Overdubs.

[mowsville]

Hi all...when reading through Don't Forget The Motorcity there are lots of instances where a group or solo artist have been overdubbed...does this mean the original vocals no longer exists as there are a few examples where both or more versions have been released or canned using the same backing track and the original version is saved...im asking as there are a few tracks that are saying overdubbed but I have not heard the original..so does that mean the original vocals were recorded over...hope this makes sense

[bradburger]

Mowsville,

It could indeed be the case that the original vocals by a group/artist were lost to a new overdub by another artist or group, but in most cases, it seems that the usual practice was to make a copy of the original multitrack for new vocal overdubs or any other type [[new instruments etc).

That said, I know that the Temptations vocals on 'Say You' were overdubbed by the Monitors on the multitrack, hence the version by the former is only available as a mono mix, since it would appear that another copy of the multitrack was not made and hasn't shown up in the vaults.

And there are indeed other cases in which this happened. For some reason, the only multitrack of the Temptations 'Since I Lost My Baby' has an early and rather rough lead vocal take on it, instead of the final highly polished version used on the single mix.

In this case, one would assume that final lead vocal take was on another track of the multitrack tape and erased by mistake, or a copy of the multitrack with the final lead vocal was used again for another session in error.

Cheers

Paul

[144man]

Some recordings thought to have been erased have been found by accident at the end of other tapes and had been lost through not being referenced.