Giles Martin: Update the Beatles

I own everything The Beatles put out in recorded form. I personally consider it sacrilege if anybody messes with their definitive output and what they originally signed off on as a band and put out in the original marketplace. THAT BEING SAID, as long as we have the original albums still available to currently buy, I have no issue with new configurations hitting the marketplace to supplement the original albums. A bonus treat for the megafan.

I would be filled with rage if the remixed/remade albums were replacing the originals as some artists have done as some sort of revisionist history (i.e. "We didn't like the way it was recorded/mixed in 1965, so this new version we recorded 30 years later is an improvement and WILL be the only version available in stores").

Bring on the White Album box!

 

Technically that has already happened with the Help! and Rubber Soul CD's, if one were going to be slightly pedantic...

 

How about centered drums at least?

I hate when the drums are all in one channel or, more specifically, when there are no drums in one channel!

 

Certainly part of the greatness of some artistic achievements has been the creative use of the medium itself, especially when the medium was technically limited at the time. These achievements are great not in spite of the technical limitations but because of how they used and overcame those limitations and expanded the possibilities of the medium. It's the same with Citizen Kane as with Sgt. Pepper. To remix with the unlimited multi-track technology we have today and the plug-ins and effects available digitally somehow subverts and cheapens the accomplishment of the original artists. Anyone with today's technology could take the multitracks and recreate a new mix, many could probably remix to pretty close to or better than the Giles remix will sound. The incredible genius of Pepper is inextricably tied up with how the Beatles, Geoff and George were able to do what they did with the technology of the time.

What they should do is just release all the multitracks isolated and allow today's generation to remix their own Pepper to their musical taste. It's the DIY computer generation after all.

 

You want a mix from the 2-track tape with drums in the middle? And I bet you'd like the vocals in the middle too?

That's called mono (there's only an instrumental track and a vocal track to mix on WTB songs)

 

This is a good incentive for artists to destroy the multitracks after a project is completed - to insure that their great work can't be messed with by any random knucklehead with a laptop.

 

Like Giles Martin?

 

I've always liked the way the "White Album" was mixed. It was sort of like the Beatles grew up, as far as the mixing went. Parts of "Sgt. Pepper's" sounded like their 2-track stereo mixes eventhough they were recorded 8-track. I'm looking forward to hearing the new "Sgt. Pepper's" remixes but can't imagine what they'd do to the the "White Album" but add an extra disc of extra un-issued material or alternate takes.

 

Remember we already got a disc of material from these sessions on "Anthology 3".

 

Well, as we go into the streaming era, in a few years, this may well be the only option.
Someone earlier mentioned colourisation. That wasn't a problem until certain films were only available colourised. In the streaming only era, albums will only be available in the latest approved mix.
Maybe this is why we got a last mono vinyl and CD box set release, to tide us over.

 

That's true, but definitely they should be remixed at least.

 

How could you possibly make a 5.1 mix out of Sgt. Pepper? They only have four tracks to work with for a remix. Am I missing something?

 

It doesn't matter to me at all HOW much they remix the music, as long as the original versions are still available. I love the idea of different versions of the songs I love, a long as I can still hear them in their original form that made me fall in love with them in the first place.

 

Things went through a process of sub mixing to sum to 4 tracks. There are more tracks available if they go back to the original tapes

 

Yeah, two or three extra tracks, at most. I'm really looking forward to hearing all four members' instruments coming out of different speakers.

 

I too heard Giles on Simon Mayo's R2 show last night. They played "Sgt Pepper" (the song) and the bass sounded so loud and heavy! Made me wonder how Paul got all that from his little Hoffner.

 

He didn't. Rickenbacker!

 

Or the horrendous ZZ Top remixes from the '90s? That said, the Beatles material that has been remixed to this point isn't nearly that horrible.

I agree though, to me these Beatles remixes are a bit of a curiosity, and those albums like Yellow Submarine Songtrack, Let it Be Naked and Love wind up sitting on my shelf un-played for years, while I regular come back to the originals.

 

I'm referring to the recordings that can be "fixed." As late as Abbey Road there are songs with the drums in one track only.

 

Just wait. A group rant will launch soon because it's not Steven Wilson doing it.

 

He was also playing a Rickenbacker 4001s, so that heavy sound wasn't so impossible.
The Hofner was plenty ballsy on many Beatles tracks from the very start. The other trick is the studio engineers adding some magic.

 

The Beatles multi-tracks have been digitized, pre-bounce, so 5.1 mixes are totally doable.

 

The average younger listener will not buy a physical version of any album at this point, let along a super deluxe of something. These reissues are indeed about older fans ponying up yet again. I'm good with my 2009 stereo and mono CDs, 2014 mono LPs, 1978 Blue Box, originals of all the US Capitols, UK red and blue best-ofs, various German pressings, etc. (whew!).

 

Only thing that would really excite me if they remix some of the albums would be to do it in SACD or Blu Ray Audio.

 

There are plenty of other good remixers out there beyond Wilson. I'm just not wild about Giles Martin's work, particularly the more recent 5.1 mixes on the 1+ project. I know that some try to argue that he was somehow forced to avoid making the surround mixes too adventurous there, but when I heard him making comments about how "distracting" it was to have too much discrete information running through the rear channels, that gave me the sense that he didn't really appreciate the benefits of the format.