American Pie Multitracks? In a manner of speaking....

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Q-Eight

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Since 2002/2003
Joined
Sep 30, 2003
Messages
3,699
Location
Castlegar, BC, Canada
I managed to get my hooks into a "multitrack" of Don McLean's American Pie. The upside is it's the original 1971 hit, the downside is it's not a true multitrack.... all vocals on one stereo track, both guitars on one MONO track :mad: , drums separated into 4 tracks, but sounds like there's been some digital manipulation to accomplish that. Piano track is nice wide stereo but has percussion on top of it. Bass is separate. I might be able to do something with this, just don't expect stellar separation with clumsy pre-mixing like this.
 
I wonder...and wish I had my DJ pressing (mono) of the song here to verify my memory. I know I heard several versions on the radio: the 45 edit (mono or stereo) which reprises the chorus during the fade out of Side 1 and fade in of Side 2. Stations also played the full Lp version, but I don't remember there being a DJ 45 with the full song on one side. There was also another edit that eliminated the 'long long time ago' intro and started with the guitar strumming and "Bye bye miss American Pie" but faded out like the Lp version, which was continued on the second side (this DJ version must have been mono, too). It's also possible that some stations contrived their own edits which they placed on a cart. So long ago, hard to be sure. I don't remember any word like 'whiskey' being edited out; that sounds like something a station might do in some unfriendly-to-booze southern states like Kentucky or Tennessee.

Interesting find you have there, regardless of how wonky the tracks might be. It's possible this is a copy of a multi sent to someone to then remix to mono and/or stereo for DJ use; again, hard to say. But I do look forward to eventually hearing how you whip this one up. Originally, McLean's idea--which was never followed through--was to begin the song in mono and slowly, as the song went along, widen the stereo until near the end, when it would be very wide. But it's always had fair but limited separation throughout, for some reason. Certainly would have made a fun quad track from the original multis; fine album, too.

ED :)
 
Apparently, they couldn't do that due to the limited equipment they had. The board wouldn't allow that sort of creativity.
 
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