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

Listening through headphones on Apple Music to the first two fully remixed tracks. It would be impossible to judge the whole album based on these two songs, but so far I'm shocked, in a very good way. It feels like a breath of fresh air has washed over these two tracks. The difference is astounding. Unthinkably, I realized I was getting choked up halfway through my second listen to With A Little Help. I started thinking how I cannot wait to hear ADITL, and Getting Better and WI64 like this. I cannot remember the last time I've been so excited to hear any music. This could be Giles' moment in the sun.

 

So why would you take the risk of hanging around on an 'anticipation' thread?

Search for 'Chicken'. Personally I like both transitions.

The Rock Band demixing was simply to enable the different channels for the game. This was not an attempt to provide a fresh version of the music for listeners. The fact that bootleggers extracted the tracks and made a 'remix' has nothing to do with Master Martin and his ambitions, I believe.

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (4 x CD / Blu Ray / DVD)

 

And four album tracks on iTunes. Not the single though, sadly...

 

Listened to the remix of the first two songs.
For Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
The lead guitar on the left channel is louder and probably a good thing for guitarists trying to tab out the ending. We can also hear the endings of the notes played in the verse.
The Sgt. Pepper chorus is now across both channels.
The left channel isn't as bare as it is in the beginning of the original stereo mix.

For With A Little Help From My Friends
The Billy Shears introduction is more buried in the mix.
The backing vocals on both channels is going to get some getting used to. They sound louder, almost drowning Ringo's own voice.

Personally, I'm not that big on having both the Sgt. Pepper chorus and the backing vocals on With A Little Help From My Friends
on both channels. They sound like they're seperate on both too and not fully in the middle. It's almost as both are hard panned to left and right. Almost bares similarity to duophonic processes. I'm glad though that the "ahh" part at the ending is only on the left channel and not both.

Things I like, that lead guitar in Sgt. Pepper is louder and that the songs are in a modern stereo when a part isn't completely panned to the right or left, but sometimes there is some novelty in that.

I'm willing to give these new mixes a try but it is going to take some getting used to them after listening to the stereo mixes countless amount of times since the early 2010's. I can almost imagine how fresh this is going to sound to people who first heard this when CD's weren't around since they heard it about 1,000 times or more than what I have heard.

 

All this excitement gets me excited for what (if) we're going to get next week. It's hard to believe this is coming out in four weeks, since I was coming out of waiting for Flowers In The Dirt for 18 months. I do think we're going to get one track and maybe it's outtake counterpart from here on out since there would be 20 different songs out before the album is fully released.

 

In addition to iTunes and Spotify, the 4 preview tracks are up on Deezer in the UK too. I assume they are now up on all the streaming services.

 

Listened to the four tracks made available today on Apple Music - love them! Nothing can replace the mono mix but so help me I'm rather enjoying the new mixes. The two 'in the studio' tracks are so enjoyable I've had to go straight to disc 2 of Anthology 2 to keep the feeling going! 2015 remixed 1 after this.

Was on the fence about the 6 disc SDE I'd preordered - this moves it back to absolutely essential and hang the cost.

I can understand if some feel this isn't their thing, but no one is being asked to hand in their CD or vinyl copies of In Mono as a result of the 50th anniversary edition. For the rest of us, there is simply no such thing as too much Beatles.

Back to coffee and Penny Lane (alternate mix)

 

From what I have heard of the 2017 remix so far, to me at least, it sounds very clear and well defined but not different or 'new'. Slightly disappointed in that respect but the 'outtakes' were the main interest. Hopefully the book will point any 'out fakery' that may have occurred with the latter.

 

Unless my ears are playing tricks on me, the snare and toms are NOT dead center. They sound like they are about 70% panned to the left channel. At least on the title track.

 

Just the 4 album tracks - not the single?

 

Together with the guitars they were recorded with. Which means that there was probably NO demixing going on here.

 

I kind of hate it.. "BUT" technically it does feature all the Beatles, his vocal is from Sgt Pepper & pieces of Carnival of light are what I call the ambient track, & there is Beatles chat & God knows what, it ( sadly ) is the follow up to Real Love, at least until they release the last one...

It's not whether I ( you ) like them, it's what's the real Beatles ( reunion ish) tracks..

1. FAAB
2. Real Love
3. Free Now
4. All Those Years Ago
5. 3rd reunion song

6a-b-c-d-e live Friar Park Jams

I'd rather have When We Was Fab, Beautiful Night, La De Da, Cosmically Conscious, Flaming Pie & Rising Sun... But it is what it is.

