A report of the Salvo label reissue of "Procol Harum"(debut)

phil i have not seen any info on "Live With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra" reissue do you know what bonus tracks are going to be on it?

 

see www.procolharum.com

They've got all the info. Two of the four bonus tracks on Edmonton Symphony Orch. are pre-concert rehearsals.

 

ok thanks ! so two new bonus tracks then that should be intresting!

 

Cool. Any idea what will be on it? More unre material? I'd like to hear some of the 1967 BBC recordings.

We need someone with a Hammond organ to play along with it

 

At least for the Fly Records material, it is unlikely that any further unreleased material(beyond that in the four Fly/Salvo CD's) will debut.....so Fly's people tell me.

 

Now some good news: Though I don't yet have the new Salvo CD's of "A Salty Dog" & "Home", the people at the Procol Harum website have informed me that there are no speed/pitch problems with these discs.

 

yay! but what about shine on brightly? was it a stuff up or not?

 

Go back & read this thread. The general consensus is that the fidelity of the main album tracks of Salvo's "Shine On Brightly" CD is excellent, but there is question concerning the tape speed & pitch versus previous releases. The Salvo CD of "Shine On Brightly" is(on the main album tracks) faster/high pitched than previous CD releases, and it is the conclusion of the people at www.procolharum.com, that these songs are running a quarter tone sharp/fast. I will leave the final determination on this matter to the musicians & engineers who were involved in the album.

There is no question over the tape speed/pitch on the bonus tracks.

 

i have read thread ! i have listened to the secrets of hive and have compared the tracks and they are different from that too but brookers voice on secrets of the hive song Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone) sounds the same so i think maybe they might have something about the pitch being too slow on the original releases!

 

Another footnote about "Stoke Poges" - it was played (in two parts) at the Fillmore gig, which can be heard along with the whole show at Wolfgang's Vault.

 

I just listened to the 2009 'In Held Twas In I" and as soon as the speaking part started I sensed something was 'funny'. Then I A/Bd it to the Castle CD using foobar2000 and it was obvious the newer one is higher-pitched. So I go online and see on the Beyond the Pale site that the speed issue is already in play; then I came here, knowing you guys had probably already started discussing it too :>

Anyway, on Beyond the Pale the essayist notes that Brooker, live and on film, can be observed playing a B-flat chord (with the F on top) to start off. In accord with this, a photo of transcriptions of the tune appear in the booklet that comes with the 2009 reissue; the key signature for the first bars of 'Glimpses of Nirvana' is clearly two flats (that is, B-flat major). (FWIW, it's three flats (C minor) for 'Teatime at the Circus')

So I'd presume the true starting key is B-flat, and the only question is which of the two versions is closest to 'concert' B-flat to start.

It also appears that the speed variation started at tape playback. That;'s good. Because if the new one turns out to be a quarter-note sharp when played with properly tuned instruments -- as appears to be the case from testimony so far -- then we at home can actually 'fix' it with soundfile editing tools. Reducing speed AND pitch is relatively easy and can be done without introducing artifacts (reducing one or the other without artifacts is much dicier)

It would also make sense at this point for someone to compare the pitches on the original LP, to the various CD versions.

 

Thanks for that. It is starting to look like the Salvo Shine On Brightly really is too fast. Who is going to step up to the plate and speed correct this for us

 

ok if this is the case which cd version of shine on brightly is worth getting?

 

Lots of people are saying the Salvo clearly uses a better source than any previous CD version but it apparently runs too fast. I haven't done any comparisons but that seems to be the consensus among the big Procol fans. I've never heard a good sounding version on CD. The Westside is ok but IMO doesn't sound like it came from a good source. Either that or it was a poor recording.

 

It may come down to how well you know the record. With the speed issues, it's not like all of a sudden the band sounds like they're on helium and beans. The disc sounds fantastic to me, but I've never owned any previous versions and a definitive answer on this is still, for now, elusive.

 

How sharp is it, exactly? Do Alvin and Theodore appear? Or, is this only likely to bother those with perfect or decent relative pitch (like me, unfortunately?)

Edit: I looked up the article on Beyond The Pale's website. Apparently we're talking less than a tone, so probably minimal chipmunking.

 

True but it should be easy to correct the speed. My copy is on the way..

I'm not a musician. How much of a speed difference would that be? Something like 3%?

 

I should've said less than a semi-tone. Don't know the percentage, but most probably won't be too bothered by less than a quarter-tone difference in pitch. (A tone is the interval between 'do' and 're'; a semi-tone that between 'mi' and 'so'. Or, two keys up on a keyboard, and one key up. A quarter-tone would fall in-between keys - say, a pitch right between F and F#.) Most people would be more likely to think the faster version is, well, a bit fast rather than sharp is my guess.

I really hope it's less than a quarter-tone, though.

 

Anybody know, was Nick Robbins (the guy who mastered Secrets Of The Hive) also the guy who mastered these albums?

 

<nudge>

 

Not quite Alvin or Theodore, or even Simon.

I don't have perfect or probably even decent relative pitch but some of the vocals (Wish Me Well, the spoken verses of IHTII) seemed a bit sharp to me the first time I played the Salvo SOB. However, this was after I read Phil's review of the first album so I was wondering if that somehow influenced my hearing of the 2nd. I haven't gotten around to A-B-ing this with previous versions of the CD or the LP. But my pitch/hearing isn't the greatest so my impressions of it might not be too valid.

 

LOL. No chipmunks, but the 'funny' thing I noticed right off was that the opening narration sounded less 'gloomy' on the new remaster of In Held Twas In I! Interesting how pitch and speed affect the aesthetic sense. It' also demonstrates how sensitive humans are to small pitch (frequency) variations from what we're used to. Quarter tones are well within what we can perceive.

In a quick switch A/B comparison I'd say anyone here would perceive the difference immediately between the old and new versions. Certainly you, as a musician, could do it. Rememebr, I noticed it before I had even done an A/B, just from my *memory* of the track, which I had admittedly happened to listen to a month or two ago.

Anyway, I plant to try speed/pitch correction this week, I'll post clips of results when I do.

 

Thanks for that SiriusB.

Is there a mastering credit on these Salvo CDs? Perchance Nick Robbins and/or Rob Keylock?

 

The only info comes from Gary Brooker himself(in the new issue of "Record Collector" magazine). The box set will be 3 CD's + 1 DVD.

 

Quite rightly so! It sits very comfortably on my LP shelf between the last John Prine album and "Shine on Brightly".