Sgt. Pepper's 50th Anniversary editions to be released May 26, 2017* Anticipation Thread.

Have you visited their physical bookstore ?

 

*cough*

I love you guys. <3

 

I hear there will be a U.S. Capitol Records "Magical Mystery Tour" LP box set first!

 

Which I imagine may pail in comparison to Pepper.

 

PAIL!

 

Alright, here are my thoughts on this reissue [this might be slightly-biased since I am not too fond of outtakes—although in one point in time I would have been very pleased to even hear the slightest excerpts of studio-chatter and random-fondling of instruments]. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band being the LP that it is—there are not too many outtakes that I believe are release-worthy—with an exclusion of Carnival Of Light, which might not be too pleasing to hear incessantly but would be interesting to at least listen to once because it shows The Beatles at their most experimental and deviated from whatever they were doing in 1964, supposedly. I hypothesize that Cardinal Of Light sounds suspiciously like The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet from The Mothers Of Invention's 1966 debut; Freak Out! Just an educated-guess. Back to my point; from what I understand about the infamous recording-sessions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, there were not that many revelatory-rearrangements of known-songs from the LP during some earlier-takes, but what IS (to me) of interest <for an example; the "Pet Sounds"-style arrangements of Penny Lane, George Harrison instructing session-musicians how to correctly play passages from Within You, Without You, and some earlier-takes of Fixing A Hole that were once marked as master-takes or "best" for each, etc. etc.> All of these examples [and probably more] are all of interest to me because of how important they are to the evolutions of our favourite-songs—and the fact that they are still unheard after all these years... these are probably (to me, I must stress) going to be the most interesting outtakes to hear that have remained unheard for so long (apart from some chatter from The SMiLE Sessions, which I found very illuminating)... plus—we are due for a brand-new stereo-remix, *which isn't going to be better OR worse than the original-mixes*, but will merely present the famous LP from a different-perspective; a more modern-approach to things, and I can't wait to hear it finally and form my opinions from there... what d'y'all think?

 

This thread is akin to a zombie. It just won't die.

 

Yes, most everything was saved. The better term is "bounce down" or "reduction mix".

The regular crew at Abbey Road did the actual hard work.

 

Just wait. When it's actually released - you ain't seen nothin' yet.

 

I doubt the members commenting on this 600 pg thread are part of the Pepper is overrated crowd.

 

Once the folddown tapes are uploaded into a computer's digital audio workstation (DAW), each individual pre-bounce tape recording then appears within the software program as a horizontal audio track stacked above or below each other (like the sentences in this paragraph). Each horizontal track can then be cursor-dragged left or right (in time) with millisecond precision thus syncing up all of the folddown tapes one-at-a-time until they are reconstructed to match the original mix exactly, or as close a possible.

Because this is Pepper were talking about, I imagine the remixing process was at the very least exhilarating & fun.

 

I love doing my own thing trying to match up Beach Boys tapes to isolate double-tracked vocals, I would have a blast doing this.

 

That "crowd"are probably lurking here though.

 

This is a newbie question, spurred by all the talk of reduction mixes in Pepper:

I was reading Lewisohn's Beatles recording sessions book yesterday - someone was wrong on the internet, so I spent 22 hours reading the book so I could get definitive proof and crush their spirit (joke, joke, English humour).

Here's my question. On songs like Taxman, it mentions that they tried making 11 mixes one day and the band didn't like any of them. As well as those 11 mixes, as has been discussed many times in this thread, reduction mixes were made many times on many tracks - just to keep it on topic, Pepper has a ton of reduction mixes.

Oh, sorry, here is my question: I know that multiple generations of bouncing will introduce noise, but won't the physical quality of those master tapes also be reducing every single time they're played?

I sit there reading and it's clear they must've played the masters hundreds of times. Is tape that good that it won't even drop in quality by 1% after a thousand plays?

