from the stereo tapes, how can they improve the songs?
Of course, I'm not trying to defensively disagree or to make a harsh argue, just asking.
By the way, what do you think about the Bicycle Race instrumental thing?
If I understand what you're asking:
The piano being present on the master tracks only means Freddie played it during the recording. It was probably decided by Freddie during the mixing stage to take that piano out and keep the opening vocal only. They wouldn't put it back into the mix for the remaster, as it wouldn't be the same version any more. Putting the bass drum "back" into Jealousy altered that song on a 33 year old album. And we know what the fan's reaction to that was.
As for Freddie's counting and piano notes and things now audible in the mix, I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that the master multi-tracks for most or all of Queen's songs (and most other artists) come from editing together multiple takes, taking the best parts and putting them together (or dubbing over existing mistakes). The studio chatter was likely present on the master from one or more of the edited takes.
The SSS meant have been present from an edited portion of a track (which they couldn't remove) or a fader got bumped up when this instrumental mixed was made.
I hope this helps, if I understood your concerns correctly.
Although they said that they never worked like that before working with Mack?
With that BR piano, it sound like some ghosting on an old tape, the count in added afterwards for the vocal overdub.
Speaking about instrumental versions, the instrumental version of Bicycle Race which can be found on the Korean Karaoke album is by standards even different than the instumental version wich appears on the Jazz re-issue. The guitar solo has a different harmony, maybe the wrong word harmony. But what i'm tryin' to say is, it is a different version as we have on the Jazz re-issue. Maybe you guys can shed a light on that.
Tom