I love instrumental music, and a hate it when people dub samples of dialogue into music. So I’ve been known to remove samples from quite a bit of music. I was quite into Godspeed YBE for a while, and still have burned CDs that I made by removing all the stupid talking bits from their otherwise pretty good music.
I’ve done the same thing with quite a bit of electro music, too. Too many samples and I’ll delete the song, but if I can remove the offending part I often will.
Well, think of it this way: you get back at Lee Greenwood at little bit every time you call him ‘Alan’.
I just cut it out. I never liked it because the synth sound seemed jarring in the context of a song with all that medieval/fantasy imagery. Had they used real string instruments, it’d be my favorite part of the song.
Now that I think of it, I also took out the key change at the end of the song and spliced in repeats of the ending riff. The key change is abrupt and unnecessary, and I could never stand hearing Robert Plant going, “All my love to you, and you, and you and you”–it gave me this image of him pointing at a series of groupies–way out of context in that song, but OTOH well, it was Robert Plant. 
Heh, that’s my favorite part of the song. I always wished there would be more of the drums. TEHO, naturally.
In a similar vein, I do the same thing for the song “Star Sign” by the Teenage Fanclub. It (and a couple other songs on Bandwagonesque, IIRC) has this atmospheric, abstract, minute-long intro. It’s not unpleasant, but whenever I throw that song into a mix, I have to cut the noodling and just get to the meat of the song.
Social Distortion is one of my favorite bands, but editing out Mike Ness’ live banter is almost always a good move. I remember seeing them in 1992 and he introduced their cover of “Ring of Fire” thusly:
MIKE NESS: This next song is for all you outlaw women out there!
CROWD: loud cheering, whooping
MIKE NESS: The women in black, I mean!
CROWD: loud cheering
MIKE NESS: Black underwear, that is!
CROWD: scattered applause
MIKE NESS: Or…no…underwear at all!
CROWD: 
:smack:
Jethro Tull - Passion Play. I edited out the silly Hare poem and merged the remaining two pieces into a single track. (w. Audacity).
Pink Floyd - Echoes. I edited out the long whale-synth-sounds part. (w. Audacity).
Me too! I also shrunk the beginning and a few other parts, turning Echoes into a nice 12 minute song (instead of what, 20?) Back in the day, I used to simply lift the phono arm and flip the album when that part started. I also plan to get a copy of Thick as a Brick and shrink that into the album I’d rather listen to, leaving out all the rambly disconnected odd bits on the second side.
I liked the silly Hare poem and other removed bits, but I sure don’t want to hear them every time I listen to the album.
I’ve edited the applause and chatting out of a number of live albums. They’re a lot better to listen to that way, after the first time. For a few albums, I also apply compression for my “car CD” version, so I can hear the quiet parts over the road noise, without having to gain-ride as I drive. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a quieter car!
Layla is much more palatable when the meandering music at the end is edited to fade out after about 15 seconds.
Yeah, he’s a class act, but I love ‘im. The intro on the album was equally silly, had profanity and I was looking to introduce my kids to some great rock n’ roll.
I fade live tracks in and out so they aren’t jarring when they come up in shuffle mode on the mp3 player. I’ve also used Audacity to fix track indexing errors and other mastering mistakes (like the channels having gotten reversed on a couple of ZZ Top remasters). I also had to fix Baba O’Riley on the 2-CD Deluxe Edition of Who’s Next after I found out I got one from a bad batch that had the opening seconds missing.
I got an mp3 of The Stars And Stripes Forever that was from a 78 rpm disc, performed by “Sousa’s Band”. Yes, Sousa’s own band, but Sousa almost never conducted for recordings.
To me it sounded a little fast and sharp, so I fired up Audacity and reduced the speed by 5 percent.
This is an obscure one. I have an LP of odds & ends by a group called the Bluethings. Two of the tracks are “You Can’t Say We Never Tried”, which shoulda been a hit single (kind of Byrds-y), and “Take Seven”, which is an instrumental version. Both are in the same key and tempo, and both start with a signature riff and end with a big chord. So, I found that editing the beginning of “Take Seven” onto the end of “You Can’t Say…” creates a textbook example of the kind of fake ending that was so popular back then (think “Hello Goodbye”)… as that final big chord echoes off, the hook comes crashing back in and slides right into the rhythm of the verse, which I then faded out.
