03-03-2014, 11:48 PM
Ever since it was announced that Street Noise would be offering another one of their 1975 recordings for the library I've been absolutely chomping at the bit to get at it. 
This is a really cool song with an interesting vibe to it. A little disco, a little jazz, maybe a touch of blues, and so 70s. I love this sound. Also, I love getting ahold of old recordings like this and using modern digital audio technology to clean them up without ruining that "old school" sound by using whole lot of unnecessary processing, particularly the overuse of limiting and compression so common with today's music and, unfortunately, with many commercial remasters of older material as well.
However, unlike Street Noise's "Revelations" where the tapes were still in halfway decent condition these tapes are in a sad state.
I don't know what the story is on the kick drum track. It sounds like a recording taken from a record with the RIAA equalization off; it's full of what sounds like pops and scratches and, fatal for a kick drum, there's very limited low frequency content. There is also a a great deal of print-through particularly on the vocal tracks, though it was evident to some extent on all tracks. The high frequency rolloff is fairly dramatic, particularly on the acoustic guitar track which is in abysmal condition; it sounds dull, muffled and has a rather annoying AC hum. From the sound of it I suspect the original recording wasn't all that great to begin with and, coupled with the issues introduced by (I suspect) poor storage conditions, the acoustic guitar track is rendered almost unusable here. Honestly? If I knew how to play guitar I would consider replacing it. Of course I can't play guitar, so I'm stuck with what I got. 
First order of business was to dig through each track one by one in Audacity and try to clean up the noise. Fortunately, most tracks had extended sections of tape silence which I could use to create noise profiles of the tape noise for Audacity to identify and remove. Individually this created a fairly uneven noise character on each track but I figured (correctly as it turned out) that played together the individual variations in noise would be inaudible and the overall noise level would be dramatically reduced. In fact, I was quite surprised at how effective the noise removal was on that crackly kick drum; it allowed me to use some fairly aggressive EQ to bring out what low frequencies were hiding on the track and managed to get much a better "thump" out of the kick than I was expecting to get. So far so good.
Next I actually snipped out any part of each track that had silence (or nothing on it but bleed). This was based on the old analog recording principle that any track not in use should be faded down or muted to avoid adding its noise to the final mix unnecessarily.
Most of the tracks I was able to brighten up by applying hipass filters to remove unnecessary low frequencies, particularly in the drums. On the Hammond tracks I actually applied both low and hipass filters to isolate the Hammond's unique frequencies which actually helped quite a bit with the bleed from the other tracks.
The acoustic guitar gave me significant issues with noise. Unfortunately the electric hum I mentioned earlier sounded enough like the guitar itself that on my first try to remove the noise the guitar's level would warble up and down with the noise treatment. The only way I could get around it was to be a lot less aggressive with the noise removal on the guitar track; in fact, I only reduced the noise by about 9 dB as I recall, though that got enough of the noise out of the way that I was able to do something with the track. In an attempt to brighten it up, I got a lot more aggressive with the EQ than I normally am; I applied a dramatic cut of 24 dB at 260 Hz and boosts of 3.5 dB and 16 dB at 3100 Hz and 4800 Hz respectively. I wanted to boost more, particularly at that 4800 Hz, to brighten it up a little further but 16 dB was as far as I could go before the noise became unacceptable. Still, considering how it sounded before I started it came out reasonably well. I only wish the acoustic guitar didn't stand on its own for several seconds before the rest of the band joins in; the limitations of the track really stand out at that point.
In the end, though, I'm pretty satisfied with the final result, which you can hear here. Unlike a lot of my other work on this site, since this mix is brand new I still have the project, so if anyone has any suggestions for further improvements, please let me know!
This is a really cool song with an interesting vibe to it. A little disco, a little jazz, maybe a touch of blues, and so 70s. I love this sound. Also, I love getting ahold of old recordings like this and using modern digital audio technology to clean them up without ruining that "old school" sound by using whole lot of unnecessary processing, particularly the overuse of limiting and compression so common with today's music and, unfortunately, with many commercial remasters of older material as well.
However, unlike Street Noise's "Revelations" where the tapes were still in halfway decent condition these tapes are in a sad state.
I don't know what the story is on the kick drum track. It sounds like a recording taken from a record with the RIAA equalization off; it's full of what sounds like pops and scratches and, fatal for a kick drum, there's very limited low frequency content. There is also a a great deal of print-through particularly on the vocal tracks, though it was evident to some extent on all tracks. The high frequency rolloff is fairly dramatic, particularly on the acoustic guitar track which is in abysmal condition; it sounds dull, muffled and has a rather annoying AC hum. From the sound of it I suspect the original recording wasn't all that great to begin with and, coupled with the issues introduced by (I suspect) poor storage conditions, the acoustic guitar track is rendered almost unusable here. Honestly? If I knew how to play guitar I would consider replacing it. Of course I can't play guitar, so I'm stuck with what I got. First order of business was to dig through each track one by one in Audacity and try to clean up the noise. Fortunately, most tracks had extended sections of tape silence which I could use to create noise profiles of the tape noise for Audacity to identify and remove. Individually this created a fairly uneven noise character on each track but I figured (correctly as it turned out) that played together the individual variations in noise would be inaudible and the overall noise level would be dramatically reduced. In fact, I was quite surprised at how effective the noise removal was on that crackly kick drum; it allowed me to use some fairly aggressive EQ to bring out what low frequencies were hiding on the track and managed to get much a better "thump" out of the kick than I was expecting to get. So far so good.
Next I actually snipped out any part of each track that had silence (or nothing on it but bleed). This was based on the old analog recording principle that any track not in use should be faded down or muted to avoid adding its noise to the final mix unnecessarily.
Most of the tracks I was able to brighten up by applying hipass filters to remove unnecessary low frequencies, particularly in the drums. On the Hammond tracks I actually applied both low and hipass filters to isolate the Hammond's unique frequencies which actually helped quite a bit with the bleed from the other tracks.
The acoustic guitar gave me significant issues with noise. Unfortunately the electric hum I mentioned earlier sounded enough like the guitar itself that on my first try to remove the noise the guitar's level would warble up and down with the noise treatment. The only way I could get around it was to be a lot less aggressive with the noise removal on the guitar track; in fact, I only reduced the noise by about 9 dB as I recall, though that got enough of the noise out of the way that I was able to do something with the track. In an attempt to brighten it up, I got a lot more aggressive with the EQ than I normally am; I applied a dramatic cut of 24 dB at 260 Hz and boosts of 3.5 dB and 16 dB at 3100 Hz and 4800 Hz respectively. I wanted to boost more, particularly at that 4800 Hz, to brighten it up a little further but 16 dB was as far as I could go before the noise became unacceptable. Still, considering how it sounded before I started it came out reasonably well. I only wish the acoustic guitar didn't stand on its own for several seconds before the rest of the band joins in; the limitations of the track really stand out at that point.
In the end, though, I'm pretty satisfied with the final result, which you can hear here. Unlike a lot of my other work on this site, since this mix is brand new I still have the project, so if anyone has any suggestions for further improvements, please let me know!
So:
