M4M | All Night Long - Joe Walsh (1980)

Musical refurb of Joe Walsh's 1983 "All Night Long" live performance. See project specs below.

PROJECT SPECS

Good golly jeepers! If I would've known this challenge was going to be such a pain in the butt... but... hell yah!! Was all worth it! The request was for a cleaner audio track of Joe Walsh's "All Night Long" 1983 live performance and sync it with the relevant video clip. Well I gotta tell yah, Here was the dilemma: the video clip of Joe's yesteryear performance (1983) of his song performed with the help of an awesome orchestral band contains an audio track comprised of distorted sound including hiss and pop artifacts which pretty much simulates a Ready-Mix cement truck in action! So I either had the choice of attempting to diminish the collateral damage of an already crippled soundtrack or... find another cleaner version and cross fingers in hopes that syncing to the clip is possible without too many hurdles. I found an audio track which is supposedly the "studio" version of "All Night Long" (sounds more like a demo) but totally lacks in acoustics, wet female backups and orchestral frenzy appreciated in the live concert performance. So I flipped a beer bottle cap: tops for attempting to cleanse the original live version or, bottoms for an adaptation with the shorter non-acoustical (and quite frankly midi-prone sampled sound) studio version. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! bottoms it was... ;-( there goes my social life for a few nights more :-).

Joe Walsh is a somebody quite frankly I never heard of, but after reading up (and hearing) what he accomplished, I feel more in tune with his musical legacy, having an echo of his talent achieved back then. The "All Night Long" live performance clip I had to refurb was to swap it's flawed orchestral audio track for some thinner toned down studio version. Gawd that pissed me off 'cause I am not equipped to simulate the orchestrated acoustically-rich live sound. Knowing I was losing wind instruments, female backups, unique guitar sound and such, I had a choice: either flip the bottle cap again or act in utter nonsense... . Nonsense I said! Let's try the impossible! That's what challenges are for... .

Premiere was used for this montage. First the video clip had to be elongated a wee bit and cut up a few sections to match the tempo and duration of the studio sound track. As for sound editing, CoolEdit did a perf job. First I had to somehow thicken the lame studio soundtrack in order to simulate a live thumping on-stage presence, so I tweaked a bit the audio samples with a spread of chorus (2-voice thinly weaved with proper delay and feedback stretching sample duration a few milliseconds apart). That, coupled with some slightly echoed warm reverb, was all it took to simulate on-stage presence without crippling the original audio samples. So far, so good, let's replay, listen, and watch. Dang!!! The live performance contains so many more-than-apparent cymbal smashes snare rolls drum kicks that are lacking in the studio version!! And what about the crowd roar, whistle and applause?? Time for a beer or two before I continue!

Adding the nuanced pattern of missing percussions was fun, but the snare rolls were not an easy feat. I could of left it at a simple repeat of hits without varying volume, cadence and timbre... and hey, who woulda noticed? Noooo way, I had to start over and over again positioning each and every unique drum sample like if I was playing them myself. That meant reviewing very slowly each frame of the clip one by one while targeting the blurred movement of the arms and sticks until syncing was music to my ears! Buurrp! Sowwy!

A quick web search for freely available crowd FX led me to two usable samples which when mixed together gave the intended crowded beer'd-up hooligan effect. Now, let's replay, listen, and learn! Ahhh, the souped up studio version of the soundtrack sounds spiffy and swell with some wind instruments "melting" behind the louder stage sound ;-) Oh my gawd... at the beginning and end of the vid, Joe Walsh actually howls at the crowd!!! That was like SO not at all planned, but that's the fun part in these media works, the kewlness of the unexpectorable! Quite frankly, I feel this one-of-a-kind unique version doesn't suck after all! Thx for the challenge, Enjoy! - dan

Disclaimer: Materials used in this video are the property of their respective Owner(s) and solely provided herein for personal non-commercial evaluative purposes.