Imagine yourself behind the producer’s console. You can “fix” a musical element of one well-known song recorded in the modern era.
Will you cut back on the "woo woo"s in the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”?
Find another singer to redo Yoko’s line in the Beatles’ “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”?
Choose a song most of us know and tell us how you’d edit it to improve it.
I’d cut at least two, possibly three, minutes off of the end of The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”, which is 7 minutes and 11 seconds long in total. What, was Paul getting paid by the minute or something? Other than that, the song is perfect!
I’d do something similar with “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the same band.
“Knights In White Satin” could use a lot more speeding up to accommodate a 120 b.p.m. double kick beat (which isn’t deathmetal fast but fast enough to make the old hippies stand up and take notice), and replace the flute solo with a frequently-muted trumpet; the vocals definitely could be a little more Gilbert Gottfried-y; and maybe a little bit of slide whistle to abruptly end the song with.
Justin Hayward should ditch his telecaster for this, and try a wicked BC Rich Warlock with whammy bar. (“Justin! More palm-mutes!”)
I prefer my remix of Black Eyed Peas’ Request Line over the original (although that’s true of every remix I’ve done): Black Eyed Peas - Request Line (BoardWaxMix)
Basically, I completely redid the song structure, stripped the beat and the accompaniment bare and emphasized the raps over the vocal hook.
A couple that I hate that I’m, just waiting for technology to get to the point I can make it happen.
Remove the mumbles verses that are barely audible but are very annoying in Chicago’s Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? (Fortunately it’s really easy to eliminate the horrible piano intro that sounds like a 5 year old beating on the keys.)
Remove almost all to all of the sampled movie dialog in Big Audio Dynamite’s E=Mc Squared. It’s so annoying. And the rest of the song is very good.
And a couple I can do and have done, but maybe others would enjoy my edits:
I removed the mumbling ending of the movie soundtrack version of Pretty in Pink.
I took several minutes out of the middle of ELP’s Take A Pebble. It’s a nice song that gets lost for a while.
I deleted the into to the Kingston Trio’s MTA. It’s better as a short song.
I’m curious. Have you listened to the song on vinyl or on CD/streaming? It does make a difference.
I’d cut out the solo at the end of “Free Bird.”
The record company has already done it for me, but I’d cut out and burn all tapes of the awful organ solo on “Light My Fire.”
I removed the spoken word intro to Jane’s Addiction’s Stop.
Some band released a song on their website with each instrument/vocal on a separate track. Listeners could open it up in Audacity or Pro Tools or even GarageBand and remix (or just tweak) each instrument.
So, all I’m asking for is every song available like this.
And before I got to a few beloved Van Morrison songs, I’d do the Lite-Rock™ crowd a favor and take out some OOGA-CHAKAs.
I actually did that for our car MP3 USB stick. Hey Jude now clocks in at 3:57.
The violin in Funky Town is ahead of the beat in the chorus (where it alternates with the guitar).
On the other hand, I’ve been listening to it like that so long it might just be weird fixing it
I LIKE the oooga-chacka version!
I can’t help this feeling.
I’d cut the ponderous overly long intro off from “Am I Evil?” by Metallica.
This isn’t a huge hit, but… “When You Get to Asheville” by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell. There’s one line so forced to fit the meter that it really takes me out of the song:
“She won’t sleep in the house now
She just listens for the sound
Of your old eighty-four Ford
Comin’ down the road”
I would change one of those lines to “Of your eighty-seven Ford.” You are welcome.
Adelle’s “Hello” is sadly devoid of cowbell.
I would remove the disco interlude from the middle of Tom Petty’s “American Girl”
You mean Manzarek’s part in the album-length cut, or is there some other reference here I’m missing? They burned the tapes? What?
If you’re referring to the album cut that we always hear on the radio, I’m surprised at this. Recently, I’ve decided that, “Light my Fire” might be the only song I simply CANNOT tire of. Forget Jim’s vocals, they’re just a life-support system for awesome guitar and organ solos.
(shrugs) Opinions vary.
Dingdingding! Winner! I ruined the song for a friend by drawing his attention to them. Once done, that’s all he could hear.
“Cowbell” was mentioned a few posts up. Back when the SNL, “More Cowbell” skit was still fresh, there was a webpage that would automatically add MORE COWBELL to any song you uploaded. I chose, “D.T”, by AC/DC.
It came out great. Along with the added cowbell, it added, at entirely TOO appropriate moments in the song, phrases from the skit. Walken says, “I gotta have more cowbell!”, someone else yells angrily, “C’MON GENE!”, and as the song fades out, Will Ferrell says, “I could pull it back a little, if you like. . .”
It was far better than it had a right to be: pretty enjoyable as music while also being amusing. Of course, everything’s better with Walken. I still have that in my MP3 directory, more than 15 years later.
“Wha-oh…here comes a flock of wanh-wanhs!”
There’s a few seconds of awful noise in Beck’s “Beercan” I’d remove.
I’d cut “Layla” in half. Not sure which half to keep. Probably doesn’t matter much.
I miss my old setup back in the 70s. I’d record straight from the turntable (a no-frills AR) to a cassette deck, which allowed me to pause on a downbeat, wait out the long, artless drum solo then pick back up right on the beat for a seamless edit. I trimmed ten minutes of drumming from the infamous “Live In The Studio” album from Lee Michaels.
And I could fade a song out early (whenever the band decided to repeat the chorus 57 times for the last minute of the song).