Post #436678 by OnyaBirri on Thu, Feb 26, 2009 4:55 PM

First: This post may get into a level of minutia that will bore some of you. But the geeks among us may dig this!

Second: This may be old news to some of you, but it was news to me. I couldn't find this on the interwebs when I searched.

Here goes:

Many of you know that Martin Denny's first album "Exotica" was first released in mono. The stereo version came out a couple of years later. By all accounts, it was a re-record, because the first was apparently recorded in mono. The subtle and obvious differences in arrangements, performances, and sonics bear this out.

Here's where it gets interesting.

I play in an exotica group called Stolen Idols, and we are learning the tune "Ah Me Furi" from this album (side 2, track 4 on the LP; track 10 on the CD). I was listening carefully to the original version when I was charting it out, and just for yuks, put on the stereo version for a comparison.

The stereo version is noticeably different from the get-go; it starts out differently, and the intro on the stereo version is longer, containing 12 extra bars.

When I started listning to the main part of the tune, however, I noticed these striking similarities: Flubbed notes in the same places, and identically-phrased melodic lines.

Just for fun, I loaded both the mono and stereo "Ah Me Furi" into protools, hacked the extra bars out the stereo, and synched them up.

Lo and Behold - THEY ARE THE VERY SAME RECORDING! They synch up perfectly, until they inevitably get out of phase (from speed variation between the machines).

Afterwards, just for fun, I put on headphones, and listened to each of the "Exotica" album tracks in mono and then in stereo. As stated, some of the tracks are noticeably different, but I noticed distinct sonic and performance similarities with "Waipo" and "Return to Paradise." I loaded these into Protools and synched the mono and stereo versions of each. Aside from the ocean sounds at the top and ending, "Waipo" also is THE VERY SAME RECORDING in mono and stereo, synching up perfectly.

The mono and stereo "Return to Paradise" did not synch, but because of the sonic similarities, I strongly suspect that the stereo is an alternate take from the sessions from the original album. It is even possible that sections of it were spliced into the finished mono master, but I didn't spend that much time with it.

So here's the question:

If two, possibly three, tunes were recorded in stereo for the first Exotica album, was the whole album recorded in stereo? Why bother to re-record it a few years later?

I have two theories:

1 - It was common in the early days of stereo to use separate sets of equipment to record sessions in both mono and stereo. Because of the learning curve with the new technology, it is possible that errors were made in the stereo recording and most of it was unsalvageable. It is also possible that stereo equipment malfunctioned.

or, more likely:

2 - "Exotica" in mono is a very heavily (and sometimes sloppily) edited album. It is likely that so much tape was hacked up in creating finished, useable mono masters that re-assembling the elements to make a stereo album was difficult if not impossible. It was probably cheaper and easier to have a rehearsed, working combo come in and bang out the album than it was to wade through all the original tape and re-assemble it.

So there you have it folks. Has this been documented elsewhere?