Yessongs Quad?

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The performances that are common to the movie and album -- "Close to the Edge", and 'Wurm' from "Starship Trooper" -- are from the London, Rainbow Theater shows of late Dec 1972, which were not part of the set of tapes Progeny came from (the preceding US tour). No word where the Rainbow tapes might be today. One thing the restorers of the Yessongs DVD/BR could have done is take the (stereo) audio of those two tracks from the *album*, and synched them to the video. (This has actually been done by Yes fan Hed Gilboa, and is available on Youtube btw) At least those two performances, then, would have better audio than the harsh mono (and lousy 5.1) we got.

As for the sound of Progeny, I would say the 'fidelity' is actually better on a per instrument/voice basis -- they-re very 'clean' -- but the mix is just so very boring. Eddy Offord did not constrain himself to keep Steve Howe *always* on the left and Rick Wakeman *always* on the right, he was fine with showcasing an instrument that was taking a solo, he didn't over-emphasize Jon Anderson in the mix, he managed to bring Chris Squire into the mix in ways that Progeny (mixed by Brian Kehew) seems unable to (despite much effort), and Eddy wasn't afraid of adding big reverb or phasing effects ...and of course he edited some of the tracks masterfully. Offord's version just sounds so damn much more *alive* and exciting. Progeny to me sounds like a sadly lost opportunity, but it's good to know that at least the multitracks are now safely digitized.
 
It's unfortunate that posts about Yessongs (the movie)a re scattered across several threads,-- it would be great to gather tham all into one thread...maybe this one, since it has Yessongs in the title.

Anyway, here's a few more tantalizing tidbits, courtesy of Forgotten Yesterdays, a long standing Yes history site (which not coincidentally I help curate). On the date for the US premiere of the movie (March 12 1975 in Madison , WI) there's a bunch of reprinted articles and posters and ads for the flick.

Of special interest is this press kit text which is reprinted verbatim in several articles like this one:

The music soundtrack, originally in stereo, will be heard in simulated quad, amplified and mixed on a PA board inside the movie theater, and projected through full-concert speaker stacks, to give all the sound depth of a live appearance.

That text is curiously *omitted* from a few articles, though.

There is also this lovely newspaper ad (I've attached it below too) from the Madison WI Capital Times newspaper, dated March 11 1975., for the premiere of the movie. It promises 'QUADRAPHONIC SOUND' with '$50,000 WORTH OF SOUND REINFORCEMENT EQUIPMENT INSTALLED by Select Sound Service of Milwaukee'

I wonder, was there confusion about what 'quad' meant? Was the soundtrack itself 4 channel (which could mean, the 'common' L/C/R/mono rears, to actual L/R/Ls/Rs, which AFAIK would be unprecedented for cinema in 1975?), or was the movie presented basically as an on-the-fly 'upmix' from stereo using a house board? Or something else?

NB Yessongs (the album) was tracked at concerts on three tours in 1972. The film comes from the last shows of 1972, in London in December, as do two of the tracks on the album. (The latter were not remixed or rereleased on the Progeny boxed set. ) The reasons for the long delay of release of the film until 1975 are unknown.

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So it would seem , to me at least , that the film was stereo and upmixed for quadraphonic presentation in the theatre.
Ergo their use of the term , simulated quad .
 
So it would seem , to me at least , that the film was stereo and upmixed for quadraphonic presentation in the theatre.
Ergo their use of the term , simulated quad .
The movie "Yessongs" was recorded at The Rainbow, London 1972. But the album "Yessongs" was recorded on various locations on the tour.
It is absolutely NOT likely that the recordings found on the album "Progeny" were somehow used for the film. So I think, since quadraphony seemed to be big in the 70s at that time, that the film actually contains quadraphonic sound. But I don't know to what extent these recordings have made it onto a DVD or Blu Ray.
 
