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Rebel Heart Album (Mixing & Recording)


RUADJAI
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*Disclaimer*     This is not a bash of her album, just an observation and conversation

 

The other day I put on some good headphones and listened to Ray of Light from beginning to end. Im sure most of you know this already but it truly is a magical experience. Especially sonically. Music, American Life and Confessions also have this in common. It's something I have come to expect from a Madonna album. Rebel Heart seems to break this mold. Either out of fragmentation of recording, or lack of a proper album mixer, or lack of attention to detail, or laziness ... It's apparent all over the album and i find it very interesting and puzzling. Some of the examples of this are;

 

"you broke in my heart, but you cannot break me down" Obviously a different vocal take but not even an attempt was made to make it blend properly. Except in the music video which they at least tried to blend it in. Did they cut a different mix for the video? or maybe the guy who added all the bull sounds and swooshes for cinematic effect fixed it?

Microphone noise just before the first words sung on Ghosttown. I mean, this is a basic recording thing unless it was left for an effect of some sort, which I can't imagine it was. 

Bitch I'm Madonna  After the first ooooh oooh oooh oooooh oooh. Theres a leftover vocal that should have been cut saying "this" or "Bitch". Also the difference in volume from the first verse and the first "I just wanna have fun tonight" is extreme and not friendly on the ears. 

An obvious volume difference with Hold Tight that makes it sound muted and almost muffled in the beginning. This is also the case with Holy Water. The songs are great once u get into them but they sound very flat at the beginning and can turn a listener off immediately. 

The curious vocal effects on her voice in Joan of Arc. The most obvious being the word betray at the 1:30 mark. It doesn't sound like basic autotune or a pitch correction, but more like a formant changer. Kind of like the effect at the end of Hollywood that changes her vocal from "Female" to "Male" creating an augmented throat size. It comes across as an oversight rather than a musical effect. 

The little clicking at the beginning of HeartBreakCity. The fact that doubling her vocal on the chorus doesn't help the vocal yet hinders it when compared to the raw vocal used in demo #4. It seems they may have have updated the Apple Music version of the album to correct the vocal edit at the 3:00 mark where it sounded like she was going to repeat the chorus again but got cut off to go on to the "Your clever game" part. (I need to get out my CD and compare)

The equalization of her vocal on Messiah to cut out the bottom end at certain parts.  If you have never heard it its quite drastic and immediately pulls me out of the song and I can't enjoy it.  If u wanna see what I'm talking about listen to her normal vocal at 1:17 . It slowly starts to filter out the lower frequencies and by 1:43 there's no bottom end to her vocal whatsoever. Then theres obvious distortion, a hiss on her vocal at the beginning of that chorus at 1:51.  Whats even more crazy is how fast the lower end comes back in from 2:08 to 2:10. 

And overall there are a lot of vocals that sound like they are sung into a MacBook mic rather than properly being recorded. Iconic, Beautiful Scars. 

And on top of all these things it doesn't sound like there was a mixer who listened to the album as a whole and mixed them together to make sure they seamlessly blend from one song to the next. In volume especially. Im wondering if they ended up just skipping that part because of the leaks and didn't have time? or maybe there were too many hands in the kitchen and the attention to detail got lost in the shuffle? Or maybe some of the songs that got released were one of the unfinished demos instead of the finalized tracks as there were too many to keep track of. i know she had an issue with producers keeping track of their stems and which one they were using and which ones they weren't. Its just all very curious to me as Ive never seen a Madonna album quite like this one thats so jumbled and messy. 

 

What do you guys think? Do you guys even notice these things? I produce music as a hobby so maybe I'm a little too analytical sometimes with it, but when an album is done right its a magical experience, but unfortunately Rebel Heart will never be that for me. I love it for what it is, I love the songs, it just can't be classified as a sonic masterpiece in my world. 

 

 

 

 

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I always thought the noise at the beginning of Ghosttown was intentional, because it's too evident, even for a non-expert. Really unprofessional also for an amateur recording! Sounds like an old cassette tape! I akways wondered if it was intended as a symbol, like a leftover after the apocalypse...

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Like someone above stated, I felt Ghosttown was intentional. Not that I don't hear technical flaws in Rebel Heart, but it's not anything that stands out to me or keeps me from enjoying the work.   I'm sure we can go through about any artist's album and pick out it's technical flaws. In the end, all I care about is if I enjoyed it or not.  I enjoyed it! 

 

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2 hours ago, poserdemadonna said:

Of course it sounds rushed and unfinished. 97 tracks leaked and she thought "fuck, I'm gonna lose a lot of money!". That album was not supposed to come out before the second semester of 2015.

She also recorded the album in various locations (not just in studios), but with many different producers. Plus a lot of the tracks ended up getting re-worked/remixed from other producers. And A lot of the mixing was done at different times by different people. That whole album just became a modge podge of different sounds, and I guess moving the albums release a month early, and the first 5 tracks coming out in December and a big effect on the engineering, which is a shame because it's very noticeable from beginning to end.

