Elton John - "Philadelphia Freedom" with The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 1986 (AI Simulation)

As you must know if you are a viewer of this channel, the song "Philadelphia Freedom" was part of the setlists starting in Europe for Elton John's 1986 "Ice On Fire" tour and most of "Tour De Force". The song was cut by the time of the December 14, 1986 broadcast.

However, the song was not one of the few that got shifted from the band set to the orchestra set. When Elton revisited these orchestral concerts in the early 2000s, the song was given the full orchestral arrangement.

It really isn't arguable that the song was at it's best with the expanded band for Elton's 1986 band, and if the song had been done with the orchestra in combination with that band? It would be the most legendary arrangement of the song, period.

So I wanted to see if I could simulate what it may have sounded like had "Philadelphia Freedom" been part of the setlist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1986! The way I did this - I took the 2004 Radio City Music Hall television broadcast version of the song and isolated the orchestra. I then spent a rather annoying amount of time adjusting the tempo to match an isolated instrumental of the 1986 band's arrangement of the song. Finally I synced them together, adjusted levels/reverb, and had my legendary arrangement. But then we needed vocals.

I trained a new voice AI strictly on vocals isolated from the 1987 official album release of the 1986 Sydney concert so that I would have the vocal quality I wanted and it would be more accurate. The video release has a flange effect on the voice in certain spots which I didn't want, thankfully the album kept the vocals clean.

I then had to record myself singing the song using the phrasing and mannerisms that I imagined he'd have been using by this point given how his voice was, and ran it through the AI. Admittedly the AI could've had a little more roughness but in the mixing stage I did some adjusting to the formant of the vocal to give it a little bit of a deeper sound and it definitely helped.

And finally...this was the result! I hope you all like it and that it gives a decent idea of what could've been if he had done the song with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra back in 1986.