So did Yes ever have a quad sound system? I saw them for the first time February 26, 1972 ina small venue. To remember that date, I look up Ricks son Oliver's birthday. His birth was announced the night I attended the show. I didn't see them again until August 73 again in a small venue and as was common back then, they played some of Close To The Edge which hadn't been released. Still no quad sound system and again not in their Tales From Toby's Graphic Go-Kart show I attended in Madison Square Garden...I forget the date of that forgettable show...
 
So did Yes ever have a quad sound system? I saw them for the first time February 26, 1972 ina small venue. To remember that date, I look up Ricks son Oliver's birthday. His birth was announced the night I attended the show. I didn't see them again until August 73 again in a small venue and as was common back then, they played some of Close To The Edge which hadn't been released. Still no quad sound system and again not in their Tales From Toby's Graphic Go-Kart show I attended in Madison Square Garden...I forget the date of that forgettable show...

They had a surround setup for the Talk tour- just speakers in the rear I believe, nothing Quad. DTS was a sponsor for the tour. That's the only time they did surround that I'm aware of.
 
Ok...I was not into Yes any longer after the Go-Kart disastrous tour. Rick felt the same way I am guessing
 
They had a surround setup for the Talk tour- just speakers in the rear I believe, nothing Quad. DTS was a sponsor for the tour. That's the only time they did surround that I'm aware of.
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Yes, That movie was advertised as quad, but as this thread has discussed, that was not the reality. Besides, The question was about whether they ever had a quad setup at a concert- like Floyd did.
 
They had a surround setup for the Talk tour- just speakers in the rear I believe, nothing Quad. DTS was a sponsor for the tour. That's the only time they did surround that I'm aware of.
They certainly used surround for the Topographic 1974 tour, and possibly for Relayer tours, 1974/5
 
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The movie "Yessongs" was recorded at The Rainbow, London 1972. But the album "Yessongs" was recorded on various locations on the tour.
It is absolutely NOT likely that the recordings found on the album "Progeny" were somehow used for the film. So I think, since quadraphony seemed to be big in the 70s at that time, that the film actually contains quadraphonic sound. But I don't know to what extent these recordings have made it onto a DVD or Blu Ray.

The film does not claim to be taken from quadraphonic sound used *at the concert*. Yes did not use any 'surround' sound at the 1972 concerts.

No Progeny (summer/fall USA 1972) performances were used in the movie. It is entirely from the December 15/16 1972 shows at the Rainbow ( it is not clear if the film comes from one or both). Two tracks from the Rainbow show(s) made it onto the 1973 Yessongs *album*, 'Close to the Edge' and 'Wurm' (from 'Starship Trooper')

The Yessongs movie (and its quadnness) has been extensively discussed on QQ but unfortunately that discussion is spread across several threads.
 
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And as I noted earlier on this very thread, here, UK screening information on the Yessongs film provided by its distributors in 1975 indicated a number of soundtrack options for presentations:


'U' Certificate 75 minutes, colour.
Available in 35mm 4-track
magnetic stereophonic sound with
a standby optical track, 35 mm optical
monaural soundtrack
, 16mm magnetic soundtrack or 16mm
optical soundtrack.
Registration no: br/E 38555/25/4/81


So it is very unclear whether the US press kit line about 'simulated quad' (which does not appear in every quote from the press kit) is entirely accurate, or whether .e.g only stereo or mono versions were available in the US.

There is also the ambiguity of the meaning of the phrase "4-track stereophonic sound".
 
So it is very unclear whether the US press kit line about 'simulated quad' (which does not appear in every quote from the press kit) is entirely accurate, or whether .e.g only stereo or mono versions were available in the US.

There is also the ambiguity of the meaning of the phrase "4-track stereophonic sound".
The USA definitely had 35mm magnetic prints with sound on all four tracks. What the intended speaker layout was--or if some prints were for LCRS while others were for four-corner--is the question.
 
