How
I ended up remixing WLL...
From a FLAC
dump of the original 1" Scully multitrack. And this is not a
rap or dance remix - I tried to stay true to the intent Page and Kramer
had back then.
My remix has no fade at the end. Interesting how they ended it, with
a farewell from Plant at the very end.
First a comparison (Click image for video):
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/lzcompare_0006.mp4
Note the comment about how low in apparent volume the
original mix is at the head of the tune as compared to the remix. This
was caused by Page and Kramer "jacking" the volume during the mix.
Maybe they got excited, maybe they were trying to instill excitement.
The problem is that's not how dynamics work - it just results in a very
apparent "bump" in the RMS levels as well as losing headroom -
resulting in crunchy mix bus overload distortion (not the pleasant
kind of distortion associated with tube and other processing).
The
reason for this is when the mastering engineers have to deal with
getting this into whatever format (CD, Vinyl, Stream, ect..) they have
to reduce the volume at the head to prevent clipping or even more
"squishing' of it by their mastering compressor/limiters later in the
song or else do annoying volume envelopes that are usually quite
audible.
And here's one with VU meters driven by my remix (Click image for video):
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/lz-wll-vu1.mp4
Listen to these on some good speakers.
This took well over 100 hours to do. I do a lot of mixing; this was
tough to get to match the original; especially the middle fluff part.
I just wanted it cleaner and a bit more modern sounding.
I initially sent it to the webmaster at the official site - he said he
couldn't hear the difference. Cool... what I wanted.
But anyone that ever played WLL back on decent system might
appreciate what
I labored over. Not fun. And my poor wife - she hates Led Zep.
The story of my WLL
remix:
About a year and a
half ago I was asked by a guy on one of my day-job forums (EDA tools
for PCB design) to remix something. He'd heard what I did on the remix
of Twisted Tower Dire that was on Remedy Records and wanted to know if I could
fix up a tune.
So he sends me a link to some rar file archive.
When I first got it and imported it into my DAW of choice (Reaper -
Justin from Winamp wrote it - only 10MBytes total installer - that's
some coding!) I thought it was his kid's band doing a cover of Whole
Lotta Love. - Only 8 tracks... The stereo pair of drums sounded so out
of balance (probably due to the transfer to digital - -see links later)
I fig'd OK, what the hell; make his kid happy...
I come to realize it's the actual multitracks from a failed Guitar Hero
release. Turns out it was done at Olympic only on 8 tracks -
see the WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-making-of-led-zeppelins-whole-lotta-love-1401390281
Since wsj might
require you to have an account - here's the same article reprinted at
biz insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/led-zeppelin-whole-lotta-love-oral-history-how-it-was-made-2016-12
So I remixed it... I
had noticed years earlier that the original release - as well as later
releases like the 2015 "mothership" remaster - sounded like crap; after
reading the WSJ article I now know why...
So during my remix, I took the original 8 - here's a screenshot (click image for larger version):
and split it up to get it to mix as clean as possible (click image for larger version):
and
added VU meters to try and mimic what it looked like to George
Chkiantz (engineer - see the WSJ article) and crew...
There was no way to
use the original 8 FLAC's for the VU's... on the original 8 tracks
screenshot, note the extended space where the cursor is - this is what
Kramer and Page must have razor bladed back then. The "yooouu neeeed...
Ta Da" is off as compared to what you're used to hearing. The Ta Da is
actually about 3 beats from where it lives in the released
version since it was for the alternate vocal that was not used.
A bit of an explaination in this vid (Click image for video):
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/wll-explain.mp4
How tight the perfomace was...
If you do the ol' Bill Fleming trick (Bill was the original "Mr Yuk" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqHxKVUG8cU
- he'd
look between the tracks) take a Fleming look at tracks 1-2 and track 4
(bass)
Look at how tight they play; esp on the verses... - nutz dead on...
All on just 8 tracks...
And when I mention in that comparison
video - - drums sounding like poo from the digital transfer - - here's a link to some of that where you can hear
Bonham groaning on almost every roll down the toms:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/groaningbonzo1.mp3
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/groaningbonzo2.mp3
And whomever dumped these to the digital FLAC's didn't
really seem to know that you don't use a stereo DAW track for a mono
tape track.
So the tracks show up in a DAW as a stereo
recording of a mono source - I verified that using a Lissajous on a Tek
Scope. Kinda sucked they did that.