See, one thing I've noticed is on The Beatles - the "jet plane" sound effect on Back in the USSR gradually gets worse throughout the song. I believe it was played repeatedly through the song and the sound effect tape gradually became stretched. My own long-ago experience of consumer tape in the UK in the 1970s was that you should never pause it or repeatedly rewind long tapes, cos you could stretch or distort them. C120 (tape that was 60 minutes each side) was universally known as being awful. Obviously Emitape and all studio tapes are bigger and sturdier, but does the same principle apply?

When I read about all the Pepper reduction mixes, I wonder: do they make copies and make their mixes from those, and then when they make their final mixes do they go back to the pristine masters? Or is Emitape so damned good, what I'm talking about simply was never an issue?

Someone posted a link earlier about how some master tapes really are literally unlistenable now. So it's gotta happen at some point. And back in the 60s did they know about dust and keeping tape heads clean and maintained? They certainly didn't know about making their feet not smell. Men's feet, up until the 1990s, smelled absolutely awful in the UK. I dunno what it was like in the US, but boy did our history of living in slums, 6 to a room with no bathrooms, leave a lasting legacy. I don't know why I'm mentioning that.

 

In that case, I take back my comment about people making threats of violence. Please, please don't hit me.

 

Simple answer, tape can deteriorate each time it is played whether consumer level or pro. That's why everything in The Beatles canon (as far as I know) has been uploaded into a computer, without degradation, to protect the source tapes from being played again unless absolutely necessary.

As for smelly feet, I imagine it's because one's shoes & socks are removed over & over again, similar to repetetive analog tape playback. The simple answer may be taking a bath once-a-month, whether one needs one or not.

And by all means, please sleep with your socks on!

 

Did someone say tea??

 

All things are, of course, relative but it's hard to read posts complaining about the price of this set (and others) from those who are paying far less than I will have to, and feel any sympathy. Cheapest UK price I've found? £110. That'll be $140 to you, good sirs.

 

I would think that tapes were stored in a proper environment...(temp and humidity). This certainly would help reduce oxide shedding. Also storing them "tails out ' may have been used ...meaning the next time they were used they had to be rewound first. Helped to keep the tape"packed correctly". Your C120's were an awful thin tape.

 

You must bear in mind that the tapes that were used will vary at each stage. The session tapes would only be played a handful of times during studio playbacks to see how things were progressing, and then during mixing. Once a mix had been made (onto a freshly minted twin track or mono tape) it would have been cut out and appended to a tape on a new reel. My understanding is that this tape would then be used to create a final album master. That is, it wouldn't be used every time a new pressing was required. So it's only the final album master that would get used a bunch of times but, even then, nowhere near enough to cause the damage you're thinking of.

But here's my own question: am I right in thinking that the final compilation tape is then used to make a final master? If so, the final product would be several generations down. We talk about first or second generation tapes being used to create final masters but, even if a song didn't require a reduction mix, we're talking:

1st gen: studio multi-track
2nd gen: twin-track or mono mixdown, cut out and compiled onto new reel
3rd gen: final EQ'd master.

Given that the "1st gen" tape might actually be a second or third generation tape in reality, we could, in fact, be talking 4th or 5th generation by the time we get to making records. That would surely have a greater impact on quality than the number of times each tape was played.

 

No is the simple answer. Every time tape is dragged over a tape head and tape path a little bit of oxide wears off.

Its an oft-quoted story that Fleetwood Mac discovered the hard way that there is a finite number of times that you can run a tape. During the Rumours session, the tape started wearing out because it had been run back and forward so much for overdubbing.

Some tapes are also more durable than others. EMItape is reportedly very stable (probably used a whale oil binder) whereas some others (Ampex 456) is very prone to sticky shed syndrome. Tapes like this can still be used but have to be "baked" first to restore the polymer chains in the binder.

 

No Beatles eating biscuits?
There's a great early Beatles"tea" sipping pic with all 4 holding cups.

 

Theres also this one