Giles Martin: Update the Beatles

Aren't there already Pepper surround sound tracks in Yellow Submarine DVD/Blu-ray?

 

IMO there's no reason NOT to do it at this point. Give us a modern stereo surround mix of every album. The catalog's been re-done from a purist perspective - let's take it further.

 

Well there it is. For years, many people have wondered whether the Beatles albums would be remixed. Sgt Pepper was the first now the White Album. If they could find a way remix Please Please Me and With the Beatles that would be awesome.

 

I agree. Screw the new generation. All they care about is bass tones that can shake the trunk of their car. You can put a new coat of paint on it all you want but it's still the same old songs and people will either be drawn to them or not.

Waiting for The Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up album to get an official so I can take a bath with a toaster and check out of this dog and pony show.

HAN SHOOTS FIRST! THE CHICKEN CLUCKS!

 

This thread is hilarious. Keep 'em coming!

 

First they came for Star Wars and I did not speak out....

 

The White Album and Revolver are twins in need of a remix. Both albums would benefit from increased bandwidth and clarity. This has nothing to do with colorization.... the actual performances of a rock band presented closer to the actual dynamic range, bandwidth and ambience of those performances is the OPPOSITE of colorization. As for the modern audience....an audience which has had access to modern stereo reproduction has been in existence in large proportions since about the time McCartney and Lennon were releasing cruddy sounding albums in the quad era!

George Martin said it all back in 87. His job was to produce records that would sound good on the record players commonly owned by postwar British teens. Mono mixes meant to be punchy and cut through. As time went on the attention to stereo increased and became more relevant but Abbey Road studios had it's policies and procedures and the engineers worked with regard to those regulations and limitations. Martin said he would have recorded the Beatles with the best technology available to him. The Beatles recordings really has little to do with the Beatles who,whether present or not, could not have told you much about how or why acoustic drums and pianos could or should sound. The Beatles stayed in the recording room and were relying on Martin and the engineers to get it to sound good with lots of overdubs and submixes with 4 track machines. They "came and had their listen then" and asked for more of this or less of that and went on their way. They weren't experts on mono stereo quad or Dolby Atmos! Though I'm sure there would be hours of tape of them all goofing on the word Atmos ( "Ringo did you drop me bloody Atmos again, ya plod... picture... picture the thing yet trying to romance a bird with ELEVEN speakers up her Atmos!") . And no one should take as audiophile gospel John Lennon's off hand reference to the mono stereo divide. No matter what he claims to have thought of the stereo mix of Revolution in 1974... I mean what did he think of the mix of the Rock and Roll album in 1974!!!!

The issue here is the MIXING board... EMI had some nice ones... probably lacking in the number of inputs and switches that would have been ideal... of course John's genius friend, Alex Mardas, approached this problem and didn't solve it satisfactorily. Geoff Emerick had one built to his specs that was well thought of though not in time to record the Beatles. Long story short after four decades of development of mixing consoles Neve, Trident, pro tools ... running those 1st generation work masters through a modern high tech mixing unit capable of handling many parallel tracks and mixing them with more headroom, dynamic range, and bandwidth for those who possess more than a low quality 1950s record player should be uncontroversial. Why Giles Martin should be doing this job and NOT the teams who did the mono and stereo remasters in 2009 is a complete mystery to me. Geoff Emerick should be consulted but if he made any attempt to get near the controls he should be locked in a small room and forced to listen to a continuous loop of London Town and Venus and Mars for a year.

Just to get a decent sounding mix of Revolution 1 would be worth the cost of a deluxe White Album... imagine actually hearing a subtle AND present blend of guitars on I'm So Tired or Happiness is a Warm Gun WITHOUT the $40,000 Sonus Faber speakers..amazing. They should be hard at work right now... Nov 2018 will be here before you know it and they should put out Let It Be movie and remixed mastered deluxe on the SAME DAY!

 

Some tapes were bounced three times, which gives potentially ten tracks, assuming each 4 track was reduced to one on the subsequent tape, which was not always the case.

 

As SFF and PL have been added to the new Sgt Pepper cd's, are we likely to get Hey Jude and maybe other songs added to any new White Album cd's?

 

What do Beatles albums and Mammoths have in common?


They're Wooly

 

Every vinyl pressing and CD release sounds different in some way. Another one makes no difference. I loved the sound on the 1+ release. Keep 'em coming i say.

 

Giles was so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. I'll tell you the problem with the remixing power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it in a Sgt Pepper boxed set and now you're selling it.

 

standalone 5.1BD-A please

 

[QUOTE="lou, post: 16477409, member: 1656"

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.[/QUOTE]

I respect the "originality" argument... but if say a McCartney bass is recorded to a tape and then a reduction mix is made with a noisy pan pot and then the whole mix on the record sounds muddy and indistinct then it is a good thing if the separate first gen recordings can be put through the same process with better equipment ... acheiving a better result without the degradations of old technology. If you could reproduce citizen Kane with the fine grain of the black and white work print instead of a washed out and fuzzy finished print then the better newer tech would be better.

As for do it yourself mixes, that should be the next phase of the post linear post physical world. Where the data as a separate collection should allow for your choice of reproduction... play back mono or choose stereo or surround with the underlying original work party being assembled buffered and played back by the computer. So take? of long and winding plays back as Spector mix or anthology mix and that's one set of data.. or it's only love is electric guitar help mix and acoustics only anthology mix one set of data.. no need for Eleanor Rigby strings as separate track.. one set of data you choose mono mix or stereo or strings only or your own mix.

 

This Boy stereo mix!

 

I didn't state audiophile good. I stated better. They will never be audiophile good. All those old mono recordings the best that can be hoped for is original tape. But with all the multi tracking bouncing down etc. with Beatles records... hey, if they can be well mixed showing respect for the original mixes and sound, with the added bonus of sounding better, I am all for it!

 

When I worry about the future of our society, the availability of original Beatles mixes does not rank very high on my list of concerns.

 

I like the remix they did for "Love". If they did all of the albums this way, I would buy them. The originals will always be there.

 

Wait.
According to this forum and many other places, everything Beatles did was perfect first time 'round.
Now I'm being told they weren't perfect?
You guys are wrong?

 

Would be like adding orchestra stuff into all White Album tracks minus 'Good Night'.^^

 

There was one vocal correction made in 'Dig A Pony' on the Let It Be... Naked album.

 

The musi

The music was perfect. The recordings were actually quite good. The mixing? Not! That's where we lost the sound quality.

 

Yeah, but we got the originals back with the '09 box set, so we're all good.

 

Look, as long they're not applying EDM-beats and autotune to the music, it can't ever be bad! It's The Beatles, for goodness' sake!

 

While some of Giles' remixes on Love sounded pretty good, look how many years ago that was already. Nothing he has done with The Beatles material since then has impressed me in the least -- quite the opposite actually. I'll see how he fairs with Pepper, but it will be totally surprising if it even comes remotely close to the quality that Wilson gets out of his various historic remixing projects, or Guthrie with the Pink Floyd Immersion sets. Unfortunately to me, through misguided nepotism, The Beatles have entrusted their master tapes and current/future projects to the totally wrong person for attention to details, or being able to get an amazing sounding end product in our hands.