When i first got the
files I thought that the 2 drum tracks were Mid/Side, where one track
is a mono L+R and the other is L-R (this is how stereo FM broadcast
works). Nope, just fucked up stereo.
Then I realized that the stereo pair was off by about 8ms - no wonder the Lissajous looked like M/S.
For what Page and Kramer did back on an old broadcast 12 channel (prob
Gates) rotary stepped attenuator console (they didn't usually have
pots) "Hats off to them..."
When I initially remixed it Bob Lefsetz (the pundit that Taylor Swift
wrote the song "Mean" about) published a mailbag where I responded to
his column about meeting Geoff Emerick and his opinion on Sir George
Martin's kid remixing Sgt Peppers. He published a link to the
comparison.
A reprint of the mailbag is here -
http://steve-marcus.blogspot.com/2017/09/mailbag.html
My comments are about half way down the page...
And regardless of what Kramer
states in that WSJ article, the "pre-echo" is
actually bleed into the guitar amp mic of a deleted vox guide
track. It matches neither of the vocal tracks. You can see it on track
6 ( the lead guit/fluff/dive tracks).
In 2018 Rhino released a rough mix of the song that was done the night
it was tracked at Olympic by George.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iREQ_rCe-JM
When you play it you'll notice it's in mono - and whomever at Rhino did
it, fucked up since the azimuth is off
(click image for larger version):
About 40us delay on the left
fixes it up. Here's example snippets with it rendered in mono:
As it is - and I tested live playback in my mix studio:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/lz-rhino-mono-as_posted_on_youtube.mp3
With me adding a 40us (microsecond) delay to the left - it kinda
emulates setting the azimuth correctly:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/lz-rhino-mono-with_40us_delay_on_left.mp3
Wow - I can't believe that a major label subsidiary would do some thing
like that... that's incredulous.
So
- what does this have to do with where the preecho came from?
Ok, so if you take that that Rhino
rough mix on Youtube that I mention above ( with azimuth issue)
- it has the "scratch
vox" that made up most of the "Pre-Echo" in the actual final mix
- just as I thought.
Here's a snippet:
- on the left channel
is the dive/fluff/lead guitar track from the FLAC multitracks I remixed
from
- on the right channel
is the Rhino rough mix from youtube:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/where_some_of_the_preecho_came_from.mp3
Screen shot of the dive/fluff/lead guitar track on the top - the Rhino
rough mix at the same location :
(click image for larger version):
So to prove the "pre-echo" is not on any
of the other vocal tracks on the multitrack...
... here's
a snippet that compares - at the A Capella part:
- Left channel
- the backing vox track from the FLAC's I was sent and remixed from
- Right channel -
the Rhino rough Mix
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/bkvox-vs-rhino_rough.mp3
Screenshot (click image for larger version):
So in no way was the preecho on any
of the existing vox tracks.
If Kramer and Page had realized it was on the Dive/Fluff/Lead
track they may have killed it.
That would have sucked...
As Quincy Jones mentions in George Martin's book:
"In
fact, the
entire entertainment industry is about trying to "bottle lightning".
There's also a saying we have in the studio that goes: you have to
leave space,
after you've done your homework, to let the Lord walk
through the room."
~~~
Quincy Jones, "Making Music - edited by George Martin ISBN 0 330 26945 3
Where the laugh at the beginning came from:
So then I get the question - "is it a laugh or a cough?"
I have no idea - but here ya go - the isolated head of track07, processed a bit to bring up the levels.
You can hear the track go into record mode:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/laugh-track07.mp3
Laugh is pretty low in volume - in the red box
A bit of digital forensics - the FLAC's were most probably dumped in the
USA
- note the 60Hz on the screenshot at a dead area: This would be
EMI/hum from the repro head/electronics they used to dump this:
So there you have it...
Someone asked on a Forum about some the things I did in the remix:
... as I try to recall what
the hell I did. As I mentioned this was not easy. When I realized what
these came from, I too also did a cursory listen to some of the other
mixes people had done from the Empress release and was about to just say
hell with it, and tell the guy that sent them to me , "no, I ain't
doing this - too much work"
But my curiosity got the best of me... Maybe I'll regret it.
One of the things that I was really striving for was to just clean up
the mix without changing what Page and Kramer were going for - and what
everyone was used to hearing. The fact that the webmaster at the
official site mentioned not hearing any difference was cool. I didn't
want to change it much.
As so well stated in the Godfellas episode of Futurama:
""When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.""
