If you like recorded music and you’re discovering multitrack master recordings for the first time, you’re in for a treat.
It’s like unearthing a treasure chest of your favorite recordings, except inside are versions you’ve never heard before. Listening to the musicians individual parts that together make a perfect whole is like unlocking the mystery of the music.
Not that they are better than the final mixed track. Sometimes you might be amazed at the flaws, or the looseness, or imperfection. But it helps you realize that great recordings are the chance gathering of musicians around a song, each playing their roles with their instrumental and/or vocal talents.
Those performances are in turn nurtured by producers and engineers who capture the sounds just so in that moment in time.
Along the way, each work of musical art is usually splashed with some accidental art before it’s all over, and poof! Out comes a masterpiece that people remember forever.
In many of the individual tracks are surprises. Listen to Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham making crazy sounds while thundering out drums on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (check out the 3:46 mark).
Gotta go — have a whole lot to listen to…
Image credit
Indofunk Satish/flickr.com
