Paint It Black / Guitar Hero

Just what the name says.
Tom Stroud
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Paint It Black / Guitar Hero

Postby Tom Stroud » Thu Dec 27, 2007 8:51 am

Ok so it's Christmas Day at the in-laws and my brother in law has brought round his Wii and his new wireless guitar. They're all playing away happily to some fairly non-descript rock when Paint It Black comes on!

I'm silently begging the person playing it to actually make some mistakes so that I can try to make out what's going on....

Anyway, if nothing else this proves that the multi must exist as they've given some elements to the makers of the game. Effectively your challenge as the game player is to hit the right sequence of buttons and keep the guitar track playing (in this case it's the guitar/sitar track that plays the vocal melody during the verse). When the track drops out it's just the bass, drums, vocals.

It's a bit hard to judge it properly on Christmas Day but the track seemed to go on quite a bit longer (even than the mono) and came to a full end. It has a final chord and then a bit more melody (imagine the "no more will my green seagull turn a deeper blue" bit where the drums stop and with the vocal mixed out). Not sure if this was a clever edit.

Anyway, just felt it was my duty to report. Anyone got one?

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Postby lukpac » Thu Dec 27, 2007 9:31 am

Wow. You're sure it's the original track? Is there some credit to ABKCO?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Tom Stroud » Thu Dec 27, 2007 3:34 pm

Definitely the original track.

This page shows up the limitations of the 4 track - I don't fully understand how the game works but it seems most of the songs offer several potential sound mixes.
http://guitarhero.wikia.com/wiki/Paint_It_Black

Here's some guy doing it on YouTube - he's perfect but at least you get to hear the end. It does sound like an edit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZwSzlizy40

I don't have the game so no idea of credits sorry! The version of The Seeker is a soundalike btw....

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Postby lukpac » Thu Dec 27, 2007 4:26 pm

Wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't quite make sense, though:

Paint it Black is the only song not playable in co-op, as the master of it is so old that all the stringed instruments were recorded onto one track, and were then combined with the vocal and drum tracks. Thus, the bass cannot be separated from guitar, so if had made a bass part for the song, missing notes on either lead or bass would cause all stringed instruments to be muted from the audio mix.


The bass isn't very clearly defined on the stereo mix, but I'd have to guess bass/drums are on one track (left), guitar and sitar on another (right), and maybe one track for vocals. Perhaps some of the percussion is on the fourth track.

Kind of amazing that a) ABKCO is doing this and b) they didn't show any interest in remixes for the SACDs, beyond the Sympathy for the Devil single (which is damn cool).
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Chris M » Thu Dec 27, 2007 7:49 pm

Supposedly a Who's Next edition of Rock Band is in the works. Hmmm...
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Postby Tom Stroud » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:40 am

They've got the I'm Free multi too. And they dusted off the multis for the Gimme Shelter DVD a few years ago. Seems that the archive is actually in pretty good shape.

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Postby lukpac » Fri Dec 28, 2007 8:17 am

Tom Stroud wrote:They've got the I'm Free multi too. And they dusted off the multis for the Gimme Shelter DVD a few years ago. Seems that the archive is actually in pretty good shape.


I was going to mention I'm Free, but what do you mean about Gimme Shelter? I don't believe there was any ABKCO involvement in that, and that the remixes were from pre-mixed film elements, rather than the 16-track audio masters.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby JWB » Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:54 am

lukpac wrote:The bass isn't very clearly defined on the stereo mix, but I'd have to guess bass/drums are on one track (left), guitar and sitar on another (right), and maybe one track for vocals. Perhaps some of the percussion is on the fourth track.


I thought "Aftermath" was done on 3-Track. I don't think RCA went 4-track until the spring of '66. I think this could be correct because none of the "Aftermath" stereo mixes have more than 3 points in the stereo image at any given time. They're all left/center/right. I could be wrong though.

Hoffman has said that the Stones stuff was recorded by filling 3 tracks with instrumentation, and then bouncing that to 2-tracks of a new tape while silmutanously adding compression and reverb, and then vocals were added to the third track. If they needed to double the vocal they would dub the tape again while simultanously blending the new vocal with the old vocal on the third track (and they would add MORE compression and reverb in the process).