At every venue?
Unlikely, given that 4-track mag theaters weren't ubiquitous. I just meant that there was at least one discrete mix.

I've posted elsewhere that I saw it the first time in a theater with multichannel sound, but was too young and ignorant to know exactly what was going on. I remember it sounding loud but good.

Some time later I saw it again in a different theater that I know for a fact only had LCRS for its mag setup. The surround/effects channel was rattly and distorted, so I actually talked to the projectionist about it. He speculated that it may have been a quad mix, so it was overdriving their system that wasn't set up for it. That was the very moment I learned that 4-track theatrical presentation was not what we thought of then and think of now as quadraphonic. In my ignorant teenage head 4-track had to be quadraphonic because quadraphonic was 4 channels.

So as I see it, the options are:

1. It never really was quad, just standard 4-track and the second time I saw it something was just wrong with the track on the print.

2. It was only EVER quad and 4-track theaters were just screwed.

3. Like the Pink Floyd movie, it had 4-track and quadraphonic prints, but by the time of the revival showing I saw, no one was paying attention, so if a theater requested a magnetic print, they got...whatever. If that's really the case, it wouldn't surprise me if some people got one mix on some reels and the other one on the remainder!
 
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Is anyone here competent to break down what all this really means:

Available in 35mm 4-track
magnetic stereophonic sound with
a standby optical track, 35 mm optical
monaural soundtrack
, 16mm magnetic soundtrack or 16mm
optical soundtrack.


How many options are actually on offer here? For example, does it break down this way:

1) 35mm 4-track magnetic stereophonic sound with
2) a standby optical track,
3) 35 mm optical monaural soundtrack,
4) 16mm magnetic soundtrack
5) 16mm optical soundtrack.


Does (2) refer to an optical (versus magnetic) version of the 4-track 'stereophonic sound' track?

Or does (2) actually just refer to (3), the 'optical monoaural track'?

Are the 16 mm options both mono?

NB nowhere here does it offer something like a '2 track stereo' option, like you'd find on an LP. Stereo soundtracks in theaters were rare in 1975.

FWIW IMBD lists these men as involved in the film sound. I've marked with an asterisk the two who were known members of Yes's sound team (they are credited on the LP, Offord as 'Producer', Dunn as 'Assistant Engineer' along with Geoff Haslam as 'Recording Engineer' ). The other three are members of the film production team, only credited on the film

Robert Alcock ... film sound synchronisation assistant
Mike Dunn ... sound recordist assistant*
John Marsh ... dubbing mixer
Eddy Offord ... sound mixer / sound recordist*
Paul Robinson ... film sound synchronisation
 
1) 35mm 4-track magnetic stereophonic sound with
2) a standby optical track,
3) 35 mm optical monaural soundtrack,
4) 16mm magnetic soundtrack
5) 16mm optical soundtrack.


Does (2) refer to an optical (versus magnetic) version of the 4-track 'stereophonic sound' track?

Or does (2) actually just refer to (3), the 'optical monoaural track'?

Are the 16 mm options both mono?

NB nowhere here does it offer something like a '2 track stereo' option, like you'd find on an LP. Stereo soundtracks in theaters were rare in 1975.
Paul Robinson ... film sound synchronisation
"35mm 4-track magnetic sound with a standby optical soundtrack" refers to what used to be called a "magoptical" print. It had four magnetic tracks for theaters equipped to play it as well as a standard mono optical track for everyone else (see FSM Board: Bridge On the River Kwai Restoration). It's frankly something of an odd thing to do because magnetic soundtracks, while better than the optical ones of the day, were expensive and delicate. It's not something you'd have wanted to routinely provide just in case it might some day be useful to someone, it's more of a specialty thing you'd do for those who specifically requested it. But I suppose if someone accidentally got shipped the wrong print, they'd still be able to run the movie. Maybe the more recent equivalent would be DTS, where a 35mm print would have the time code necessary to sync to the DTS CD-ROM but would also carry a standard optical track in case the discs got separated from the print (which a former projectionist friend says was a real problem, so much so that the industry joke was that DTS stands for "Do They Ship?").

