Leaked Multitrack Masters

[LennonCobain]

Remember back about 10 years or so when a number of legitimate multitracks were leaked online as “Multitrack Masters”? We got a few tracks from Led Zeppelin II, Sgt. Pepper, some Nirvana tracks, etc.

Does anyone know the source of those leaks and have a full list of the leaked tracks? This happened around the time of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band craze, but some of the leaked tracks were never featured on those games.

Those were some great times. I was able to make a pretty good Surround Sound mix of Ramble On because Page/Plant can’t be bothered to do it!

 

[jsulzinger]

Rick Beato on YouTube seems to have multitracks for tons of songs from all of the greatest artists. In his "What Makes This Song Great" series he breaks down songs and always plays snippets of isolated tracks.

 

[jimfisheye]

Most of these come from the Rockband game or the Jammit website. These are generally REALLY stepped on! They're also not multitrack stems but 'mix stems'. Meaning they are renders of the subgroups. For example, the vocal will be the vocal bus with all the mix processing and further any reverb/delay ambience dialed up. The guitar track might be a stereo guitar bus that is a submix of 6 guitar parts and all the processing (eq'ing, dynamics, ambience, reflections, etc) baked in. 'Mix stems' like this will (should) add up to the final mix when simply lined up and the faders are at unity. These are further stepped on from format reductions (they're all run through the mp3 meat grinder even if you find them put back into a lossless container) as well as the same limiting/boosting and the bright eq to hype the levels that is often done to CD versions of albums. If you try to remix from these, most of your time will be spent on restoration work and you still won't quite be able to hit the original fidelity.

Sometimes though - especially if the stereo release might have only been available as a volume war CD - you can get away with things and genuinely make an improvement (even if still technically compromised). The condition of what's out there is all over the map.

There ARE sometimes actual genuine multitracks (the raw lossless multitrack with no alterations) given to audio engineering schools for the students to work/practice with. Some of these leaked out.

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

...Sometimes though - especially if the stereo release might have only been available as a volume war CD - you can get away with things and genuinely make an improvement (even if still technically compromised). The condition of what's out there is all over the map...

Funny you should mention this. I recently made a small project of an album like this, Juliana Hatfield's Only Everything from back in 1995. I really like this one, but have always been frustrated by the smashed-flat dynamics and frequent clipping. One track in particular, "Hang Down From Heaven," has quiet acoustic guitar in the verses, contrasted with big loud electric guitar in the choruses, which would be much more effective if the thing hadn't been compressed so badly that the acoustic verses actually sound louder than the electric choruses! Sheesh. Also trying some clipping restoration on tunes like "Universal Heartbeat," with some success.

 

[edisonbaggins]

There ARE sometimes actual genuine multitracks (the raw lossless multitrack with no alterations) given to audio engineering schools for the students to work/practice with. Some of these leaked out.

My, my, I'd love to get my bugar hooks on some of those!

 

[Woody71]

I got a hold of some of those. Stevie 'Superstition', Doobies 'Long Train', four tracks from Sgt Peppers.... may have been more but that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I think I have them on a DVD somewhere. The 'Superstition' one was really interesting for the amount of Clavinet tracks alone.

 

[quicksrt]

I got the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" both wonderful displays of what a multitrack can show off.

 

[PaulMichael]

Remember back about 10 years or so when a number of legitimate multitracks were leaked online as “Multitrack Masters”? We got a few tracks from Led Zeppelin II, Sgt. Pepper, some Nirvana tracks, etc.

Does anyone know the source of those leaks and have a full list of the leaked tracks? This happened around the time of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band craze, but some of the leaked tracks were never featured on those games.

Those were some great times. I was able to make a pretty good Surround Sound mix of Ramble On because Page/Plant can’t be bothered to do it!

There are thousands of leaked multis online. Reddit used to have a thread where stems got posted daily.

 

[LennonCobain]

There are thousands of leaked multis online. Reddit used to have a thread where stems got posted daily.

The vast majority of these are just rips from Guitar Hero and Rock Band game discs and DLC. My initial post was in reference to multitracks that were not such rips.

 

[LennonCobain]

Not a leak, but R.E.M. made the multitracks available for the track “It Happened Today” from their last album as part of a fan remix contest. The files may still be on REMHQ for download.

These files were also fun to play around with.

 

[François]

IIRC, Mike Oldfield did the same for side 1 of Tubular Bells…

 

[puddin]

I'll add that Radiohead also made 2 tracks (Nude and Reckoner) available to fans to remix. They were stems rather than multi-track beds (some of the tracks contain multiple elements so remix options are somewhat limited). Like others have mentioned, there are literally 1000's of rock band and guitar hero stems out there that you can remix into 5.1, but audio quality varies. Some are effectively less than poor mp3 quality and you need to clean up the tracks before working with them. Some just have 5 stems to work with: vocals, drums, bass, guitars, and everything else on another stem. This severely limits your options for 5.1 mixes. I've had some success making my own 5.1 mixes from these stems. Sometimes you can use digital editing to separate elements from stereo stems to isolate guitar solos, keyboard parts, etc. and give yourself more to work with in a mix. If you want to get really fancy, there is a lot of software out there designed to create upmixes from stereo mixes. If you use that software on stereo stems (i.e. a guitar stem that contains multiple guitar tracks mixed into stereo), you can effectively split stuff that is centered versus wide in the mix, allowing you to separate some of the premixed elements into the front and rears of your homemade 5.1 mix. It's a ton of work, but can yield better results than simply mixing the stems "as is" into 5.1.

 

[PaulMichael]

The vast majority of these are just rips from Guitar Hero and Rock Band game discs and DLC. My initial post was in reference to multitracks that were not such rips.

The ones on reddit were not from GH. Many were 32 bit studio stems and multis.

 

[edisonbaggins]

I'm wondering to what extent it would be possible and allowable to catalog the true multis that are out there.

 

[antoine555]

Trent Reznor made some Nine Inch Nails tracks available to remixes: http://www.ninremixes.com/multitracks.php

 

[LennonCobain]

The ones on reddit were not from GH. Many were 32 bit studio stems and multis.

I’ve actually seen both on Reddit so we’re both right. Unfortunately many of the links are gone. For example. I didn’t know that the multitracks for Nirvana - (New Wave) Polly was among the leaks. I’d like to track that down!

Anyone know who AnalogTodd is?

 

[PaulMichael]

I’ve actually seen both on Reddit so we’re both right. Unfortunately many of the links are gone. For example. I didn’t know that the multitracks for Nirvana - (New Wave) Polly was among the leaks. I’d like to track that down!

Anyone know who AnalogTodd is?

Unfortunately the thread got shut down. Real shame.

 

[Fourplay]

Here is a list of stem-type multitracks which have been released:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_works_released_in_a_stem_format

 

[TheCatinSurround]

I was wondering if anyone has ever compiled a list of SACDs where the engineer definitely used the dry studio multitracks to make the mix instead of stereo trickery to sucker people into buying?
So far I've only seen a few. David Bowie-Ziggy Stardust, Toto IV (Eliott Scheiner) Billy Joel- 52nd Street
I'm sure there's a ton more. Just seems rare that these labels allow access to the dry sessions for these releases.

 

[wrat]

there was a whole lot of Zep multis with no mastering released , HOH, III, IV, PG, they are amazingly cool sounding