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

Does anyone know when they started saving more stuff from their sessions? I was under the impression a lot of things were erased, maybe even most things, towards the start of their career. I bring this up because one of the interesting inclusions in Anthology was a vibes track for "I'm Only Sleeping" - but only a small fragment survived as it had clearly been erased. (What survives was basically the tail end of the recording. Whatever was recorded over the take simply wasn't long enough to erase the whole thing.)

My take on the vibraphone arrangement of "I'm Only Sleeping" is that they never got around to adding vocals to it, but didn't want to take up space on the Anthology 2 set with a full instrumental outtake (though they obviously did so on Anthology 3). I think very, very little was erased after, say, 1962. The iTunes 1963 Bootleg Recordings has almost 40 minutes of outtakes, and I can't imagine that by the time they got to Revolver there was any policy in place of re-using tape. That is, "Paul's broken a glass, broken a glass" was saved, so there's probably a hefty amount of Revolver outtakes.

The main issue with Revolver is that -- and I'm leaving myself open to correction here -- they hadn't yet started bouncing down from one 4-track to another, so there are no "stems" to revisit when attempting a thorough remix.

Apropos of nothing, here are some notes I made following this afternoon’s Twitter Spaces…

🤫 pic.twitter.com/8Fj5p9Atsa

— EggPod 🍏 (@IAmTheEggPod) August 7, 2022

Soon after the Sgt. Pepper box was released, Giles Martin said there definitely wouldn't be a white album box. Soon after the white album box was released, Giles said there definitely wouldn't be an Abbey Road box. Since Giles said a similar remix of Revolver wasn't possible, it means a Revolver box is probably happening.

What are the only "official" Beatles tracks (released by 1970) where McCartney doesn't appear?

"She Said She Said"
"Julia"
"Good Night"

(He's supposedly playing the piano on "Revolution 9".)

Anything else?

Oh, "Within You Without You".

Since Giles said a similar remix of Revolver wasn't possible, it means a Revolver box is probably happening

(He's supposedly playing the piano on "Revolution 9".)

Yeah, he's singing the "can you take me back" bit which is officially part of Rev9. (even though it isn't really)

I think "She Said" is the only one where he's missing and the other three are playing.

I had to check, and someone actually uploaded the liner notes to Anthology 1, 2 & 3 online!

https://www.reddit.com/r/beatles/comments/264x59/anthology_liner_notes/

The relevant parts re: "I'm Only Sleeping" are here:

https://i.imgur.com/5tht3D3.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/HjmkTud.jpeg

(Liner notes were by Lewisohn, FWIW)

Working towards overcoming technical difficulties seems more like hpoing that "deminxing" tools improve to the point that it's viable. They almost certainly will improve but there may also be inherent limits, although I guess it could be a case of reconstructing tracks with AI tools.

deminxing lol

Who'd want that?

The relevant parts re: "I'm Only Sleeping" are here:

Thanks for posting those! I suppose if it was approached as a rehearsal, they probably thought none of it could be of immediate use and/or fit for release at that time.

re: "demixing," Giles used that process (those processes?) on the 2016 Live At The Hollywood Bowl, which sounds fine, but isn't a dramatic improvement over the 1977 mix.

reconstructing tracks with AI tools

And from there it's a short leap to a hologram reboot of the rooftop concert

You could probably pull that off now, have the show eight stories higher than the audience.

My own experience with separation audio software is that the sharing of frequencies from different instruments, like guitars and vocals or middle-range sounds in general, results in certain problems and really noticeable artifacts.

At the moment this software interface is a basic 'press go and hope for the best' model, but in the future, when processing speeds catch up or faster/more efficient software is written, I imagine that degrees of control will then be introduced and Giles Martin and his pals will be able to fully peel apart the guitars, cymbals and high vocals in She Loves You, and the world will be able to buy them over again in Dolby Atmos or summat.

It would be controversial but using digital extraction (which I believe Beach Boys have used on some some recent stereo mixes), even the first two albums could be remixed as four or eight track with vocals and bass in the middle.

This is a question that goes wider than the Beatles and deserves its own thread, but this technology is not going to stop developing, and people are going to want to apply it to all sorts of old recordings. At the moment, debates about authenticity are mostly limited to 'is this mix right?' but as AI plays a bigger role, there'll be questions about what the original recordings involved in the mix even are. Visual AI is well ahead of audio AI, of course, and if any of you have played with apps that magically enhance the resolution of a photo you'll know how these boundaries are all dissolving. In fact, an iPhone does a whole bunch of AI on the photo even at the original capture stage.

It's all going to be interesting as all the raw meat of early recordings gets fed to the AI beast.

I mean this guy is kinda doing software separation remixes of all sorts of old records, he's done The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc:

https://www.profstoned.com/2022/08/the-beatles-beatles-for-sale-remixed.html

Thank you! Loving them.

Now there’s an idea….

— Giles Martin (@mashupmartin) August 11, 2022

Does anyone here listen to Giles's remixes very often? I know it's the main selling point of these box sets, but personally, I've give at best one or one and a half listens and that's it. (The only one I bothered holding on to was Pepper and even then I still prefer the mono mix.) I'm more about the bonus material rather than the new album mixes.

*I've given them

I prefer his mixes to the originals. I prefer clarity and separation of parts. It only occasionally doesn't work for me. For example, the murkiness of "Long Long Long" doesn't really benefit from the Miles treatment. Curious how the muddier tracks on Revolver might fare like "I'm Only Sleeping".

I listen to the white album remix a lot, and I love it. I think the Abbey Road remix is fine, but I'd probably be hard-pressed to tell the difference between it and the original mix. I only heard the Sgt. Pepper remix once, and I liked it, but haven't revisited it (more due to time constraints than anything). But the white album remix cleared out a lot of sonic cobwebs for me (sonic cobwebs I didn't notice until they were missing).

It's a big 50/50 for me. Some tracks are certainly improved while others could have been left alone.

This sounds a bit much, but I wish I could put each song in its original order while shuffling in a different version of each track. Go through USSR / Prudence / Glass Onion, but randomly have the mono USSR, the 1987 Prudence and the Giles Onion appear. That way, I could still listen to the album, but not be trapped in a certain mix.

the new mixes are better on headphones at least

Nothing new in here really, but Variety confident enough to print it

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/beatles-revolver-deluxe-remix-next-up-box-set-fall-giles-martin-1235351400/

I'm actually more open to remixes for the earlier stuff. Something like Abbey Road already had a great mix supervised by the Beatles, but for the sloppier, early stuff, I'd like to see what Giles can do. I'm glad he said this:

"I’m looking for the technology to do [the remixing] with, to do something really innovative with ‘Rubber Soul’ and ‘Revolver,’ as opposed to just a remastering job, because it’s been remastered already."

To be fair, I wouldn't mind hearing them try the purist route of mastering with correct, vintage tube equipment, no compression, no limiting and minimal EQ, but barring that unlikely event, I wouldn't be interested in a new mastering at this point.

early is probably a poor choice of words - more like pre-White Album

alleged track list:

Looks like this is what we can expect! pic.twitter.com/ZquLYHaC2H

— EggPod 🍏 (@IAmTheEggPod) August 26, 2022

To be fair, I wouldn't mind hearing them try the purist route of mastering with correct, vintage tube equipment, no compression, no limiting and minimal EQ

MoFi should handle this.

Mmmm ‘songwriting work tape’.

No "Carnival of Light," no credibility.

I'm a little annoyed about the amount of repetitive tracks that were already released on the Anthology, but in general I'm pretty stoked.

I had an exchange about this box set with Andrew Hickey on Twitter and he had some theories that due to copyright issues there is less incentive to release new outtakes:

Because anything recorded more than fifty years ago *which hasn't already been released* is out of copyright in the EU and UK. Anything recorded from 1963 on which *has* been released has copyright of 70 years, anything which hasn't has copyright of fifty.

— Andrew Hickey Finally Dropped his Halloween Name (@HickeyWriter) August 20, 2022

So...everything on the Revolver set that hasn't already been released will be public domain in the EU and UK? Because that's kinda nuts for a variety of reasons, chief among them (as Hickey pointed out in that thread) the fact that labels sat on 50-plus-year-old outtakes assuming they were still under copyright.

Had no idea EU copyright law worked that way!

I don't think I follow the logic, though. So for example, Carnival of Light, being recorded in January 1967 and remaining unreleased, has slipped out of copyright. But does that mean they have "no incentive" to release it? Wouldn't the incentive be selling a bunch of copies to Beatles nerds, in some deluxe box with some fancy new essays and archival photos or whatever? Sure, it would quickly become widely available on YouTube and they wouldn't be able to suppress it. But they'd make some cash, versus no cash.

I thought there was a loophole around that public domain law, namely mastering.

JSP ran into trouble when they thought they could legally clone Bear Family in Germany's CD mastering of the Carter Family recordings and simply tweak it for their own releases. By that point the records were far more than 50 years old, so why not? Bear Family sued and won - the argument was that the mastering itself was subject to copyright law.

So if it was worth their time and money, I could see EMI/Universal/whatever the company is now suing any potential "public domain" releases for trying to reissue the newly-released outtakes as public domain, arguing they could have come from their masterings of said material since they hadn't been bootlegged before.

*could only have

Also re: reusing Anthology stuff, I've noticed that too on the other box sets. Once you take remixes and the previously released mono mixes out of the equation and just cobble together the alternates and outtakes, you're usually left with less than two full CD's of stuff (or three in the case of the White Album box set), and a lot of that overlaps with the Anthology releases. I know the remixes and printed material are a big part of the selling point, but in a lot of ways the set don't feel that heavy on 'unheard' material.

