Simple Twist of Fate: Dylan as you have never heard him before

Engineering and artistic endeavour: Paul Thompson.  Apologies: Tony Attwood

Because the main point of this article is a re-engineered version of a rehearsal of “Simple Twist of Fate” by Bob Dylan, here is the music first.  Explanations follow…

Last year we published a version of Maybe Someday as you will have never heard it before, using the same technique.  If you missed that article I would urge you to read it now, before going on.

But if you really don’t want to go back here’s the key sentence…

Paul: There’s a music editing program that’s been around for about a year called Spleeter. One can use it fairly easily to split a song into various instruments, such as vocals, drums, bass, and so on. I just used it on “Maybe Someday” (see article linked above) to remove the backing vocals through the instrumental break, as well as the end.

“I have to agree it sounds a lot better that way. I also lowered the drums and bass, since 1980s production tends to have too much of that.”

Paul then sent Untold Dylan another song that he had worked on in the same way, and because a) organisation and Tony don’t mix and b) Paul was far too polite to endlessly hassle about why his next piece had not appeared, the article gathered metaphorical dust.  But finally, the article has re-emerged and here it is…

Paul wrote at the time, “Here’s another one I want to send you cos I think I significantly improved it with an edit. It’s from the sample 1984 tour rehearsal. The take broke down partway through and then restarted. I edited it to make one coherent version. Again, I had to change the speed of one of the versions to get them to match. Note how the lyrics are drastically different from the album version.”

And just in case you read on from the top, rather than play the music, here it is again…

I’m really sorry Paul.  I’ll try and do better in the future.  Tony.

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