The lead vox I did very little to.The reverb was a convolution EMT plate
sample from Lexicon. I used to use the old EMT's back in the late
70's/early 80's and when the Lexicon 224 came about it was the first
outboard piece of gear that was even close to those old plate behemoths.
Some guy has released impulses of those original 224's and that's what I
used. The difference might just be that the mix is a lot cleaner due to
the technology. The vox tracks I got were dry - you can hear Plant
tapping his foot.You can also hear heavy foot tapping on the lead in to
the first percussion part.
As to Page's rhy guitar, I went for a bit more modern spatial placement.
I did a very crude article in dB Magazine in 1988 about head related
time based production techniques. For me it allows more room for the
vox, bass and kick to sit in the mono field, and is a bit more like how
your aural perception of directional information works.
There's a great
video on youtube from a professor teaching programmable logic where he
talks about that subject -
#25 -- Mandelbrot and sound localization
#26 -- Sound localization and sound synthesis
These are college level courses so they get a bit deep... the second one
(lecture #26) at the beginning gets more into the meat of head related
transfer functions and directional cues.
At the head of the tune I went for a compromise of it not blaring your
face off (due to the more modern sounding mastering we now have) so it
wouldn't offend listeners that are used to the original mix and without
having to resort to dynamic manipulation (see Katz book on mastering)
which is one of the things that kinda bothered me with the original
release . I prefer that the listener be able to enjoy the dynamics of
the player. And with experienced players like these guys it's really
nice to not muck with that.
As I mentioned the drum pair - well... even the original tracking
engineer in the WSJ article mentions the mic'ing he used being a bit of a
stretch. As the technology got better, things like When Levee Breaks
became possible to do and allowed Andy Johns to get that great
stairwell drum sound.
The theremin part - wow, that was not easy. That took a week of looking
for and trying every plug in, every plug in combination I could find to
get it to do the wooshy thing. As someone earlier in this forum post
stated, the original seemed to be lacking in spectral nuances. When I
heard the raw track I recall thinking, "Wow - that's some really cool
stuff..." and trying to imagine what he was hearing, what he was
striving for as he was tracking it. I'm guessing that what he and Kramer
ended up with was sort of limited due to the technology and the time
Page/Kramer had to spend on mixing it.
As to near the end, I really just left the band's dynamics carry the
tune - on the released versions, by the end the two or three level
increase (I point out in the comparison) that occur earlier really
smashes the drums/cymbals and the bass into a wash of (nasty - in my
opinion) overload mix bus distortion of that 12 channel console -
where the vocal; with more peak info and sitting in a bit of a spectral
hole - makes the lead vox appear to sit above the mix. This is what I
really wanted to fix - to try and make it sound more like a band.
So at the end, as they're really cranking, and now with a lot less
distortion, the bass and drums appear to sit higher in the mix; esp
since Bonham is now really bashing out the fills - and groaning while
doing it.
Also - at the end, Page is doing this "wooo hooo" thing that leaves a little more space in the guitar part - here's an example:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawam2/wooohoo.mp3
Also note that earlier in this forum topic, I mentioned that I did a
quicky mastering of this to sort of match the RMS/LUFS of the Davis
remaster at the mid/end. Note I mention this in the comparison vid. So
as the processing is getting hit with more drums and bass it reacts to
it. Also note that the vid audio has some artifacts in it - the lossless
version is a bit more dynamic.
The bass - yea... one thing I noticed in the original release was that
after the second chorus, before the orgasm/fluff/freakout part, you
lose definition of the bass. So as it progressed thru that fluff part
the bass sits where it was and eventually is more prominent. I initially
was gonna adjust that, but after hearing it, I sort of wondered if
that's what Jones was looking for.
One other thing - the dives - I went back and forth left to right Also
take notice that right before the A Capella part on the released version
- now slammed on the 12 channel console's mix bus - the dives are
chopped off. On my remix it came out as I think Page wanted it - nice
and clear. Again, I'm guessing at his intent but it seems to make sense.
I hope I was able to answer some of your questions about this. I put a
lot time into this and hope that people enjoy it. The VU meter thing was
an afterthought, a great way to see how limited the technology they
used was, and just how amazing they are as musicians. It's obvious that
even today, with today's technology, that the years Page and Jones put
in as session players was apparent. And Bonham, well what can you say?
Just amazing. And being able to hear Plant's vocals in the verses is
just great.
And yea - that ending - wow. That really shows how good those guys are - how well they interact when playing together. Just magic.
