🚀 go-pugleaf

On Dec 5, 10:48 am, "Dec [Cluskey]" <d...@makehits.com> wrote:

> 1) Have the High End back track providers now got access to a mix
> (from the record companies) of current chart tracks with the lead
> vocals removed?

Not likely unless they're stolen or it's the record company themselves
putting out the music-minus-vocal product. Dave Martin, who used to be
a frequent contributor here, had a long term project a while back to
record "sound-alike" backing tracks. As a musician, arranger,
producer, engineer, and working member of the Nashville music studio
scene, he had access to top flite musicians and arrangers who could
chart out any pop tune, and a band assembled from appropriate players
who were available could crank it out. You'd be hard put to tell it
from the original. And it only took an afternoon to do a few songs.

Point being that if you're good enough, you don't need the original
tracks, you only need to hear the finished song. There's no assurance
(and none is necessary) that the sound-alike used exactly the same
gear, settings, and patches as the original, but the goal was to sound
enough like  it so that someone could sing along and feel like they
were in the right band, and that was accomplished efficiently.

> 2) Is there a definitive piece of software that can intuitively remove
> the lead vocal cleanly from an existing stereo release and leave a
> back track with no loss of quality [I personally doubt that]

No.

> 3) Looking at it the other way, I hear lots of dub mixes using just
> the clean lead vocal from Chart tracks.  Again, have these guys got
> access to the original multi track/computer files of Kylie, J Lo etc.
> from the record companies?

Usually. But if the vocal is clean with nothing behind it (or nothing
that they can't use as part of the production), producers have been
known to "sample" existing product without permission. Sometimes with
permission, too. They're not all bad.

I'm not talking of remixes commissioned by
> the record companies - just normal club DJ dub mixes.
>
> I would be glad of any insight?
>
> Dec [Cluskey]
>
> PS:  My chart career spanned exactly the time of the Beatles
> beginnings and my band were the first to use double tracking for
> vocals and overdubbing on 4 track for commercial release and
> charting.  I cannot take the praise for this - we worked with a great
> USA producer called Shel Talmy, who introduced us to the
> techniques ... difficult in those days when the multi track tape
> machines had to be put into sel-synch mode to overdub or 'drop in'.
> Shel also produced The Who and The Kinks, Fortunes etc.  As a
> coincidence, I lived at 54 Boston Place in London ... The Beatles
> owned and used a studio, in a converted mews house, six doors away ...
> strangely, I have never seen or heard it ever mentioned!  Weird.