Madonna | Live To Tell (Change Request ReVision)
For this ReVision, I went after a top-three song from this artist and one that is considered the most exceptional ballad she ever wrote.
"Live to Tell" is the lead single from Madonna's third studio album, 1986's True Blue and It became Madonna's third number-one single in the US, and her second number-one that is featured in a film after "Crazy for You."
Written by Patrick Leonard for the score of the film Fire with Fire, the instrumental was shown to Madonna, who decided to use it for her husband Sean Penn's film At Close Range. She then wrote the lyrics and co-wrote/produced them with Leonard.
I have always loved this instrumental for its classic 80s instrumentation, synth choices, drum machines, and iconic early digital reverb.
The drum sound on this recording makes use of a recently developed technique at that time of gating the spatial effects returns of the drum tracks. The gate opens and closes quickly giving a nurse of huge transient and attack, but cuts the sustain and removes the decay of the reverb as to make the drums, especially the snare, jump out of the speakers.
This intentional use of a noise age as a creative device in this manner is a now-standard recording technique called gated-reverb. However, this technique was invented by accident while producer Steve Lillywhite and engineer Hugh Padgham were recording Phil Collins drum tracks on the song "Intruder" off Peter Gabriel's third studio album.
Collins would go on to make this sound a centerpiece of his work with almost every single hit record he made after this featuring this gated reverb drum sound.
For this ReVision, I actually for the first time, used parts of the original record, as I want to re-arrange this song for some time now.
Eventide's SP2016, the Lexicon224, and the EMT250 reverb is THE sound of the era as some of the first rack-mounted studio processors were being introduced. The entire tone of 1980s recordings arts can pretty much be summed up with just these three spatial effects alone.
I added a relevant rhythm section and drum programming, using these classic reverbs, added many more synthesis layers and harmonic textures, some string melodies, rhythm guitar, and a re-written keyboard part in the section in the bridge with a classic Yamaha DX7.
