Is the Beatles 1962-66 (the 'red' alb) the only record of theirs that you need?

the running order of the blue album on CD is one of the reasons why this entire release got delayed by several months, apparently. when they added tracks they didn't do it in a chronological way (which is how the LP is sequenced), but then changed their mind and went back to get the CDs fixed before they were produced. it was too late and too expensive to redo the LPs.

I'd like to hear this kind of sonic clean-up on the Beatles' contemporaries whose records weren't that well recorded in the first place - the Stones, the Kinks, even someone like the Pretty Things.

woah woah woah no way dogg

I have to say I’ve always found the album design for red/blue very lazy and hastily put together and wished they had re-designed it for this reissue.

Also not having all the songs in chronological order as the first time around irks the hell out of me.

they are chronological on the CDs I believe, that's part of why the whole thing got delayed.

I liked the red and blue covers - it does put the Get Back cover to good use instead of letting it go to waste.

Peter Jackson's documentary up of the making of Now and Then:

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

the quality of the isolated vocal is pretty amazing. I'm quite sure I'll love the finished product here, I'm very easy to please with Beatles material.

obv a missed opportunity to apply this same treatment to Free as a Bird and Real Love, though I understand why they didn't (not wanting to detract from the attention this song warrants). There are murmurs that Anthology is being looked at again so maybe as part of that. I suspect that by the time that gets finished, McCartney and Ringo may not be around anymore though

I get it, but still kinda lol at that NASA control center looking ass setup.

And talking about their bleeding edge machine-learning technology while showing what look like FabFilter EQ plugins

The Anthology footage there looks really clean, wonder if he's been working on a reissue of that? Didn't he hint at something in the works when Get Back came out?

Tho, to be fair, that gigantic screen with the waveform is kind of what I picture whenever I see a H0ffman forum type rushing to post the DR scores for the new Styx live album.

I heard Pete Best is supposedly being involved in the similarly supposed revamped Anthology project. I really hope so.

Yes, he gave some footage of them in leathers to Peter Jackson for the Now and Then video. Earliest known of the band.

https://www.thebeatles.com/read-what-peter-jackson-says-about-making-beatles-last-music-video

The Anthology footage there looks really clean, wonder if he's been working on a reissue of that? Didn't he hint at something in the works when Get Back came out?

that was the music video for Now and Then, which he directed.

As Jordan says, great advert for FabFilter Pro-Q, I guess they didn't want to show the GUI for Jackson's stem software. It sounds like the track doesn't have that slappy Jeff Lynne drum sound, thank god.

yeah Lynne hasn't been involved in it at all beyond whatever he may have helped do in the 94 sessions, which I suspect was not much during the tracking stage.

For this he receives the 'Additional producer' tag.

It's hard to say for sure, but when they played George's acoustic guitar track, it sounded like it could've had Lynne's usual sound for acoustic guitar (which he loved to pile on to a lot of his productions) - basically thin out any lower frequencies, maybe add a lot of compression, etc. Just listen to his stuff with Tom Petty, he produced some stuff with him where it was mostly just a strumming acoustic guitar. I'll guess we'll know when they release the single, but regardless, when they played John's isolated vocal, that was really fucking cool.

There's gonna be so much of this kind of thing in the future, Halfway's comment upthread I think is pretty prescient.

Especially now that the cleaning-up end of things has finally been almost completely solved, in my work every day I use two simple 'Waves' Plugins ($29 apiece) that do really quite remarkable things with noise/reverb reduction

Idk exactly what Jackson's software is, that he's clutching so tightly, but it's reasonable to assume that they've gone much further down the route of managing to correctly separate instruments with a complex set of shared frequencies.

But the next thing coming down the wire is the ability to recreate/simulate lost (or never properly captured) frequencies, it's already here in the form of a couple of things that came out this year, and they're pretty decent but still limited.

When they have that licked in a few years, however, it'll be game on and the record companies will jump on this as the latest way to make us buy the same music. We'll all be given the opportunity to listen to Robert Johnson in crystal clear Dolby Atmos and the Hoffman forums will implode.

that recent Coltrane / Dolphy album that came out this year, Evenings at the Village Gate...that's the sort of thing I would love to hear this technology applied to. not that that album didn't sound good given it's source, but image being able to really separate those instruments and balance them out with a proper mix. There are loads of live and archive recordings like this that would really benefit.

Jackson has said he wants to do the Beatles Hamburg tapes as well.

It also extends into TV/Film/Radio archives too, spoken word is much easier to work on, in this way, than music.

The Hamburg tapes would be perfect, I forgot about those - I honestly think one of the great live albums in rock could've been had if that recording was better. The main problem is the vocals are almost impossible to hear. It's going to be tougher because you're dealing with more instruments across a wider range in a room with even worse acoustics, but given how well the Lennon cassette demo worked out, I'm sure a massive improvement can be made.

re: the pete best tape, it's rumored to be this which has been out for a while now; but Jackson did say it hadn't been seen...so I don't know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Lwh6BJGyw

Where exactly can we hear this at 2pm GMT? All the streaming services?

yep

https://open.spotify.com/track/4vziJcnB2Qyi9o4nIRUeN7?si=e8e07619efb74908

Definitely better than the Anthology songs, imo.

well, that's about as good as it could have been given the source. surprised to a degree how little mccartney actually sings on it. they really went with a full lennon vocal through the whole song.

Yeah, I was surprised by that as well.

McCartney's slide part is...okay? Shows how singular George's playing was.

It’s interesting as an artefact, and the heavily melancholic mood of the original song is developed well whilst avoiding going completely over the top.

Not sure about the strings though tbh.

My third listen now. This is gorgeous.

I like the strings.

george's slide parts were generally higher on the neck.

Regarding strings, I was wondering what is meant when it says that Giles Martin provided a string arrangement like George Martin did previously. Does he really create and write it himself? Is he really that musically accomplished? Or does he subcontract it to a specialist to do it, approve it, and then manage the process of how it's recorded?

string arrangement is really great, imo. feels a bit more like a john solo song than a beatles song, tho i could see it slotting onto disc 2 of the white album

Better than “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”, but that isn’t saying too much

better than love me do

the new Love Me Do remix is actual shit

ben foster is also credited for the string arrangement alongside martin & mccartney. they did a decent job at coming up with a george martin-esque string part

i don't think it's as good as "real love" or "free as a bird" (both of which are just fine) but it does feel about as good as it could have been? i agree it feels more like a solo lennon song but that comes back to the tune itself, it's just a mode of his that was far more common in his solo career.

Spotify chose to play Au Contraire by They Might Be Giants immediately afterward and I wished Paul & Ringo had dropped a cover version of it as an unhyped b-side

new stereo "love me do" is silly, it's just ended up hollow

I have had it up to here with Beatles remasters

i liked the previous new stereo mixes generally - the abbey road one is the definitive version imo and the rest are all at least major improvements over the original stereo mixes, but this "love me do" just feels like they're showing off the tech (which is genuinely impressive) now

It's fine, I don't hate it. I've made imaginary post-Beatles LPs and it will be a nice thing to include on the final one.

Spotify (which I don't really use) next played me "All You Need Is Love?", then "I Want To Hold Your Hand" then Dolly Parton's "Islands In The Stream" before I turned it off.

there's a little run on the strings that really recalls that bit in Carry that Weight just before it reprises You Never Give Me Your Money...probably the most 'beatle-esque' part of the song