abba "take a chance on me"

I sent a couple of you guys an MP3 that I edited from CD.

Did that edit sound right and if so, do you need more help with the edit points?

I know how it was done and where all the parts are. It's just hard to describe clearly.

The way they got rid of the talking was to take the second "Take a Chance On Me" in each case (which had no talking) and replaced the first.

The second instance is harder to re-create because when they extended the swirly sound for a half second or so they didn't edit on beat points like most edits. Only after I noticed how the strings stayed on through that section did I realize that they took a half second of audio and repeated it. But they did it in a very odd way and it took me some time to find the exact piece.    

Bill

Yeah Bill's edit is amazing!

My guess as to why the American record company(Atlantic) needed to do those edits was the promotion department thought radio programmers wouldn't cotton to those spoken passages (they are somewhat distracting to the overall confection of the record), and it was hard back then to get an overseas record company to remix a single sometimes.

With Abba's current iconic status, it's easy to forget that EVERY American single was somewhat of a challenge to get on the air (and work up the charts). They were never "automatics".

I would love to find out if indeed that edit was made by an Atlantic employee, or perhaps it WAS also released promotionally overseas.

Andy

A friend has just asked me a question about "Take A Chance On Me," which led me to listen to the 3:25 white label test pressing for the first time since 1978. (My station began playing the track immediately from The Album. When the test pressing was issued, every jock on the staff felt that the edit didn't cut it, so to speak, so we stuck with the LP track until the 3:30 DJ 45 was issued a short time later.)

In comparing the test pressing's stereo side with the stereo side of the official 3:30 DJ 45, I noticed that for the remainder of the song following the a capella intro, Benny and Bjorn's vocals are nearly mixed out. The word "chance" brings them a bit forward each time it comes up, but otherwise they're pretty much lost in the woods. By comparison, the official DJ 45 has them featured much more prominently throughout the latter part of the tune.

That discovery was interesting in itself, but Benny and Bjorn's more-distant vocals on the test pressing were the opposite of what my friend said he once heard:

Later in its run, one FM station started playing a mix where the boys' chant was enhanced, panned both left and right, out of synch just enough that they were as clear as the girls, which is not the case on the album mix.

I'm not familiar with any such mix. Does this description ring a bell with anyone?

jimct wrote: Way back in his initial post, my friend Ed states that his 45 has a listed time of (4:05), but an actual time of (3:58). However, my commercial 45, which also has a listed time of (4:05), instead features an actual run time of (4:01). FYI, my 45's deadwax is "ST-A 34598-1".

I don't own a 45 of this, but I will note that the 3:58 version on Billboard Top Hits 1978 has a complete fadeout -- in other words, it fades out to nothing but hiss, then the song quickly ends. Which means that an early fade during the CD's mastering can't account for its shorter length. So there may indeed be two different 45 pressings with slightly different run times.

FYI, the final line of the fadeout on that 3:58 version on the Billboard 1978 CD is "gotta put me."

Wanna do my very best
Baby can't you see
Gotta put me--

End of music. One second of tape hiss. End of track.

Edited by Brian W.

The database currently states that DJ 45 copies of ABBA's "Take a Chance on Me" run 3:30 and 3:25 and that commercial copies all run 4:01, not 4:05 as stated on the record label. I can also confirm that the song's actual vinyl LP run time is 3:55, not 4:05 as stated on the label. This might help explain why "Take a Chance on Me" runs closer to this shorter length on several CDs.