I was continuing my exhaustive work on fixing Two Steps From Hell and while comparing recordings for merging a thought occurred to me, are these different records or do they count as one? For this thread, I am using the song “Master of Shadows” as my example but there are many more.
So many TSFH songs have alternative versions like ones where the choir is removed and the song is now tagged as “instrumental”, but a song like “Master of Shadows” is one of the special cases which not only has an alternate version but also stems and allows you to make your mix of the song.
Basically what I want to know is that since the stems are publicly provided and the alternate records are just adjustments of the stems, do all the versions of “Master of Shadows” count as the same recording, much like a remaster, or would the “official” alternate version still be considered separate?
Generally I look at “Recordings” like the tape that came out the studio. If a “stem” is only part of that recording, then it is a different MB recording. It was a different tape that came out the studio.
Chop bits of audio out, put bits in - different recording.
Change the volume a bit and clean up what you hear - same recording.
Remix the audio to create something new - different recording.
So how much of an “adjustment” was done to the stem? I think these sound like different recordings to me.
At about 1:30 it sounds like there are lots of extra crash symbols happening and I don’t think I hear that in the stems, but it’s kinda hard to tell. It’s a much more subtle change and it seems like it would be odd for them to add something outside the stems though.
I think the fact that you, a fan, are questioning it and thinking it is separate. Then that is a reason I would keep them separated. Especially if they have (alternate names).
Certainly the one without choir is separate recording. But if there are a set of these, then that is another reason I’d keep them all separated even when some differences are subtle.
It sounds like a fan would be curious and want to keep them clearly separated.
If it was me, I’d then be filling annotations about history of these and other details. And maybe even linking them with a series. Or did they all appear on a digital release?
Well, the Extreme Music release is technically a digital release haha.
The serious answer though is only 3 of the 5 were released on their public albums. The main track, the “instrumental” aka “alternative mix, no choir” aka “alternative version 2” track, and the “orchestral” aka “alternative” aka “alternative version” track.
As far as I know “alternative mix” aka “alternative version 3” was only re-released on their greatest hits industry album, and “no choir” aka “underscore” has only ever been on the industry release of Power of Darkness.
I see the MB annotations as a place for me to leave research notes. The next fan who passes by will enjoy sharing your knowledge and may well expand on it.
It also means if I have done a heap of work on something I can also go back and read it again when I forget the details.
This makes good sense in this case. Production music libraries such as Extreme Music often provide variations on a track to cater to different needs of movie and TV soundtracks: mood, intensity, use as foreground or background music, etc. It’s certainly possible that these kinds of variations might have only subtle, almost inaudible differences between them (as you’ve already mentioned, @shakgriig), but that shouldn’t be cause for an extremely high workload of comparing and contrasting the variations before adding recordings to MB.
To keep the workload low, maybe a helpful new (if it doesn’t exist yet) rule of thumb could be that for production music libraries, “official” alternate versions may automatically be considered separate recordings at face value - trust the label that they have a good reason to sell multiple variants of a track.
Easy enough to add and probably for most industry stuff, but TSFH also releases public albums that contain only parts of the industry release, so comparing is necessary at times to match the recordings as they rarely use the same track sub-title/ETI from the industry release on the public release.
It’s easy enough when there are 2 versions on the public and 2 on the industry, then they are usually (sometimes not though) one-to-one, but like in my example track, I am trying to match 3 public recordings to 3 of 5 possible industry recordings.
Not directly related to the main point of this thread but just correcting this and also venting because it seems like whoever controls the naming on the industry release just hates people and wants to make it as confusing as possible.
Industry being a release from somewhere like extrememusic.com, meant to only be bought and licensed for use by people in various industries like music, movies, commercials, games, etc.
Public being releases that the general public can buy at sites like Apple Music, which usually has fewer tracks than an industry release.
I’m writing the following much, much more for myself than as a reply to you so that I can understand the situation better…
Essentially, an artist has produced their music for a limited market (“industry”) and then decided to also make at least part of their music available to the general “public”. The problem for the work we’re talking about: they’ve created different variations (mixes) that appear in various releases, but the ETI turns out to be not reliable to identify these variations across releases (and the differences between some variations are minuscule).
Two Steps From Hell were a company producing “trailer music” (generally, music that can be licensed for use in other media productions). According to Wikipedia, the two musicians eventually decided that demand for trailer music was waning. They started to take their music “mainstream”, also releasing music to the general public and performing live, both with quite some success, until they disbanded earlier this year.
Industry Their piece “Master of Shadows” was produced with several variations that can be licensed by media productions via Extreme Music. It also appears on Extreme Music in a remastered “best of” collection where it isn’t certain if the variations match the original master tracks or if the ETI has been kept the same from the collection the piece originally appeared on.
Public At least one variation of the piece is also available to the public on the album release available on Spotify, but the ETI given on Spotify doesn’t match that of any of the variations available on Extreme Music.
I think I now understand @shakgriig’s effort in trying to match these variations to recordings. My first reply to this topic only considered one fairly easy part of that issue…
Thanks for the compliments! It’s an interesting case…
So, to expand on my first reply that only looked at the initial Extreme Music release but ignored the best-of release on EM and the general-availability release of “Master of Shadows”…
Technical answer: adjusting the relative volume of stems creates a new mix IMHO, hence each change would make for a new recording. But I wouldn’t assume that the variations on Extreme Music have been created by only moving faders on the multitracks, it’s possible that the officially released variations had more work done to them, as you’ve suggested as a hunch with one variant that seems to have pronounced crash cymbals which you couldn’t find in the stems.
For this specific case: Since it’s known that “Master of Shadows” (and probably other works by Two Steps From Hell) is available in multiple variations and the naming on the various releases doesn’t make it easy to identify identical mixes, would it be prudent to just consider each appearance of the piece a separate recording?
This would be along the lines of @jesus2099 suggesting to not merge recordings if we’re not sure in MB Community: To merge (recordings)… or not to merge?; his observation that all the recordings can be found as long as they’re linked to the same work as well as @IvanDobsky’s call for annotations would be gold in this case. I still think the workload to guess mixes shouldn’t fall on MB editors if publishers and labels put out variants but won’t be exacting in the information they provide.
Well for their track I can tell (usually) it just takes more effort than simply looking at the track name in the case of their library. Overall I am mostly sorting these for myself, even if it’s beyond the expected scope for MB editors. Maybe it’s the ADHD, but it just really bothers me you know?
In MB language “remastering” that adjusts volume or speed is not counted as a difference. They would still be treated as the same Recording.
Splice something into or take out of the Recording and it is now a new Recording.
(There has long been debates in long threads about remastering… but MB has its own definitions of words).
You are not alone in wanting to chase down a tunnel of madness to sort out your collection. You are among like minded friends wanting to notice these little details.
