The rest of this write-up here was written by Fabio:
Inspired by Paul's "Near Acappella"
Carpenters collection from some years ago, I decided to check if
there were "full acappella" versions of Carpenters songs
available, since in recent years audio tools (with or without AI)
have gotten better separating vocals from instrumentals. It turns out
there are indeed a lot of acappella versions of Carpenters songs out
there, so I selected the best ones I could find. At first, the album
I made from the acappella versions I found made for a relatively
short album. So Paul suggested "two or three more tracks."
But I got excited with my "new toy" (the MVSEP online tool
that makes it possible to segregate all kinds of tracks from a
multitrack source) and ended up creating an additional dozen tracks
myself, while also finding some more. That ended up being too much
for a single disc. So, as per another suggestion by Paul, this became
a "twofer", or two volume collection. These albums may be
considered twin siblings of the earlier "Near Acappella"
collection.
I got about half of the tracks from YouTube
channels or Facebook fan groups, and the remaining were done with
MVSEP. I used Audacity software to exclude instrumental breaks,
intros, and outros, as well as cleaning up the occasional odd
instrument (a drum roll, a sax riff), in order to keep this new
collection truly "full acappella." All those that have
"[Edit]" in their titles had some additional cleaning done
by Paul or me (other than what was already done by whoever shared the
acappella tracks originally).
We (myself and Paul)
discussed a bit about pros and cons of including harmony vocals (by
Richard and/or backing singers, or even occasionally a full choir,
like in "Sing" and "Goodnight"). Paul was
inclined to keep only Karen's leading vocals. But I argued that a
full album with just Karen's voice, regardless of how beautiful it
is, could sound a bit monotonous, while the harmony vocals help to
provide additional color and variety. So, in the end, we decided to
keep them.
---
There's more to Fabio's comments, including explanations of the sources of all the songs. Check out the Word file included in the download zip for that. However, here's one final comment from him, about the bonus track:
While mining for tracks, I found two already done acappella versions of "We've Only Just Begun": one with only Karen's lead vocal track, and another with lead vocals and harmony vocals. Both are good - the "lead singing only" is more intimate and a bit melancholic, while the "lead vocals with harmonies" is quite exquisite. So, I suggested to Paul that we could keep them both, one at the official track list and another as a bonus track for Volume 1.
This album is 46 minutes long.
01 I'll Be Yours [Edit] (Karen Carpenter)
02 Goodnight (Carpenters)
03 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)
04 Maybe It's You [Edit] (Carpenters)
05 [They Long to Be] Close to You [Edit] (Carpenters)
06 Baby It's You (Carpenters)
07 Rainy Days and Mondays [Edit] (Carpenters)
08 [A Place to] Hideaway (Carpenters)
09 Sometimes (Carpenters)
10 A Song for You (Carpenters)
11 Goodbye to Love [Edit] (Carpenters)
12 Sing [Edit] (Carpenters)
13 From the Heart Comes the Soul (Carpenters)
14 Aurora (Carpenters)
15 Only Yesterday [Edit] (Carpenters)
16 Solitaire [Edit] (Carpenters)
17 Love Me for What I Am [Edit] (Carpenters)
18 Eventide (Carpenters)
19 Good Friends Are for Keeps (Carpenters)
20 Ordinary Fool [Edit] (Carpenters)
We've Only Just Begun [Harmony Vocals Version] [Edit] (Carpenters)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/En3Makbp
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/2L3B4h5poc7r7wm/file
I don't know anything about the cover image except it's Karen Carpenter "circa 1970." The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.
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