Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
One of my childhood friends passed away in 2019. Dave was a talented keyboard player and a great vocalist, a musician through and pure. While cleaning up my old junk this week, I found a cassette tape with Dave singing this Elton John classic in 1977. The tape was from a live performance, so there was a lot of background noise and the timing was very inconsistent, but I was able to extract the vocals and record new music tracks to produce this version ... Dave singing in 1977 and me playing in 2021.
For the technical geeks, I decided not to auto-tune or change any of the essence of the tone. It isn't perfect, but it is amazing the timbre for a then teenager. For the vocals, I processed the original recording through iZotope RX8 to remove hum and crackle, then isolate the vocals from the rest of the music. Since the cassette version has no musical value above 10,000 HZ, I rolled off the tape hiss with a high-band EQ, then I used the Search and Destroy method to remove crowd noises (use a flat EQ and boost one frequency, then move that frequency around until you increase the noise you want to remove, then attenuate the EQ down to remove that sound). Next I used Melodyne to tune to pitch (adjust the tuning only to fix the battery variances on the motor of cassette drive) and then separate the sibilants from the non sibilants (final effects in the mix were only applied to the non-sibilants). Finally, in Ableton I added EQ, compression, a limiter, reverb, double tracks and some Fresh Air (by Slate Digital).
Again, the result wasn't perfect, but for a 45-year old tape, recorded at a live performance in a bar, filled with lots of background noise, I was quite pleased.
For a Karaoke version, click here ... youtu.be/Ukn92XY4wKw
One of my childhood friends passed away in 2019. Dave was a talented keyboard player and a great vocalist, a musician through and pure. While cleaning up my old junk this week, I found a cassette tape with Dave singing this Elton John classic in 1977. The tape was from a live performance, so there was a lot of background noise and the timing was very inconsistent, but I was able to extract the vocals and record new music tracks to produce this version ... Dave singing in 1977 and me playing in 2021.
For the technical geeks, I decided not to auto-tune or change any of the essence of the tone. It isn't perfect, but it is amazing the timbre for a then teenager. For the vocals, I processed the original recording through iZotope RX8 to remove hum and crackle, then isolate the vocals from the rest of the music. Since the cassette version has no musical value above 10,000 HZ, I rolled off the tape hiss with a high-band EQ, then I used the Search and Destroy method to remove crowd noises (use a flat EQ and boost one frequency, then move that frequency around until you increase the noise you want to remove, then attenuate the EQ down to remove that sound). Next I used Melodyne to tune to pitch (adjust the tuning only to fix the battery variances on the motor of cassette drive) and then separate the sibilants from the non sibilants (final effects in the mix were only applied to the non-sibilants). Finally, in Ableton I added EQ, compression, a limiter, reverb, double tracks and some Fresh Air (by Slate Digital).
Again, the result wasn't perfect, but for a 45-year old tape, recorded at a live performance in a bar, filled with lots of background noise, I was quite pleased.
For a Karaoke version, click here ... youtu.be/Ukn92XY4wKw