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To me, I like to imagine the whole album having an "apocalyptic" feel to it. I don't imagine the end of the world being kind to making an album. Trust no one but never stop moving. Ghosttown's crackle at the beginning gave it a vintage sound that I thought was a great detail. I prefer the revised version of Living for Love (you can find it in the forums). IT sounds fuller and more rounded. It is basically the version used in the music video minus animal sounds. Diplo's final cut of BIM was better and worse at the same time. The instrumental was much better while the vocals got slightly worse. I jsut listened to the whole album yesterday and I did find a drop in volume on Hold Tight compared to the songs around it. Beautiful Scars and Graffiti Heart seemed like they were remembered at the last second, but I personally love the final version more than the demo.

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I agree with you, the mixing/mastering process was rushed probably because of the leaks and there are many many many mistakes in the production.

Living For Love having horrible differences of vocal takes between the 2 verses (You've broken my heart - as you said), the 'Up' reverb cut on the 2nd breakdown, Devil Pray having different vocals bounced together in the 'But if you wanna save your soul, then we should/could travel all together" etc etc.

I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing (I produce too so I notice literally every single mistake, and that's a problem).

I use the leaked Living For Love-revised (used for the music video) and a re-mastered Bitch I'm Madonna without the wrong vocal cut intro instead of the regular album versions

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32 minutes ago, Dazedmadonna said:

I agree with you, the mixing/mastering process was rushed probably because of the leaks and there are many many many mistakes in the production.

Living For Love having horrible differences of vocal takes between the 2 verses (You've broken my heart - as you said), the 'Up' reverb cut on the 2nd breakdown, Devil Pray having different vocals bounced together in the 'But if you wanna save your soul, then we should/could travel all together" etc etc.

I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing (I produce too so I notice literally every single mistake, and that's a problem).

I use the leaked Living For Love-revised (used for the music video) and a re-mastered Bitch I'm Madonna without the wrong vocal cut intro instead of the regular album versions

What is the remastered version of BIM you have? Diplo's or another version?

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I think some people are re-writing history.  As I recall, she was still trying to decide which mixes to go with.  And once the leaks happened, she specifically stated, it forced her to change some of the songs up as she didn't want to put out the same versions that had leaked. 

 

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I think we can put a lot of these errors down to, simply, 'too many cooks spoiling the broth. Earlier albums, like Ray of Light, were the work of one (or maybe more) major producer, newer albums use far too many. No wonder things sound patchy, messy, and unfinished. Rushing the album also didn't help.

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Quote

On the morning of Dec. 17, Steve Berman, vice chairman of Madonna's label distributor Interscope, was on the phone with her and Oseary. "She was in a very angry, upset, emotional place," Berman recalls. He had visited her in New York the week prior to hear some of the album's first finished songs with label president/CEO John Janick. "She told me, 'Steve, I care about my music. I can't have the songs being heard the wrong way.' "

Berman was confident that Apple's iTunes could be engaged to turn around an official release of finished Rebel Heart tracks on a dime, even though the digital retailer's servers would effectively shut down for the year on Dec. 19, just two days later. But he faced two major hurdles: pushback from the upper rafters at Universal Music Group ("Should we just wait and do it all at the top of the year?" was the response from one executive) and the availability of iTunes vp content Robert Kondrk, who was already on vacation with his family in Mexico.

During the next 48 hours, Kondrk was able to help Apple greenlight a Rebel Heartpreorder that would include six instant-gratification songs for download by midnight ET on Dec. 20 -- including "Living for Love," the set's first single, which was initially intended for a Valentine's Day release (and will now be promoted to radio on Feb. 10). However, Madonna had to make sure the six songs were in finished form, so she holed up in her New York studio working on the final mixes into the wee hours of the morning of Dec. 18. "There was no time to call any of the producers -- nothing," says Oseary. "Just her final mastering sessions."

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6436370/madonna-rebel-heart-leak-inside-story

 

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I appreciate this thread and post so much @RUADJAI

Yes being a Madonna fan, you kind of become an audiophile too and it's true that beginning with MDNA (carrying over to RH) the mixing was simply quite subpar. No -- way below the usual quality superior Madonna mixing and equalizing we were used to pre-2012 Madonna. I will put the blame on the many "producers" of these two albums especially on RH. 

No worries though, I believe M14 will see a return to supreme quality MADONNA sound we all know and love.

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Also, I still think that this should've been the released version of LFL. Yeah yeah Keszia, Gorgon City sounds from 2014, but come on it had more of MNEK's vocals... and sounded less "rushed" and "forced" 

AND MNEK should've been more featured on RH, like more of his vocals and music styles! Would've put more of a cohesion so to speak. Meh, oh well

 

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I'm so happy that this time she's able to release her album the way she wants to (fingers crossed)!!!  

I remember it was taking her so long to get RH out, and fans were getting impatient, but we know it was probably due to the fact there were, to use the phrase again, "too many cooks in the kitchen".  

Looking back, Rebel Heart really sounds like it was too much marketing involved from the get-go with the song titles even.  Holy Water, Messiah, etc, they all sound like "typical classic Madonna song titles" IMO, no matter how much I like those songs & their titles tbh.

 

 

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