I suppose " I'm the greatest " is real too.

 

Is CD Japan a better option in this case than Amazon Japan ?

 

The remixed track are not in the danish iTunes store. Oh well i can wait....

 

Spotify Germany also only has the remixed title track as a "single".

 

isn't this new mix just "New Coke" all over again?

 

I'm sure a few of the songs have alternate takes-performances, where they could fly in alternate backing vocals, guitars, keyboards, & edit to fit with Protools.

It's exactly what they would have done, if they had had tracks to do it. Listen to the Tug of War album with Paul & George Martin. Duel 24 track "2" inch machines & they doubled all that kind of stuff, or Lennon's Double Fantasy, same thing.

People have these artificial boundaries, oh no can't do this can't do that. Thank God Apple ignores a lot of it, or these latter day releases wouldn't have anything new on them.

Why is it ok to center drums but not double something, or demix ?

We have a poster in this thread by the way, who knows the demixing tech, & he said the newer process for this Sgt Pepper 50 took 2 months, whereas the older method on Rockband with cedar took a year, I believe he said.

He also corrected me about something regarding the differences between spectral editing & demixing, but I still didin't understand.

Point being though, if it works & it's a new project use it. The original version isin't going anywhere. In another 10-15 years the Sonic's people will be selling an entirely new format or system with " new improved fidelity !!! "

Meanwhile if they can separate RINGOS drums onto their own track & fader without weird digital artifacts, loss of timbre or fidelity, it would be criminal not to, for a project like this.

If a technology isin't effective well that's different, but if it does, this could be special, if the mixing team knows how to operate it. There's a lot of fancy gear out there with people not well established at using it.

I'd imagine any type of Beatles-Apple project is well funded enough to pay for the full ride & have all the tech people there for the duration.

On the other hand if it's that well funded, why didin't they spring for a new 3-4 minute music video as they have on every other new Beatles project for 25 years, until this one.

 

I prefer to think of it as a box of choc mints! Seriously though I'm ecstatic about the new mix + outtakes - but I've always thought the perfect place for it would be on a Pepper deluxe edition. But alas not to be

 

Well no one liked New Coke, so it doesn't seem to be so far. We'll know in a month after a sufficient taste test.

 

Pepper Take 9 + chat is up on YouTube, not any of the other tracks though... not yet anyway.

 

I should have thought out my analogy a bit better and come up with some after dinner something or other that was for a more rarified palette. Something that only a few would appreciate.
Perhaps when the publicity machine begins to roll someone will specifically quiz Giles why C of L didn't fit. I'd be curious to know. There was undoubtedly some discussion of it. Perhaps finding a place for it was a problem. It certainly doesn't belong in the middle of anything. It almost has to be the final piece of any disc. Maybe a time thing. I'm too lazy to search, but my memory says it's between 11-17 minutes. ( Am I close?) If the discs are full the thought may have been, "What do we sacrifice to make room for an avant-garde sound collage? And how many people will hate that we did that?" Maybe, we'll find out. If it were up to me, I'd have put it and whatever is around from the run off groove recording at the end of the blu-ray. Or maybe slipped it in as an Easter egg.
Perhaps it there already hidden deeply within the menu somewhere.

 

Actually my opinion is changing about the remix. Hearing more things - just like a real Beatles Album, which is quite something after 50 years!

 

One thing I just realized - in this take 9 of Pepper, we can already hear elements of the original multitrack that we know were mixed out of the bounce down to the final 4 track - this is amazing. So this take presented to us is one of those pre-bounced syncups which they've gotten so good at. It sounds great.


Does anyone know offhand the pre-bounce track layout for this track?

I know the final 4 track has one track of bounce, one track of lead guitar/brass, one track of sound fx, and a track for vox

 

So the mix so many was predicting would be so bad based on small fragments of streaming degraded audio is now good and detailed......

Good. I would say though that this is exactly why i would not pass judgement on those snippets. The brain simply cannot adjust to a soundscape in 5 seconds of compromised audio.

 

I loved the outtakes, especially With A Little Help!! Awesome stuff!!

The remixes, however, kick ass. I think they sound amazing! And I'm not one to listen to Sgt. Pepper in stereo(mono only for this album), if the other tracks live up, this is will my go-to version of the album!!