Remastering Capitalism - by Brett Scott
I’ve played instruments since I was eight, but it’s only in the last year that I’ve been teaching myself how to mix tracks. The history of recorded music is pretty fascinating, and one of its breakthrough technologies was the multi-track tape recorder. For example, a 4-track recorder enabled a musician or band to record four different tracks in parallel, set each to its own level, and then output them as a single master track. Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album was recorded on 4-track, giving it that lo-fi sparse sound.
A more complex song like Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, by contrast, used a 24-track system, allowing for all those layered harmonies. Here’s a breakdown of the track structure…
Each of those tracks was separately recorded, but you can’t just squash them all into a big bundle and hope they all sound good together. To make the song shine, you have to mix the separate tracks, so that they complement each other to create a symbiotic whole that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Nowadays most people use digital programmes (like Ableton and Pro Tools) for mixing, but in Queen’s case they would have used a 24-track mixing console. Here’s a modern version.
This console looks very complex, but if you count from the left, you’ll find there are 24 vertical strips of identical knobs, with each strip dedicated to a track. These allow you to adjust the parameters of each track - how loud it is, the balance between bass, treble and mid frequencies, and the stereo panning - before sending them to the right side of the board to get compiled into a master track which can then be tweaked with finishing touches, or mastered. So, in 2011, when Queen released a ‘remastered’ version of Bohemian Rhapsody, it means they took the original mix, but re-polished the master.