I’ve practically made a hobby out of desecrating artist’s music, to the point that I’ve become so used to my edits that I can barely remember everything I’ve done. Live tracks always get fade-ins and fade-outs since I usually listen on shuffle. I also have tons of bootlegs which usually need some work. Bum notes are easy to fix if its part of a repetitive riff or chorus; you can just lift it from another part of the song. I also do a lot of quicker fade-outs if I feel it gets tedious, just like a lot of people seem to do with Hey Jude.
All of this was done on a Mac with Audacity. If you’re not familiar with these bands, a lot of this probably won’t make sense:
AC/DC
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: The original Australian version of the song has a few extra repetitions of the chorus at the end that are not on the Worldwide version. I have an Australian version of the CD, but it’s not remastered and sounds pretty crappy, so I copied the different parts and added some EQ to get it sounding as close to the remastered World version and dropped it in.
Beatles
I Am The Walrus: I took the version from the mono boxset and added the extra bar that appeared in the U.S. mono single right before “yellow matter custard”. I lifted it from a vinyl rip of Rarities and tried to EQ it, but you can still kind of hear the difference. I also changed the opening notes from 4 beats to 6, even though that was only done on stereo versions AFAIK.
Dear Prudence: I took a guitar part from near the end to make the beginning cleaner, minus the jet sounds from Back in the USSR.
Mean Mr. Mustard/Her Majesty/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through The Bathroom Window: As you might have noticed, I pasted Her Majesty where it was originally meant to go. All you have to do is chop off the silence at the beginning and end of Her Majesty and just plop it in. It fits perfectly.
Black Sabbath
Warning: I faded in the segue from Sleeping Village and chopped out the extended noodle-fest by moving the very end of the song to the end of the third verse, right at the line “just a little bit too strong”, clocking in at a lean 3:41 instead of 10:28.
E5150/Turn Up The Night: I like the Heavy Metal soundtrack version of The Mob Rules, but I still wanted E5150 in the playlist, and I never liked it paired with Neon Knights, so I thought it would sound good with Turn Up The Night. The only problem was that the “twinkling” effect at the end of E5150 is way too short on the album version to sound right segueing into Turn Up The Night. I never liked the faster version of E5150 on Live Evil, but it has and extended “twinkling” section that I used to bridge it over. I used the Out Of Phase Stereo (OOPS) method which eliminated most of the crowd noise from the Live Evil segment, plus it had a high-hat count-in that matched the high-hat count-in on Turn Up The Night perfectly, so it worked out rather nice.
Heaven And Hell: I love Tony Iommi’s guitar solo on the Live Evil version of this song, but I can’t stand the rest of that version (any audience participation stuff is verboten in my shuffle!), so I incorporated the solo into the studio version. There’s a sustained note toward the end of the song where I cross-faded it into the solo, and then cross-faded the end of solo into the end of the song. Lucky for me they played it in the same key live as they did on the album.
Elvis Presley
Clambake: I removed the lines “Mammy’s little baby loves clambake, clambake…” (cringe), and replaced them with extra repetitions of the chorus.
A Little Less Conversation: Probably the most elaborate edit I’ve ever done. I love the original version of this, but it’s just too damn short. I wanted to loop it back somehow to repeat the “C’mon baby, I’m tired of talking” part, but I needed something to put in there. I used the OOPS method again to eliminate the vocals off the verses to make a sort of bridge. The problem with OOPS is that it always results in a mono track, and I really wanted this song in stereo. So I faked stereo by OOPSing the first verse (without horns) and the second verse (with horns). I then made one stereo track out of the two mono tracks and adjusted the balance to put the horns in the right place. I also looped a few parts at the beginning and did a quicker fade-out, since the song kind of breaks down in an annoying way. All this resulted in stretching the song from 2:12 to 3:11, and was totally worth the ridiculous amount of time and effort I put into it.
Suspicious Minds: Eliminated the false fade-out by looping through it.
Judas Priest
Rocka Rolla: Fixed the various tracking errors that have plagued this release since the advent of CD. Straightened out the whole Winter/Deep Freeze/Winter Retreat mess that seems to change with each issue (all of them wrong). I also separated the second half of Dying To Meet You into the standalone track that it’s supposed to be (Hero, Hero).
KISS
Strutter (Alive! version): Moved the “You wanted the best…” introduction to the front of this song. It’s the first song of my playlist, so I just thought the intro should go there.
Firehouse: Made a loop of the siren sound effect at the end of the album version and overlaid it over the last chorus, the way they do it live. I also tagged on the alternate ending from the Double Platinum compilation.
