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Karen's Voice In Your Lap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj0ihJrLLkE

This video originally began as a Real Media Audio file I found on an old hard drive. I can't recall where I originally found that file - it may have been offered on a Yahoo Carpenters group or I may have found it with WinMX or LimeWire.

The title of the clip is "Karen's Voice In Your Lap" (SACD 2005 lead-vocal samples.rm). The clip consists of excerpts from 5 Carpenter songs. On each song, all you hear is Karen's voice front and center with just the barest musical accompaniment - drums, bass guitar, and piano. There are no strings, horns, and no overdubbed or background vocals.

I think the clip was released in conjuction with the release of SACD version of the CD "Carpenters Singles 1973-1981" in 2005. I have that CD, but don't have a SACD player. I'm wondering - if I played the SACD disc on an SACD player, would I be able to hear every Carpenters song like this - Karen's voice front and center?

It's been several years since I've listened to it, but immediately I knew I wanted to use it in a video. However, there was a problem. Windows Movie Maker is not equipped to use Real Media Audio files. So I had to convert it. I found some software online that converts those files and I converted it to a WAV file that ran for 5 minutes, 51 seconds. Now I could begin my video.

I began by assembling the various videos you see in this compilation. There is no video of Karen singing the excerpt from "This Masquerade," so I used the video she made for the Karen-Ella medley from the "Music, Music, Music" special. So you'll notice that the lip movements are out of synch with the music. For the "Sing" video, I used the Japanese "Sing" video. Again, since Karen and Richard are singing in Japanese, the lip movements don't match.

Once I had all the videos, I used Nero Wave Editor to edit the WAV file into 5 separate files (Ticket to Ride, This Masquerade, Sing, Please Mr. Postman, and Yesterday Once More). Then I used Windows Movie Maker to edit each video down to size to match the audio clips. Once I had the video excerpts, I muted each clip, then inserted my WAV file onto the clip. By shifting the audio back and forth on the storyboard, I finally got the audio to match the lip-movements, clicked SAVE, and then created my MOVIE file.

Then I opened Windows Movie Maker to create a new project, which gave me a bare storyboard. I imported each of my 5 videos on the storyboard in the order that the song appeared on the original clip. Then I placed photos of Karen and Richard on the storyboard in the "breaks" between each song. Then I created my title credits. Lastly, I used a fragment on "Yesterday Once More" from Richard's "Pianist, Arranger, Composer, Conductor" CD to accompany the fade out at the end of the video.

There's a couple of interesting moments in the video - an unintentionally funny moment when you see Richard onscreen, but with Karen's voice singing, "He's got a ticket to ride," but it also helps to show the how the overdubbing of vocals helped to create the "Carpenters sound." Another interesting moment occurs during Please Mr. Postman at the end, when you hear Karen hold a note - "the sooner, the better-ah-AH!" - an effect that wasn't as noticeable on the original recording, because the overdubbed voices tended to mask it. And listen to when she sings "it's yesterday once mo-o-ore..." with her "chest" voice that so many Carpenter fans love.

From start to finish, this video took about six-and-a-half hours to create. But I felt it was worth it, just to salvage a six-minute audio clip that most people might have never heard. I hope you enjoy it

She stills sounds just as magical, even more so.

That was beautiful
I would love to have been able to hear her sing with no backing at all, something like 'Rainy Days and Mondays' or 'A Song For You', cos I think that would have sounded amazing. Her voice on it's own was stunning.

Sara x

I have to admit, that voice in my ear made me jump! Even though I have loved that voice in my ear all these years and would've thought I was used to it, but this is something special.

I love how it closes with Yesterday Once More, because that's the first song of theirs I heard when I was 9. I vivdly remember whipping around to stare at the radio on the shelf behind me, half-expecting to see someone right there singing to me. On the shelf, in my ear, in your lap, it's all the same kind of wonderful.

Ned, I originally put these on the forum. First I posted the collage, which is the one you have I'm guessing, then I posted the full songs, then posted the songs with their respective videos sync'd to them, then I did mixes using the surround channels from the SACD and sync'd those to video as well. The SACD contains the songs mixed as a whole, so they pretty much sound like their album counterparts, except in surround sound. I was able to get the isolated channels by transferring from the player to my sound card. It was quite awhile ago, but if you check the archives, you can see all the hoopla. Nice to see some of this stuff being heard again!
Edited by dvb-Classic, 14 June 2008 - 02:54 AM.

That was wonderful Robert, thank you for all your hard work. I was just wondering, are you still doing all this from the library or were you able to finally get a computer?
Robin

Awesome! I really enjoyed that.. thanks so much for sharing it. I love to hear vocals like that. You can really hear her voice nice and clear. Not to mention also that I can hear the drum parts really well.

When I knew that SACD by Carpenters would be released, I bought SACD player then the SACD. The first thing I did was to listen to only the center channel.
Then Matt joined this forum, and shared many videos and audios. Thanks again!
I was glad that Matt let other members hear the cneter channel.

But the only center channel sometimes don't sound right.
I love Matt's mix from the SACD.
I sometimes listen to them. Recently I put Matt's mix songs to my cellphone.

Sakura

Thanks for the info. I looked around and finally found your posts. Judging from the dates of the posts, I must have missed them all, because I joined the forum last year in June. I clicked on some of the links, and they've all expired... :-( I really would have liked to have heard those... Any possibility that you could reupload them? (fingers crossed)...

I second that totally!!

And thank you once more, Ned!

Edit: in some of the fragments she's singing on a track that she had already done vocal work onto, like in This Masquerade, Sing and Please mr. postman, we can hear bits of the backing vocals, and in Sing and Please mr. postman her lead vocal is already duplicated (in some verses in Sing and in the whole fragment in Please mr. postman). And in Yesterday once more there is at least one vocal overdub, since the word "a-WAAAAY" overlaps into the word "every", so they are from two different vocal takes.
Edited by betossantana, 14 June 2008 - 10:26 PM.

Now I want to hear every song like that, they should release regular CDs like that ( that aren't sacd or whatever ) I think that would make you respect her takent even more, just hearing her voice not hidden in all of that music and overdubbing, it would be awesome

I know, that would be great! I love all of the arrangements and the overdubbing!!!! but it would have been nice to hear more of Karen just singing with piano......like on the short songs from "Make Your Own...." A house is still a house, etc. More freedom/rubato in the music. That would have been awesome!!

jonathan

thank you so much...you make me happy

I was wondering if Mr. Nickerson could upload at least the audio track to that deleted video again, it was too beautiful to hear!