Originally Posted by
Motown Andy
Ok Ramone,
I'll try to explain it here, but maybe we can explain it on Tuesday on John Perrone's Night Flight. Here goes:
When a song was recorded at Motown, roughly between 62 and 65, they recorded on a tape with 3 tracks on it; 1965-1970 on a tape with 8 tracks; 1970-1976 with 16 tracks; later 24, 48, etc. Those tapes are called multi tracks, this means there was an individual track for lead, one for backgrounds, guitars, bass, drums, strings, horns, etc.
Back in the day, an engineer would mix it down to a mono mix, or a two track stereo mix. This tape, known as the master. The masters would be played an quality control would accept or reject the mixes. It might become a single, am album track, or it might go back to the vault.
If a song gets cut somewhere, beginning, middle or end, it has an edit. The Diana Ross album version of Love Hangover is nearly 8 minutes, but the single edit is under 4 minutes. When we put the song out on CD, we remastered it. That is we took the two track master [[album version, or single version) and made sure it was clean and free of ticks, pops, hiss, and if necessary make minor EQ [[sound) adjustments.
When we put Love Hangover on Motown Karaoke, or on Definitive Diana, we remixed the song. We took the original 16 track multi, and re-adjusted each instrument in the song to create [[in the case of Karaoke) an instrumental, or [[in the case of Definitive) a fresh sounding mix. When Almighty did We Love Diana, they did a dance remix, which is using parts of the multi, say the lead vocal, several pieces of instrumentation, and new instruments [[synthesizers, drum machines, sound loops, etc) and they create an entirely new sound. These new add on's are called overdubs. Back in the day, a record like My Girl may be completed, but then they decided to dub in, or add in, strings.
Sometimes we go into the vault and find on a
Multi track that an artist recorded two vocals to a song. The producers back in the day may have used one, the one we know. The other one would be an alternate. Let's say there's three versions of a song, like Buttered Popcorn. There's a released take, and several other unreleased takes. These are also different versions, or alternates.
Promo is short for promotional. If you bought a single, you bought the single version. However, if Motown sends a copy with a white label to radio stations, that version is a promo. It may be an alternate, or it may be the same, but you couldn't have bought it commercially.
I hope this answers all of your questions!
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