I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

^ Exactly!

Maybe if they were playing it at a house show and you could hear said keys. (Also, who's going to play rhythm guitar then?)

(Harpsichords are also kinda, uh, large. Did any bands tour with that kind of gear/overhead back then?)

I think Vox and Farfisa organs had harpsichord settings. Lennon's playing, what, a Vox at the '65 Shea Stadium show?

Rhythm guitar on "Fixing a Hole" - where is it??? Wikipedia says there's an acoustic on there...

Again, completely missing the point.

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican), Saturday, April 22, 2017 3:00 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, I think most of us are. What difference does it make if the songs "stand up" with or without production? The record's great as it is, and the whole reason they made it (and the only reason George didn't quit) is for the record to take the place of touring.

And what are we considering "production"? Additional instrumentation? Arrangements? Compression? How much compression? Overdubs? Which overdubs? Tape effects? Suggestions made by Emerick and/or Martin regarding how close the singers should stand to the mics?

The Shea instrument is indeed a Vox Continental. It had some sliders to adjust the sound but no 'instrument' patches like you'd see in synths later on. Wiki gives a nice lineup of famous tracks on which it can be heard - it's the California Sun/Light My Fire/I'm A Believer/Sir Douglas Quintet sound.

Meh. The record has some occasionally stunning moments - 'A Day In The Life' being the real achievement. As a collection of songs, though? Meh.

Odessey and Oracle still remains a far stronger record, as does the two LP's Small Faces did for Immediate.

I've read that the double manual Vox Continental had a harpsichord setting. They're the red buttons. I think it was just reeds and flutes for the single manual. Farfisas had a row of voice buttons.

There was an American band called the Mandrake Memorial who were signed to Poppy/MGM. I seem to recall that their first album has lots of fake harpsichord on it.

My suggestion, though, is that the Beatles could have made do with compact organ and/or electric piano on a certain amount of their material from this period, but Lennon would probably have had to be the guy a lot.

huh, didn't find anything about that other version of the continental, my bad!

apparently with a little modding you could get god knows what sounds out of these things. clearly they should have just hired this guy along to back them up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3DxMX7xDy4

Well firstly, what makes you think that Beatles audiences in late 1967 or early 1968 would have been full of people screaming uncontrollably? Different times, people would surely have calmed their tits by then.

― ...so music and chicken have become intertwined (Turrican), Saturday, April 22, 2017 6:22 PM (five hours ago)

this is kind of an interesting question because the beatles would seem like such a different band if they'd kept playing live. it's really hard to picture them playing, like, white album songs to screaming audiences. i can sort of imagine them doing really elaborate sgt pepper live performances, with sets and props and costumes, but not a full tour with stadiums and everything. maybe the audiences really would have calmed down by then. in retrospect it's bizarre to think of the beatles recording revolver, with songs like "tomorrow never knows," and then going on tour and playing chuck berry covers for kids who were still flipping out and making noise like it was 1964.

Totally. And it's not like screaming fans stopped being a think right away - pretty sure the Monkees got at least some of that.

two LP's Small Faces did for Immediate.

as a guy who has held many CHALLENGING OPINIONS in his life, I bow respectfully to "the two LPs Small Faces did for Immediate are better than Sergeant Pepper"

Hah!

idk Ogden's is p great

They're both great. The self-titled Small Faces album from '67 in particular is sorely underrated and the equal of Ogden's, IMO. Ogden's is best in its mono mix, but you can tell they deliberately went out of their way to make the stereo mix as interesting as possible, and as a result it seems like far more thought went into it than any of The Beatles stereo mixes.

Here I am, again, to say

A mono mix is more difficult to do than a stereo one.

Each instrument and sound combination needs to have the appropriate audibility, which is harder to achieve in one audio source.

Also, if the mono mix is done, what's left to do is to spread out 'guitar over there a bit, bass over there a bit, vocal 1, 2 etc slightly left and right, and don't alter any levels. There you go, stereo mixed.

how are the DeAgostini releases currently in whsmiths? i noticed the white album was out yesterday.

ditto the RSD version of S Fields / P Lane?

uhm okay so if u guys are done discussing whether Sgt. Pepper's has good tunes, I'd like to ask about this quote in RS abt the remaster/remix:

The remix is full of nuances any fan will notice, especially the bottom end – Starr’s kick drum reveals new dimensions. “There’s nothing new – this is the album they made,” Martin says. “All we do is peel back the layers of compression that were necessary to release music in 1967. It’s their album now. It’s just boys in a room, making noise.”

usually audiophiles complain that nowadays music is heavily compressed as opposed to the good old days, and I know this is to some extent fake nostalgia since for instance Motown singles supposedly were very loud and iirc most labels were doing loudness wars alreadyu in the 60s, but can someone say something abt the type of compression necessary in 60s production? is it mainly a kind of bass eq'ing due to vinyl groove limitations?

also Mark G, very interesting to hear abt mono being difficult to mix - do you happen to have a good source on this?

can someone say something abt the type of compression necessary in 60s production? is it mainly a kind of bass eq'ing due to vinyl groove limitations?

speaking of Motown, I heard this thing during the w-e :
https://youtu.be/EsMjTTFRHdY
I find it quite charming (and well done).
after more than 15 years, maybe it's time for a mashups comeback !

also Mark G, very interesting to hear abt mono being difficult to mix - do you happen to have a good source on this?

No, apart from personal experience (my demo tapes, I know, I know), but no-one's directly contradicted me as yet (and I have said that statement a few times, around the place) (I wonder what S.Hoffman's site might say, however).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsMjTTFRHdY&feature=youtu.be

I also discovered the Beatles'Rock band isolated tracks : some great stuff !
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bealtes+rockband+isolated

and you get to see them perform the pepper tracks... well sort of !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3BXAR1ZEF0

Yeah, get a couple of those isolated tracks (heck, get four) and mess around with the play buttons. Hey Presto - Instant Remix.