A standalone 35mm mono optical soundtrack was the industry standard from the very first sound-on-film days until Dolby Stereo came along, and even then it was a modification of the old technology rather than something radically new. At the time "Yessongs" was new, there was no optical Dolby Stereo, so the track would have been mono.

16mm magnetic soundtracks were routinely used at the very least for news reporting in the pre-video days. This is the only time I've ever heard of the technology potentially being used for actual commercial theatrical showings, though that could just be ignorance on my part. Presumably it could have sounded better than 16mm optical, though I wonder if it might have simply traded optical crackles and pops for magnetic hiss.

16mm optical is what those of us old enough to have sat through school film showings heard every single time. 100% standard and universally compatible. It's also what we would most of us would have been listening to while watching anything on TV from film. (Some richer stations in bigger markets did have 35mm film chains, but it wasn't common.)

I've heard of specialty 16mm DTS installations but am not aware of any 16mm magnetic stereo prints. It's not necessarily impossible, as there were magnetic stripes on both sides of the film, but one was much narrower than the other and was intended solely to make the film evenly thick on both sides. Apparently there was at least one Super-8 stereo projector that took advantage of both tracks, but its alleged existence is literally all I can remember about it.

Two-track stereo would be unusual and even if it existed would probably have been played from a print striped for four tracks. As far as I know, the only common multichannel theatrical sound formats were:

1. Cinerama: 7.0 - Five screen channels, stereo surround. Played from an interlocked "dubber" that reproduced the sound from full-coat magnetic 35mm film. Combined with the three projectors necessary to present the image, Cinerama required FOUR different devices to all run in perfect sync.

2. Todd-AO (and later 70mm): 6.0 - Five screen channels and mono surround played from magnetic stripes on the same film as the image.

3. CinemaScope: 4.0 - Three screen channels and mono, bandwidth-limited surround played from magnetic stripes on the same 35mm film as the image. In the image linked to above, you can immediately spot which stripe carried the bandwidth-limited track. That track also carried a control tone to only have the surround speakers active when needed, preventing them from just hissing when they were intended to be silent.

Having said that, there are videos out there from companies that generally try to do the right thing that have old non-mono, pre-Dolby movies with 2.0 soundtracks. I don't know what the story is behind that. Criterion's "The Man Who Fell to Earth" comes to mind: It was pre-Dolby, so I'd expect anything other than mono to be mixed using the CinemaScope 4.0 format, but the Criterion Blu-ray has a 2-channel soundtrack with no explanation that I've ever been able to find. There are a handful of others as well, but unfortunately, none that I can remember at the moment. Oh, yeah: Kino Lorber's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"...the Blu-ray is 2.0 and the stereo is clearly real, but it's weird that it's not 4.0. Maybe some movies really were mixed that way.

You're right that stereo soundtracks were rare in 1975, but they were out there, sometimes in surprising places. Big-budget movies that got fancy roadshow releases commonly used them, especially musicals, though even there some movies that you'd expect to have stereo mixes never did.

In the early years of CinemaScope, 4-track stereo was mandatory, but Fox relented after a while when some exhibitors refused to install the equipment. At least some 3D movies had stereo tracks (commonly run interlocked as Cinerama did), though sadly a lot of the stereo mixes were junked before the video age.
 
Another bit of magnetic soundtrack trivia: Standard 35mm optical soundtracks had the audio read in the projector at a point after the image was projected. That's why you'd always see a splice but not hear it until a second or so later. 35mm and 70mm magnetic prints had the sound read by a "penthouse" right at the top of the projector, before where the image was projected, so you'd always hear a splice *before* you saw it. As far as I know, 16mm magnetic was read at the same point as the optical.
 
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