Hey Guys, hope everyone is doing good !

For those not in the know, recently there was a crowdfunding group set up to purchase a really rare and expensive session for Madonnas most excellent tune, Everybody, which I may or may not have thrown a few sheckles in for.

Crowdfunding for stems.. who`d a thunk it? oh…wait..

anyway..

What is also not known is the amount of work going on behind the scenes atm, which is not really seen by many, so just want to say a little thanks to those pulling far more than their weight to help the cause and CR. It is not going unnoticed. Great to see the talent and dedication of some of you, must admit. Making me look like a beginner lol.

Which brings me swiftly back round to this. The DVD that was purchased, had more data on it than just the original 30 track multi..in fact there are another couple of things on there that were, until now, super hard to recover.. as you`ll see. I`m not going to personally go into the process of how these files have managed to be rescued, I`m going to let one of our backroom guys let you know how it was done. Hopefully the endeavours of our man, (now with even more grey hair apparently – erm.. join the club!) could be an inspiration to all. Or, at least, it`ll be good info if stuff like this ever has to be done again.. so excuse the copy n paste, but there really is no other way to get these deets out. Bit of a long read, but stick with it !

So, after a little to-ing and fro-ing with some emails, here`s where we are.. like I say, copying this pretty much verbatim.

“I have had a bit of game trying to sort these PT Sessions out but we now have two loadable sessions.

I have never used PT before so it was a VERY steep learning curve and that after spending a day trying to cure a PT install causing the Blue Screen Of Death. But I got it stable enough to sort the mess of these stems out after a fashion.

Both sessions come with the full-length stems but with the clip list intact, however, all of the clip info is missing so useless. If clip info had been there, I might have been able to rebuild the clips.

As it was, with the help of several other people, I was able to learn how to relink the full-length stems to the clip list and then drag them in to the session. This gives us a PT Multitrack session as opposed to a straight arranger/production session.

You probably know more about this than me (EDIT – I dont), but from what I have learnt from asking around, as the audio files were in .sd2 format, that these sessions were created in early versions of Pro Tools or Sound Designer which the newer versions of PT no longer support.. but I was pointed to a handy dandy windows app called sdTwoWav (freeware) that converts sd2 files to Wav.

It worked perfectly and you can get it here: http://www.railjonrogut.com/sdTwoWav.htm
Its safe to download and use and is spoken about on the Avid PT forum.

When I first opened the session file it gave the message that the session had been created on a Mac without being made Windows compatible. I also learned that on a Mac all audio files (incl Clip files) have two parts, 1. The audio file, 2. A Resource Fork that contains information about the audio file incl the clip info such as file type, bit rate etc, position on the session timeline, length of clip, where any fades start and end, what stem the clips are linked to and so on.
As this is MAC specific it needs to be deliberately saved to any session file intended to be opened on a PC. If this has not been done the second any file is copied onto a Windows drive of any kind that info is lost, forever gone.

You will see from the clip list there are multiple takes of different sounds and without any info there is no way of knowing if Clip Snare 1, 2, 3 or 4 was used and at what point in the track.
There are also some clip files labelled PtN.cit and no one I have asked knows what they are.

It is what is and at least there are two distinct PT multi sessions which no one else seems to have bothered with (EDIT- wonder why !!) so a little exclusive for CR.

When you first open the sessions you will get a pop up asking you to search for missing files, select the automatic option and it should find the newly linked wav files. (tested 3 times here and it works).
Let me know if you’re able to open them or not, I have put them on Mega for you to grab, links below.

Everybody_Orig.rar

As far as I can tell this is the original song multi and the song is longer then the 2nd multi.

Madonna – Everybody (Original Key)(Multitrack & ProTools Session)(84 Mono Tracks)(44.1k-16bit)

Everybody_For_Liver_PB.rar

This is the multi for the production of stems for playback during a live performance of Everybody which I am guessing from the names of some of the stem tracks would be sometime in 1993 and is shorter than the first”.

Madonna – Everybody (Live Version)(-2 Semitones)(Multitrack & ProTools Session)(65 Mono Tracks)(44.1k-16bit)

Now if thats not dedication to the cause, I dont know what is !