The "With a Little Help" one is pretty cool (I love that you can hear Paul's foot following the rhythm) !

Re: mono mixing vs. stereo mixing ... while it's true that with everything being in the centre while doing a mono mix, one has to be aware of how the levels are balanced at all times during the recording process and make sure no element overwhelms another, it really all depends on the nature of the project, the elements of the track and who is mixing.

Mixing a four track tape consisting of 1 x acoustic guitar, 1 x lead vocal, 1 x backing vocal and 1 x tambourine track in mono would be far easier than trying to cram 128 tracks into stereo in Pro Tools.

On the other hand, the mono mixes done in the '60s were done on four track tapes where there had been much bouncing down and the levels would have had to be considered right from the start of the recording.

Stereo mixing is a completely different skill to mono mixing and it obviously took a while for people to grasp how to use it. Taking the mono mix and seperating it out all at the same levels is not a good way to do it - this is how one ends up with crap mixes like the stereo Rubber Soul. The best way to do it is to mix from scratch with the format in mind using existing mixes as a reference -;this is how the better 5.1 mixes are done these days.

I seem to remember reading somewhere (and am open to correction) that the early Beatles stereo mixes were panned hard-left and hard-right because that's all that was available at the time -- there weren't mixing consoles designed specifically for stereo (or at least, none at EMI) that enabled the elements to be placed anywhere else other than in one or the other channel.

Xpost There is a lot to what you have said, yes.

To get a decent Stereo Mix, you would not want to start with what they were mixing when they did the mono (instruments mixed on channel 1, vocals on 2 and 3, extra instruments on 4)

As has been proved by how they have done the latest Stereo mix.

Panning controls were a lot less "finer" then than they are now, if I remember correctly, you could only pan to certain set positions in the stereo field. This is why when you hear things getting moved about in the stereo field in '60s stereo mixes, the panning movements seem sharp or "in steps" rather than the smooth panning we have now.

I don't know if they were panned/mixed, would not be surprised if they took that last 2 track tape and said Use that, and the mono mixdown happened at the cutting stage, as was the (lack of) stereo mixdown.

(I'm talking about the "Please Please Me" album there)

chasing around those isolated tracks upthread lead me to this McCartney 1969 vocal warm up for Oh Darling which is pretty entertaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmnrHsYMHfI&spfreload=10

As much as I love The Beatles, listening to the pre-Rubber Soul again has made it apparent that there's an excitement to a lot of that stuff which is just completely absent from a lot of The Beatles, bar things like 'Birthday' and 'Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey' etc. 'It Won't Be Long' and 'Any Time At All' are fucking fantastic examples of a band just going for it full-on and full of enthusiasm.

I think it would be fair to say the band's enthusiasm was tempered by more complex emotions and a certain amount of ambivalence by the White Album, but it's I'm So Tired that I sing to my daughter at bedtime, not Help!

Not... Good Night (or Helter Skelter) ?

band's enthusiasm was tempered by more complex emotions

they were also taking a lot of speed on those early tours

Helter Skelter is the encore (xp)

yeah, and a lot of pot/hero from the white album on, hence the slower, heavier (and bored ?) aspect, I guess.
Even if you compare a faster/old school number like "one after 909" on Let it Be with their performance in their earlier, it's striking.
they still made great songs, of course, but it's almost like they didn't compose the same way anymore (and I'm not talking about the fact that at the very beginning they were still composing together).
They changed/evolved drastically as composers/arrangers. Like it would seem unlikely the Lennon of 68 could write "You're going to lose that girl" just as unlikely as the McCartney of 64 could write "Let it Be" (let alone "You never give me your money")...

ahah. good way to ruin your effort for the bedtime song !

That said, regarding pot I think they started circa Help/Rubber Soul so it may not be the main reason for the change of songwriting/sound.

the clip of Lennon and Macca sharing a mic and doing Two Of Us in a pepped-up electric fashion is probably the liveliest recording of the last couple of years, aside from some of the medley on Abbey Road i guess. once again it's a bafflingly under-seen bit of footage, and obvs nowt like the version on the record.

Just to echo someone far upthread, the Miles-penned Macca 'autobiog' really is an eye-opening (if partial) vista on the whole Beatles phenom, and a joy to read, as well.

That said, regarding pot I think they started circa Help/Rubber Soul so it may not be the main reason for the change of songwriting/sound.

― AlXTC from Paris, Tuesday, April 25, 2017 7:25 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the Anthology, Ringo talks about how Help! was impossible to film because of how baked they were the whole time. One scene with all four of them took two days only because one of them would blow a line, and they'd all get the giggles, then another one would screw up a line, more giggles, etc. etc.

I think it would be fair to say the band's enthusiasm was tempered by more complex emotions and a certain amount of ambivalence by the White Album, but it's I'm So Tired that I sing to my daughter at bedtime, not Help!

― Impartial Father (stevie), Tuesday, April 25, 2017 9:17 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's great and everything, but it was 'Please Please Me', 'She Loves You' and 'I Saw Her Standing There' that they made their name with, not 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill', 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' or 'Glass Onion' ...

They also didn't make their name with "Till There Was You," "Anna," or "A Taste of Honey."

And as for "You know my name" ...

Like, people often forget this, but it's not like The Beatles suddenly clicked into place on Rubber Soul, they were writing huge hits and putting out some ballsy, punchy tracks out 1962-1964, and it's this stuff that led to Beatlemania. I think people just avoid this era because of the cover songs on the LP's, but it wouldn't be difficult or much of a stretch, given how much music they put out in this period, to put together a couple of all Lennon-McCartney LP's from the available material.