Abbey Road 50th contents, outtakes and sound quality thread .. only

9 voices doing a 3-part harmony.

 

Oh, please. I suppose next you're going to assert that the piano chord at the end of A Day In The Life must be a 217th chord because of the number of notes sounding at the same time...

Harmony parts can be used in different octaves... throw in a melisma or two from Paul and there ya go...

Not to say that's what they did here, but 9 parts does not have to be a 17th chord.

 

True. Those elements are included in the listed multitrack analyses, but the outfakes are worth hearing for sure.

 

Now I'm curious to hear "Because" with the voices digitally shifted up and down an octave. Probably the acappella version would work best.

 

That's right. Both Twickenham and Apple rehearsals/sessions were recorded in mono by the film crew (Nagra tapes), and some of the latter are on multitracks. Lewisohn mentions a blues jam with Billy Preston on the multitracks, an edited mono version of which (from the Nagra tapes) is here:

It can be vastly improved upon by using the multitracks and mixing it to stereo! They've already done it with Mailman Bring Me No More Blues, and there are other unreleased-by-the-Beatles songs from the Apple sessions waiting for such treatment, such as The Walk, Maybe Baby, etc...
P.S.: sorry for going off topic

 

Il'l be going to England on September 21st, do you think I'll be able to buy it in the stores by that time ?

 

Link to a musical sounding example of anything in 9 part harmony?

 

As I said above, I don't think it's anything to do with whether Apple rate Revolver highly. It's to do with sales and creating an event.
Sgt Pepper was always going to be the biggest event for media due to its cultural weight, so always the best title to lead with to see if these work.
Revolver - in the UK at least - is definitely in the second tier of Beatle albums as far as continued sales is concerned. So there was no way it would launch a series of expanded releases.

 

I’m thinking something like the out there choir composition that starts after Dave is turned off in A Space Odysey 2001. And even that is probably not as much as a ninepart harmony.

 

Yeah - I didn't want to completely derail the thread with a detailed examination of the setlist, etc.

Cheers,
Paul

 

I don't think it's 9 parts all the way through but there are definitely some runs that I think would count...

Especially around the 2:57 mark.

 

Giles Martin:

I can do whatever I like, but then they have to be happy with the end result. They say to me – all of them say to me – “Your job isn’t to be safe, you work for the Beatles, your job is to push boundaries”. So we do things, ADT to the guitars for instance. ‘Dear Prudence’, for example, you remember the song in your head, you think about that guitar’s tone, John’s arpeggiated guitar, and it sounds beautiful – his voices comes in directly on top and then the bass and drums come in. You listen to the original song, the guitar is…I think it’s in the left-hand speaker, but it’s quite small. You don’t remember it being small.

So we ADT-ed the guitar, which is double tracked, to a tape machine and stereo-ed it, so it sounds more how you remember it in your head. And it’s that, it’s doing that.

Now, you wouldn’t know I'd done that unless you AB the mono – AB the original to the thing. But the mix just sounds like ‘Dear Prudence’. So that’s kind of the process, if that makes sense. I don’t think I'm ruining their guitar sound or making it sound modern – because I'm using the same techniques they would have done.

And I think that being my father’s son and being trained under him, knowing the Beatles…I didn’t know John very well, met him once when I was little, but I spoke to Yoko about it. I think if I'd say to him, “Shall I ADT the ‘Dear Prudence’ guitar using this tape machine?”, he’d probably go: “Yeah, try it out”. So that’s what you do. And they couldn’t have done that then, they didn’t have the technology to.
​

(From “The White Album isn’t the sound of the band breaking up”: DiS Meets Giles Martin / In Depth // Drowned In Sound)

Cheers,
Paul

 

I don’t think there is any shortage of alternate studio takes, and I’m sure that’s what they will include, I’m just personally not that interested in those. Live tracks could be interesting, but again I think enough of that was presented already on the Anthology releases. I get that they are treating the bonus materials on these as sort of expanded versions of what they touched a couple of decades ago, and I guess I’ll probably just be one of the people buying the album-only editions of these anniversary releases.

 

I don’t find the Sgt. Pepper’s remix to be particularly better (thought I do think it’s fine), but the White Album remix is fantastic, if only because it fixed one of my greatest personal irritants in recorded music history, the massive volume drop from “Helter Skelter” to “Long, Long, Long”... also the whole album sounds more clear without sounding clinical. No hype on my end, I’m just happy with a purchase.

 

Interesting! Not only did he think critically about this mixing choice, but he also admits that the other parties have to give the OK on the mix. On top of that, what was suspected to be a sort of 'digital massacre' was actually done on tape machines! Huh, it's almost as if Giles cares about the authenticity

 

Do we know for sure they are doing them at all? I think we may be making some assumptions, unless I missed an announcement making it more official.

 

Totally off-topic - and totally amazing! Who said DVD/Blu Ray was dying out!

 

Well there’s still 2.7 million living Boomers and older so...

 

I'm sure there are doubled notes and plenty of octaves in there so it wouldn't really count as 9 part harmony by most definitions. But it is impressive.

 

No.

 

See thread title please.

 

And rarely, until Abbey Road, recorded anything besides orchestral arrangements in true stereo.

 

Nope. We don't even have confirmation that they're doing Let It Be yet.

And we only just received confirmation this month that Abbey Road will be done......

 

I don't know if it's part of the official definition or not, but I count octaves as harmonies.

Is there somewhere that says that is not so?

 

@mikecarrera , will we get a video with Giles and Sam talking about the new mix, like the one they did for The White Album?