XP I think it's quite tricky to release an out-of-copyright Carnival of Light now. First of all Yoko probably still wants to veto it as it doesn't fit the narrative of John and Yoko as the avant gardists, not Paul. So you'd need to include it in a reissue that shows some balance to John's reputation somehow. And then, if the critical reception after hearing it is more naysaying "this is not even Revolution 9 quality, this is laughable" that's not good. So you should release it in a way that doesn't build up expectations. I think the way to go would be to have someone curate under Paul and Yoko's supervision a mid-60s avant garde music box set or documentary soundtrack that includes Carnival, some Cage and Stockhausen and Fluxus and what not, some John and Yoko work tapes, maybe try to shoehorn in some other psych bands making random racket work tapes like Floyd or Zappa. The big problem with Carnival is that out of context it probably sounds too tedious and indulgent and silly, but if you sandwich it in with the context of other people making silly avant-garde racket, it would sound alright to the target audience.

Are the Christmas records now in the public domain in UK/EU, a fan club release is still a release, right? I suppose another approach would be for Giles to make a grab bag of weird Beatles recordings remixed and segued together in the style of the Love album, incorporating Carnival, some of the cooler bits from the later Christmas records, some of the still unacknowledged songs from Get Back sessions like that "palace of the birds" organ-led jam, and various other work tapes like more of the strawberry fields session. If you incorporate Carnival without really altering it, but it's in the middle of a remix album, I bet that would hold copyright.

It was primarily George who vetoed the inclusion of part of "Carnival" on Anthology 2 ("avant-garde a clue"), but Yoko and Ringo sided with him on the grounds that it was never intended for release. Which doesn't make sense since none of the false starts, breakdowns, and rejected songs were meant for release, either -- and all four Beatles were in favor of "Carnival" getting its one public airing.

Paul should just have a friend or staffer or someone slyly leak "Carnival" to youtube.

Helpful posts, thanks!

Does Yoko really care that much about Paul not getting avant-garde credit though?

I assume the major issue going back ages is that it just isn't very good or memorable or interesting. The name "Carnival of Light" has probably gone a long way in making it sound transcendently cool and mind-blowing. If it was called "Collage Tape" or "[untitled mix for event]" I can't imagine the fan interest would be QUITE as great.

I doubt she would really care or worry about Paul stealing the avant-garde spotlight. I've always had the sneaking suspicion that Carnival ventures much more into the "this is not even Revolution 9 quality, this is laughable" territory.

Does Yoko really care that much about Paul not getting avant-garde credit though?

Hard to say. The irony is that Paul knew, or at least knew about, Yoko before she and John met, and he may have suggested to John that he check out her art show. Since John's image in the Beatles is, to a degree, tied to him as "the avant-garde one," I wouldn't be too surprised if Yoko continued trying to maintain that perception. Not that she'd be holding the track back out of malice towards Paul or anything, but the release of a long-lost avant-garde Beatles track largely arranged and guided by Paul that predates "Revolution 9" by over a year would obviously get a lot of attention, and would no doubt result in innumerable think pieces about, "Wait, Was Paul Really The Avant-Garde One?" Also, Yoko had significant input into "Revolution 9," so a release of an earlier not-entirely-dissimilar track would show that the Beatles had been into the "avant-garde" prior to her and John's relationship, which flies in the face of several narratives about the Beatles and her impact on their work.

But it's less about Yoko not wanting Paul to be associated with the avant-garde and more about Paul wanting to firmly establish that HE was The Avant-Garde One, effectively nudging Yoko out of the picture in that regard. Paul's indifference towards "Revolution 9" has been presented as everything from "eek, it's scary! Our fans will hate it!" to "It's ok, but we can do something along those lines better," all of which comes from his jealousy of John and Yoko's relationship, and maybe of Yoko's work itself. That is, instead of Paul being the one to lead the other Beatles to various avant-garde artists and approaches, John brought in a real-life long-established avant-garde musician who could handily usurp Paul's authority in that area.

And maybe the Get Back project was, to some degree, Paul's way of saying, "I'm going to lead us in this back-to-basics rock 'n' roll approach that Yoko can't challenge me on." "Back to our roots" also meant "back before John and Yoko met." Of course, as it happened, the highlight of those sessions was the Yoko + feedback segment.

And then, if the critical reception after hearing it is more naysaying "this is not even Revolution 9 quality, this is laughable" that's not good.

I mean, if someone is going to frame it that way (as "not even Revolution 9 quality"), their opinion wouldn't be worth much. I know Mark Lewisohn says he didn't think much of it but a) I'm not very interested in his judgment as a music critic and b) how many times did he even hear it? Once?

This isn't to build Carnival of Light up – I very much doubt it's as fully realised as Revolution 9 – but surely by this point Apple and the remaining Beatles and widows are aware that releases from the archives are a matter of historical interest, not of impressing rock critics.

Why George Harrison vetoed it for Anthology does interest me - whether it was just his opinion of its quality, or something else more interpersonal. I'm rewatching the Anthology doc at the moment and it is kind of hilarious how offhand his stance is through much of the interviews.