Time for Livin'

[WesleyOHSnaps!]

I don't know anything about music recording, but has anyone else experienced the vocals missing from Time for Livin' on Spotify and now the new iTunes Radio?

[dirtydan11]

Back when the video for the song first aired I saw it and it had vocals. I recorded it on VHS 8 hours later at a friends when I knew Much Music would air it again.
To my surprise there were no vocals on it all of a sudden!
We ended up concluding that the vocals only show up in proper stereo playback and not the shitty mono vcr my friend had recorded it in.
That was over 20 years ago and I never experienced it again.

[djB]

This happens when the track is in mono.
Something strange happens to the bass I think on pass the mic too.

[JasonP]

I didn't know there were lyrics for a couple of years. My stereo at the time didn't play the lyrics and then I bought a discman and suddenly there were lyrics! mind blown!

[Bernard Goetz]

My boombox in college played the cassette of CYH without Time For Livin vocals. Blew my stoned fucking mind.

[easy 3]

I've got some kind of promo VHS that has the Time For Livin' video without vocals on it. I had always assumed it was because they were still awaiting the outcome of some kind of copyright agreement to cover the Sly Stone lyrics, but I guess a lot of TVs are mono, so this might be a more accurate explanation?

It's one of my all-time favourite songs (Beastie or otherwise),and some of the skateboarding featured in the video was right up to date at the time, and is still pretty sick to this day.

[Micodin]

Mullet Head on the VHS didn't have lyrics and when I finally got it on the EP there were lyrics. I was confused to which version I liked better. Still am.

[3stooges]

I put Time For Livin in Ableton, and put a mono plugin on it. The vocals are gone. Wow that is so weird. Apparently it is because of some weird phase issue, how the vocal was mixed. It's weird. I tried to look it up online but couldn't find any real clear explanation. It is mysterious. You wouldn't think that something would just disappear completely when you sum to mono. I would think I would still be able to hear it a little, but I can't. It's interesting. I wonder if they did it intentionally. Probably not, ha.

[tt5brevisited]

Two instances of the same (mono) vocal, one panned hard L, one panned hard R, one inverted.
Collapsed into mono this results in silence.

They might have done this to create width.

[phade1]

I wonder if the different versions they released with or without lyrics have any thing to do with the fact that they didn't write the lyrics themselves.

Time for Livin' is a Sly and the Family Stone song written by Sly/Sylvester Stewart. The Beasties used the lyrics over their own hardcore track.

[phade1]

I wonder if the different versions they released with or without lyrics have any thing to do with the fact that they didn't write the lyrics themselves.

Time for Livin' is a Sly and the Family Stone song written by Sly/Sylvester Stewart and he did get credit on Check Your Head but maybe not on all releases. The Beasties used the lyrics over their own hardcore track.

[Brother McDuff]

its called cancellation. as tt5b said, its due to phasing. phasing is a common effect, and when put in mono can create a bevy of cancellation issues depending on how out of phase the source and effect signals are (essentially the delay between the source and effect return). when the two signals are perfectly out of phase, then complete cancellation occurs, such as this case.

[facedownfall]

its called cancellation. as tt5b said, its due to phasing. phasing is a common effect, and when put in mono can create a bevy of cancellation issues depending on how out of phase the source and effect signals are (essentially the delay between the source and effect return). when the two signals are perfectly out of phase, then complete cancellation occurs, such as this case.


Exactly! I have played "Time For Livin'" in my dj sets and you can hear the vocals through the headphones but not on the PA.

[kanderer]

So I played Time for Livin' today via my iTunes library. Same file I've had, ripped from my original 1992 CYH CD, since 2009. Today it played without the lyrics. WTF? It's my own MP3 copy of the song that I've listened to 100 times before.

Freaky.

[b-grrrlie]

iTunes has a right to do anything with your library. It can even delete your own music, meaning music you've made yourself. Read the fine print, There's a good blog about it, but can't find it now. https://www.google.se/search?client=firefox-b&q=itunes+deleted+my+music&oq=itunes+deleted+my+m&gs_l=serp.1.0.0l2j0i22i30l8.58689.59536.0.61809.5. 4.0.1.1.0.103.301.1j2.3.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..1.4 .309._pYTm6v4VjA

[Sir SkratchaLot]

I think that if you have your speakers hooked up wrong (out of phase) you'll get the cancellation effect on the vocals. That's why you could play the track, hear the vocals in the headphones, but then not hear the vocals over the speakers.

[CHECKHEAD2004]

So I just got a new Bluetooth speaker, it’s a JBL charge 4. This was the first time I listened to check your head on it and I was shocked to not have any lyrics on this song. I’ve never ever ever heard of that before. I thought I was hearing things at first or not hearing things. LOL Anyways a quick Google search brought me to this message. Nice to see you all are still on here.
It’s so weird because in my car the lyrics are fine it’s just on this one speaker there’s absolutely no lyrics on the song. Crazy. BBoys are messing with us.

[Sir SkratchaLot]

My question for them would be whether this was done on purpose. I can't imagine Mario C missing something like this and it seems like something MCA would do on purpose. I think most mixing and mastering engineers work in stereo and mono to optimize across various playback systems so it presumably would have been caught.

[tt5brevisited]

My question for them would be whether this was done on purpose. I can't imagine Mario C missing something like this and it seems like something MCA would do on purpose. I think most mixing and mastering engineers work in stereo and mono to optimize across various playback systems so it presumably would have been caught.

Not TFL but:
https://youtu.be/bPSCSIBup6M?list=PLA3xt7Uq00qvc3_VUnKsyN1B2Si-aWx26&t=515

[Sir SkratchaLot]

Not TFL but:
https://youtu.be/bPSCSIBup6M?list=PLA3xt7Uq00qvc3_VUnKsyN1B2Si-aWx26&t=515

Notice how he said "... which is nice". :eek:

[fonky pizza]

Time for Livin' is a Sly and the Family Stone song written by Sly/Sylvester Stewart and he did get credit on Check Your Head but maybe not on all releases. The Beasties used the lyrics over their own hardcore track.
(y)yeah! Time for living is on of my fav hardcore songs along with Mullet head and Hearts attack man. :)