The Beatles 50th anniversary editions in Mix magazine

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Chris DeVoe, Feb 10, 2020.

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  1. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    I've been reading Mix magazine for decades, and the new February 2020 edition has a fairly long article titled The Ultimate Remix: Beatles 50th Anniversary Editions that's a deep dive into exactly how it was accomplished.

    The subhead is Giles Martin, Sam Okell and Abbey Road Studios go back to the source - the original, individual, pre-submixed tracks on a three-year journey through Sergeant Pepper's, The White album and Abbey Road.

    It arrived in my mailbox this morning, and I haven't read it yet, but thought that you folks might want to know.
     
  2. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Thanks for the heads up. Just mail me your copy when you're done with it. Thanks
     
  3. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    I actually have a second copy.
     
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  4. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Well ! Is the post office still open or what ?
     
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  5. Tuco

    Tuco Senior Member

    Location:
    Pacific NW, USA
    @Chris DeVoe If you would just post a thumbs up or thumbs down once you've read the article, I'd be very appreciative. I am not a subscriber, but if you think it's a good article, I will get a digital subscription. Thank you.
     
  6. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    I 2nd that!

    Txs @Chris DeVoe
     
  7. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    Here's a fascinating bit about how they synchronized all the tracks:

    When creating the new mixes, however Giles Martin and Okell wanted to take advantage of the discrete, individual track material, drawing on the original raw performance of an instrument on an earlier reel, not the submix of combined instruments found on a later reel. So Cocker would take a second transfer pass, this time syncing each reel for a given song. It's not as simple as "lining things up in Pro Tools."

    "You can slide things on a timeline, but they won't be phase-accurate," Martin explains. "And we don't want to digitally stretch anything, because we want to keep it pure." Adds mastering engineer Martin Showell: "Analog tape never plays at the same speed twice. every time you run it, it's different. Even if you cue up all the tape machines and hit Go at the same time, they will drift out of sync."

    So Cocker uses two special tools to accomplish the task: his ears and a manual vari-speed control connected to the playback tape machine (a Studer A80 from the 1970s for 4 track and a Studer A820 for 8-track.) Keeping the original stereo master as a reference, Cocker transfers in the first multitrack reel. He will then find a start point - say, the 4th beat of the song - and cue the tape machine of the following reel to that point, then hit Play at the right moment.

    To keep sync, he pan a mono mix of the first reel's content hard left, then pans a mono mix of the new reel's content hard right. "Then, listening in headphones, you literally just ride the vari-speed knob and keep the image central in your headphones," he explains. "That means you got it phasing so that there's cancellation in the middle. It takes a little rehearsal, but you get used to it."
    Anyway, that's the level of technical detail they get into.
     
  8. DK Pete

    DK Pete Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown. NY
    ..appreciate it. I'm going to look for it. Thanks.
     
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  9. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    Another later quote:

    Samples were never used, Martin notes. "I only have one rule for myself: I don't use any samples, and I don't tune them. do nothing to the performance. We never bolster Ringo's drums with samples, because then it wouldn't be Ringo."
     
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  10. DK Pete

    DK Pete Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown. NY
    I'm not sure what they mean by "samples"; I know what they are in terms of how they're utilized in Rap (to name on form) but how would they have been used with relation to Ringo's drumming??
     
  11. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    Another quote:

    Another important tool Okell will use is re-amping - placing a speaker at one end of a studiol room, playing back a monophonic - recorded trac, such as strings or drums, and re-recording them with multi-microphone arrays placed in the center or back of the room.

    "Most of my father's string recordings on Beatles sessions are in mono," Martin notes. "so if you want to make that stereo, over at Abbey Road, we've got the very rooms in which these instruments were recorded, so we can just mic up the room, and it gives us a stereo feel, and still reproducing the character the room in which they were recorded." (Studio 1 from strings or Studios 2 or 3 for band instruments.) "The speaker is actually facing away from the mic, so it's reflecting against the wall," typically a large Bowers & Wilkins unit ("the big spaceships," he says.)​
     
  12. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    Often when mixing music, going back to Roger Nichols's work with Steely Dan, the original drum sound will be replaced with a more carefully recorded one.
     
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  13. Exotiki

    Exotiki The Future Ain’t What It Use To Be

    Location:
    Canada
    with special software, you can notate all the drum beats in a recording in MIDI notes and replace and/or supplement them with Drum Samples.

    You can also re-record the drum's completely, Use the program to align it perfectly to the original drum track and drop out the original.
     
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  14. DK Pete

    DK Pete Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown. NY
    Oh nooo!!! That would have been a huge mistake...the amount of flak Giles would have gotten for that here alone would make the forum blow up!! Zappa did that will many of his albums and it totally ruined the essence of the albums. I believe this was also done with the remix of Graham Nash's Songs For Beginners...not a good thing, IMO.
     
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  15. DK Pete

    DK Pete Forum Resident

    Location:
    Levittown. NY
    ...seriously sickening. To me, that would re "re-recording", not remixing. That's even worse than taking old studio sessions of unfinished songs and topping them with new vocals or guitar parts.
     
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  16. Man at C&A

    Man at C&A Senior Member

    Location:
    England
    Vile! When was that done on the Nash album?
     
  17. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I dig those special edition Beatles Magazines...still!
     
  18. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    3rd...
     
  19. Exotiki

    Exotiki The Future Ain’t What It Use To Be

    Location:
    Canada
    4th!
     
  20. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    LOL, it's because he's so NOT knowledgeable as admitted by his own tongue...very frustrating!
     
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  21. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    I finished the article. 6 pages out of the magazine, 7 photos + the one on the content page. I could have done with an even deeper dive, and I suspect Sound on Sound might do one, but good coverage of this project.
     
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  22. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    LOL!
     
  23. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise) Thread Starter

    Just so you can make sure you get the right one, the cover photo is Carter Burwell in his new studio.
     
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  24. Exotiki

    Exotiki The Future Ain’t What It Use To Be

    Location:
    Canada
    Paul: So, Giles how many tracks did you put ADT on?



    ...



    Giles: YES
     
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  25. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Indubitably!
     
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