Extracting individual voices from reel to reel recorded ensemble singing

[Ramon Amira]

I want to revive a stage musical that I wrote thirty years ago, and market it. I have (all) the songs on lead sheets, and in any case I know the entire score from memory, and could play it all on piano. I am missing one piece, and as luck would have it, it's the most important piece in the musical. The problem is that it is an ensemble piece, with six or maybe seven singers, sometimes all singing at the same time, sometimes in unison, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in counterpoint, sometimes two or three, etc. If I could separate out the individual parts I could transcribe them to sheet music. So I have some questions.

All the songs were recorded in a professional studio on reel to reel tape in 1994. I think by then reel to reel was digital. I do recall that the sound engineer who did the recording, besides giving me the reel to reel tape, also gave me a mini disc. If he made a mini disc from the reel, I assume that means the reel is digital. The disc is lost forever.

Assuming that I can have a digital reel, either original or as I understand it can be converted to digital, my question is, is there any way of a sound engineer separating out the various sung parts into individual files. Maybe these days with AI. If I had files for each individual part, I could reconstruct the whole thing in sheet music. Is that possible.

Thanks for any help.
Ramon

 

[Art Welter]

Ramon,

It is doubtful any reel to reel tape recorded in 1994 would be anything but an analog recording.
1/4" tape could be in twin track or quarter track format at 7.5, 15, or 30 inch per second, and one of a half dozen Dolby or DBX noise reduction formats may have been used in the recording.
The reel to reel would have been re-recorded to the lost MiniDisc, a magneto-optical digital format from 1992, or the MiniDisc could have been recorded at the same time as the analog reel to reel as a backup instead of using the more common analog cassette format.

There are still many studios and individuals with reel to reel tape machines.
If the tape can be played back, it can be re-recorded to a digital format.

Using a digital format it might be possible to isolate individual parts from a stereo mix with a program like RipX, but would take time.

Programs like Auto-Tune have note identification.

AnthemScore has a display that identifies notes, and can actually create scores from them.

Harmonics may make it appear there are separate notes played, but since you know all but one part, should help in figuring what's what.

Good luck recovering the missing piece!

Art