Friday 29 January 2010

The Playlist -The Beatles

Catching up on Six Months of Music for me is like a lifetime. So I think I'll try and work backwards and see when I run out of steam. Starting with Beatles (did I say backwards):

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The Beatles are such an integral part of the emotional side of my musical education it is very difficult to treat their recorded work subjectively so I am not going to try. To me from the first strains of "I Saw her standing there" to Paul's comic exit on "Her Majesty" spanning only 7 years from 1963 to 1969 there is no other body of work of such listenable genius in the history of music.

And then they were collectively gone.....
Beyond the end there was only John and for for, oh, such a short time.
8th December 1980 was the day my music died

"And while Lennon read a book of Marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died."

What did Don McLean know?

I grew up listening to these guys on the radio only sub-consciously acknowledging them but then just as their light was turned out at Abbey Road I started on my hormonally charged journey into the nether regions of music (just ask my friends) with the Beatles, Tchaikovsky, Holst and a host of denominational music forming a panoramic backdrop.

It is special to me that the complete works of the Beatles are not a work of musical virtuosos but a group of 4 musical experimenters from Liverpool with a sense of humour and good human sensibilities that when put together made magic.

John, Paul, George Ringo
What other group of musicians are universally known by their 1st names.

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So what is all this about it?
The guys at Apple (no its not the new i-Beatle, its the "other" apple) have finally re-mastered the whole catalogue This has clearly been a work of love bringing the original mixes to pristine almost current day audio quality over 40 years on.

The Beatles - Boxed Sets
I am now the proud owner of both the Stereo & Mono Beatles 2009 box sets (thank you my love). I think everybody in the house (except me) are sick of the Beatles now, C'est la vie. These are gorgeous re-masters beautifully packaged. The packaging will of course disappear into a corner gathering dust once the booklets, inserts and mini LP covers have been looked at a couple of times but these best versions of some of best rock songs of all time will last forever, actually drop the rock.

The early albums have had all the original excitement put back
The later albums have all the original intricacies pulled out and put right in your face
On all albums you hear things you have never heard before unless you've never heard them before.

The mono re-master of Sgt. pepper is truly magical. Magical mystery tour in both Mono and Stereo are (different) revelations and are becoming favourites. The White Album is still timeless, but now feels eternal. With the new Help, Revolver & Rubber Soul (my favourite as a pre-teen when I thought Norwegian wood was about A Norwegian Wood not Norwegian Wood) mixes it is hard to believe that they were recorded mid-sixties albums.


A Geeky Bit - Go no further ye of weak stamina

Why both Stereo & Mono?
During the Sixties Stereo was still a novelty only of interest to HiFi buffs and mostly for Classical music. As such, the band only paid attention to the Mono mix and left it to, occasionally, George Martin their producer or, more often than not, to some of the junior engineers to rush out a stereo mix (enjoy the now pristine quality screw up on the vocal panning in Eleanor Rigby for instance). Also pop producers hadn't really figured out that you should attempt to balance the sound across the stereo field rather than for instance, sticking vocals on one side (usually right) and all the instruments on the other.

Please Please Me was recorded on a 2 tracks tape recorder which gave them no flexibility on a Stereo mix. They moved to 4 on Hard Day's Night and eventually to a massive 8 on the White Album and thereafter. There are some notes multi-track below for insomniacs and other assorted persons with too much time on their hands.

Anyway, in order to compensate for the lack of available recorded tracks they used some studio tricks like multi-tracking and echo (to take out the dryness in the studio). Unfortunately once you had done all of this added to the small number of resulting tracks there still wasn't much flexibility to do a good Stereo mix.

To sum it up
Up to and including "Magical Mystery Tour", the authentic, band supervised mixes were in Mono. With "Abbey Road" and "Let it Be" only on Stereo. One day I'll try and pick track by track favorites "authentic" or otherwise (I bet you can't wait). But until then:

MONO: Please Please Me, With The Beatles, For Sale, Mono Masters
BOTH: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour
STEREO: A Hard Days Night, Help, The White Album, Let it Be (no choice), Abbey Road (no choice), Past Masters
NEITHER:Yellow Submarine - The only Beatles dud ... But then there is "All you need is love" I guess and "A Northern Song" oh, and "Its all too much". OK make it Stereo

Historical Note on Tape Recorders (can't believe I am doing this)
Eight track had been available on 1" tapes since the 1940's when, I believe, Bing Crosby helped Ampex develop it based on an idea from Les Paul (the guitarist who, by the way, designed the Les Paul guitar that is still heavily used in all areas of Music today). Apparently 8 track was not considered appropriate for Pop music oh dear me no. Post Beatles (but not due to them) the number of usable tracks just escalated up to 24 tracks per tape and with synchronised recorders up to 96 tracks. Toto used this set-up, but it didn't help the music.

And then came Digital....Infinite tracks anybody?
And completely different ways of using tracks, but that is another story.

LET IT BE!
"Let it be" used mainly a "live stereo" recording that records actual positioning of voice and instruments with 2 tracks. This used to be used to record accurate live performances (as long as nobody coughed).

I MEANT LET THIS TAPE STUFF BE
OK

"Now it's time to say good night
Good night Sleep tight
Now the sun turns out his light
Good night Sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me
Dream sweet dreams for you"


Bloody Ringo

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