Parasite: Added a third chorus after the guitar solo, the way they do it live.
Detroit Rock City: Gave it a clean start by EQing the opening notes from the Smashes Thrashes & Hits compilation and pasting it on the front of the Destroyer version. It would be easier to just use the ST&H version, but it’s a 1988 remix with triggered drums and sounds like hell, just like when the ZZ Top catalog was ruined around the same time.
I Stole Your Love (Alive II version): I cross-faded the “We want KISS!” chant from the end of the album onto the front of this song. Even though it’s on the beginning of side 3, this was actually their opening song at the time.
Christine Sixteen: Deleted Gene Simmons’ lewd monologue over the second chorus by pasting in the first chorus. I play this stuff at work, ya know.
Tomorrow And Tonight: Eliminated screechy backing vocals after the guitar solo with some creative looping.
Rocket Ride: Edited it into the single version using a vinyl rip from an old 45 as a guide. Of course they then released a box set of all their old singles on CD few months later.
I Love It Loud: Eliminated a false fade-out.
Lick It Up: Not long after Guitar Hero and Rock Band came out, people figured out how to extract multi-track files of the songs. I got ahold of this one and changed it to mimic the considerably different live arrangement.
Led Zeppelin
Black Dog: Tagged a section of Bring It On Home to the beginning, the way they did it live for a while, such as on The Song Remains The Same.
Mötley Crüe
Shout At The Devil: Another Guitar Hero multi-track. I eliminated everything but the guitar from the intro, up until the “Shout! Shout!” chant.
Pink Floyd
Another Brick In The Wall part II: Edited the album version into the single version.
Queen
Battle Theme/Hero: From the Flash Gordon soundtrack. I edited Hero onto the end of Battle Theme. I never sounds right because the production is slightly different, even though Hero is pretty much a reprise of Battle Theme.
Rolling Stones
We Love You: Deleted the cell door sounds at the beginning.
Rush
Finding My Way: Gave it a cold start without fade-in by copying the guitar riff from elsewhere in the song and looping it into the beginning.
2112 (Frankfurt 1979 bootleg version): They almost never play this in its entirety live, but this one is close, only missing Oracle: The Dream. So I just pasted in the album version of that section and overlaid crowd noise from elsewhere on the Frankfurt CD. I only went to the trouble because this version of the song is absolutely stellar.
Slayer
Raining Blood: Added the storm sound effect to the end of the live Decade of Aggression version.
The Trashmen
Surfin’ Bird: Looped part of it to make it a bit longer, like the Ramones arrangement.
T.Rex
20th Century Boy: Another Guitar Hero multi-track. I really wanted to get rid of the annoying back-up singers, but they were on the same track as Marc Bolan’s lead vocals. Instead, I eliminated everything but vocals, guitar, bass and drums, and really cranked up the guitar.
A few I’m still working on:
Black Sabbath, War Pigs: The ending consists of the tape being sped up, and I always thought it sounded stupid. I’m still trying to figure out what to do.
The Beach Boys, Don’t Worry Baby: The drum intro sounds like the tape got cut off (literally), and after several attempts I haven’t been able to fix it in any way that sounds natural.
EDIT: Damn, this looks excessive. I’ll just note that I have been doing this for at least ten or twelve years, but I could probably stand to get out of the house more in any case.
Like “Hey Jude”, “Take it to the Limit” and “Witchy Woman” by The Eagles would both be better songs without that last repetitive 1/3 or so.
+1. The perfect edit.
On Annie Lennox’s album Songs of Mass Destruction the song Sing features a spoken introduction:
This is a call for the national implementation
Of mother to child transmission prevention
Programme in all the maternity hospitals
In South Africa
OK, fine. A worthy goal, but I heard it the first time. I don’t need to hear it every freaking time I play the album, so the version I play has that bit edited out.
Killing Me Softly as covered by the Fugees. I took out that obnoxious call response shit near the beginning and the weird angry ending and made it a pleasant song with Lauren on vocals instead.
I also made a Mashup of the 5 mixes of the Gorillaz track Dare. as for the why, each version brings out a different element of the song. Its their only track where someone other than 2d sings lead but he sings just under Noodles lead vocals on this one. that plus it was pretty easy to do with all of the breaks in the song already there.
Murderer!
At the beginning and end of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” (otherwise a fucking awesome song), there’s an annoying child’s voice, so I just snipped off each end of the song.