Anyhow, my point is that they could have done a sync-up of all the mutli-track stages and isolated the guitars. It doesn't necessarily mean that they worked from the final multi-track only.

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Postby lukpac » Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:04 pm

JWB wrote:I thought "Aftermath" was done on 3-Track. I don't think RCA went 4-track until the spring of '66. I think this could be correct because none of the "Aftermath" stereo mixes have more than 3 points in the stereo image at any given time. They're all left/center/right. I could be wrong though.


As far as I know, the stuff done in December of '65 was 3-track (Mother's Little Helper, 19th Nervous Breakdown, Goin' Home, etc), while the stuff done in March '66 was 4-track (Under My Thumb, Paint It Black, etc). There's certainly a different sound to the 3/66 recordings.

Thinking about it more, there isn't any question in my mind. Listen to the mix of Paint It Black on Time Trip 5. Some of the instruments come in late in the right channel (sitar maybe?), indicating that *two* tracks were mixed right. There's your 4-track recording. It was certainly common practice back then to only mix L-C-R regardless of the number of tracks used. Atlantic had *8* tracks in '58 and they pretty much mixed that way for years to come.

Hoffman has said that the Stones stuff was recorded by filling 3 tracks with instrumentation, and then bouncing that to 2-tracks of a new tape while silmutanously adding compression and reverb, and then vocals were added to the third track. If they needed to double the vocal they would dub the tape again while simultanously blending the new vocal with the old vocal on the third track (and they would add MORE compression and reverb in the process).


I don't know how he knows those specific details (that doesn't seem to be the case for The Last Time, at the very least), but yes, I have heard that RCA didn't have/use Sel-Sync when they were only 3-track, so any overdubs would be done via bouncing.

Anyhow, my point is that they could have done a sync-up of all the mutli-track stages and isolated the guitars. It doesn't necessarily mean that they worked from the final multi-track only.


Of course, it is unclear if the earlier stages were saved. And it's moot in this case anyway, since PIB was a 4-track recording.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Rspaight » Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:09 am

"Gimme Shelter" (the song) is on Rock Band, so ABKCO is apparently being pretty aggressive with licensing this stuff. WGFA is also on Rock Band, but I haven't unlocked it yet.

All this is even more intriguing on Rock Band, because the drum (and, I guess, vocal) track can drop out as well...

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Postby Tom Stroud » Tue May 27, 2008 6:36 pm

Gimme Shelter elements here
http://www.mediafire.com/?nsxdyt9mjyo

Track comes to full end; clean extractions of drums, bass, vocals (Mick and Merry on one track), several guitar tracks. Harmonica and piano aren't clean but are in there.

WGFA elements here! Amazing
http://www.mediafire.com/?jbte23yxnea

Big old list of Rock Band extractions
http://www.iorr.org/talk/read.php?2,913549,page=2

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Postby lukpac » Tue May 27, 2008 7:41 pm

Tom Stroud wrote:Gimme Shelter elements here
http://www.mediafire.com/?nsxdyt9mjyo

Track comes to full end; clean extractions of drums, bass, vocals (Mick and Merry on one track), several guitar tracks. Harmonica and piano aren't clean but are in there.

WGFA elements here! Amazing
http://www.mediafire.com/?jbte23yxnea

Big old list of Rock Band extractions
http://www.iorr.org/talk/read.php?2,913549,page=2


Seems like some things are pre-mixed - for instance, the synth track on WGFA has reverb and some backing vocals, but that's still damn cool.

Now how the hell do I get these into WAVs?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby Xenu » Tue May 27, 2008 8:32 pm

What the heck is a "mogg" file?
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Postby Xenu » Tue May 27, 2008 8:41 pm

OK, I figured it out...Audition loads it, so I guess it's just a standard OGG file. Interesting that some tracks seem duplicated.

Not having followed the scholarship on this issue: I assume the files were originally stored in lossy format? Because if they weren't, I'd LOVE to have lossless copies of some of these, "semi-true" multitrack or not.
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Postby lukpac » Tue May 27, 2008 9:44 pm

To quote that thread:

"i have it in flac, but i'll just post the mogg version."
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD