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Posted by Larry Jordan on July 20, 2008, 4:44 pm, in reply to ""Shepherd Of Love" is a winner!..."
Message modified by board administrator July 20, 2008, 7:04 pm
Glad you liked the CD.
You are no doubt accustomed to hearing "Distant Drums" with the longer drum intro so the new arrangement sounds strange to you. On the original, Jim starts singing about 4.5 seconds into the song. On ours, he begins about 2 seconds. So we only eliminated about 2.5 seconds but it probably seems longer than that.
The original overdub production we did had the french horns and strings fading in as the drum beat, but an engineer involved in the final process was of the opinion that there was too much distortion on the drums and that we would be better off to eliminate some of those beats.
Keep in mind that VoiceMasters "works wonders" in the handling of Jim Reeves' old tapes and transcriptions but there are limitations to what we can do if the original recordings have imperfections that can't either be camouflaged or eliminated.
When we dug Jim's voice "out of the mud" it clarified the drum sound and hence you could hear distortion.
For audiophiles out there, you might be interested in doing an A/B comparison with the RCA/Bear versions of the song verus the one VM released. Note the difference in how Leo Jackson's guitar sounds in the latter half of the song. Leo conceded that he had been standing three feet from Jim when the demo was recorded, and his amplifier was overwhelming. Some of those guitar licks were piercing (through no fault of Leo's).
We were working with a mono track, so it became a real challenge to try to subdue the harshness on those licks. But thanks to the digital age, we were able to identify the frequencies of Leo's guitar and go in and selectively turn it down without disturbing any of the other instrumentation at that point. We thus were able to achieve a better balance between his guitar and the new instruments.
People have asked why I didn't overlay horns on top of Leo's guitar when Jim sings about hearing the sound of "bugles blow." RCA did that but out of respect for Leo's performance I chose not to cover him up.
You'll also notice that on the VM version, Mel's drum throughout the song doesn't sound as loud either.
These little subtle "fixes" result in the overall production really sounding great, as fans seem to agree.
Maybe I shouldn't reveal some of these other tricks, but in the instance of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Jim seemed to sing it too quickly, racing through the song at an unnatural pace. So we were able to alter the tempo without changing the pitch (still another miracle of the digital age). The song still sounds brisk.
In the case of the title track, Reeves seemed draggy...the recording was just too languorous. I envisioned adding a sax but it would have been too hard to play along with the song "as is." In that case, I increased the tempo slightly -- again, without changing pitch.
Please understand that there is strong reason to believe that in some cases where Jim seemed to sing too fast or too slow, that it wasn't his fault -- the tape machines were off. We know this because in certain instances we have had to electronically "tune" an entire recording to bring it on pitch so the new instruments could play on it. We have also had to deal in a couple of instances with a badly tuned piano on the original demo (a real irony given Jim's chronic complaints about promoters who didn't furnish pianos that were in tune!)
Over the course of releasing these CDs there have been a multitude of problems dealt with and overcome, such that we feel Jim's great artistry is presented in the best possible manner.
It is gratifying that fans have responded so enthusiastically to all this new music and the totally new songs we've released over the course of a dozen CDs. And it's a thrill to get reports that these tracks are being played by stations all over the world, including the BBC and outlets in Sri Lanka, New Zealand, "south of the border" and even Iceland!
As for your query about the new Jim Reeves biography I'm writing, I've stopped commenting on the book simply because I have nothing new to add, except to say that a "reading copy" has now been produced (layouts done, pictures laid in, and looking the way it will when it comes off press), so you know it won't be long now...
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