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

Plus the From Me To You Single with One After 909 takes (one of which was on Anthology 1)

 

Octaves counts as different parts but not harmonies. Anything else than octaves are harmonies (however disharmonic some of them might be)

And here is where i promise to stand down from this discussion, since the last time i got involved in a music-theory related discussion on this board it ended ugly.....

 

The premise itself makes no sense. Pepper’s needed to be stereo? Uhhh maybe. White Album? Fine as it was. Abbey Road? Best engineering Grammy. Nothing wrong with it.

 

A Plangent transfer for example.

 

Personally I think it’s hubris to think we know better than Emerick nd the guys who made the records I’m the first place, and no the mixes are not already “preferred”. That’s far from universal. Inferior mixes? That’s just nuts.

You want something fun and sweet like “Love”? Terrific. It’s Vegas, it’s a mashup, it’s post-modern I get it. Different? Fine.

Again. I wonder if Giles thinks his father’s are inferior mixes. I highly doubt it.

 

There are official rules of counterpoint that guide creation of three part harmonized vocal lines (in which you would almost never use octaves) and four part harmony (in which octaves can be used in certain ways and you are not supposed to make use of certain types of parallel motion between the lines).

Are rockers aware of these rules? Very rarely.
Do they follow them? Quite often if they are doing something musically interesting with the harmonies, then they are following them - because basically the rules mandate doing more musically interesting things with voices and not doing the dumbed down obvious stuff (with singing in octaves being the most dumbed down obvious way for people to sing together other than singing in unison). So you will often see folks like the Beatles or Beach Boys or groups that include David Crosby follow close to these rules intuitively.

I'm not enough of an expert to tell you if anyone ever extended the rules out to what to do with 9 part counterpoint, because for the reasons I explained it is not very possible to do that and sound real musical, though I expect some cutting edge composers that were more interested in doing musically innovative and challenging things than in making pleasing sounds must have tried it.

But beyond those rules, nobody would ever call 2 people singing the same line an octave apart people engaged in harmony singing. That's just what happens when two people with very different vocal ranges (e.g., a bass and an alto) try to approximate singing in unison.

I regularly arrange 3 part vocal harmonies for my band, and if we find 2 of us are just singing octaves at some time, we try to revise the lines we are singing to correct that and have each of us singing a different note so we make a full chord between us.

 

And dying by the minute.

 

The tapes are in fabulous shape and the last transfers made on an 810 are not showing any signs of dropouts or any other issue. The problem is the 810 or ATR are a dated design and there’s more on the tape than we’re hearing

 

Has it been mentioned anywhere if the cover art is lenticular like the Sgt Pepper set?

 

If they did their homework, then I’m assuming that they know that take 37 has been out for quite a long time. On all the Abbey Road boots I own, ‘‘tis has always been a highlight! Thanks J

 

No lenticular cover. Keeping it simple this go around.

 

Well that speaks volumes. And of course no mention of flying in the outro guitar.

 

He addresses it specifically - no outro guitar fly-in. Instead - he claims there were two guitar tracks. He treated the guitars with ADT and spread it across the stereo image:

"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"​

Can you provide a source where he (or Sam) says he flew-in the outro? Not trying to start an argument here - I can't find any record of it in Giles' interviews.

Cheers,
Paul

 

To be fair, no matter which note you sing it generates different partials in the overtone series. An A at 440, will generate a strong 880 as its first partial, and at an octave up, an A at 880 will generate a strong first partial at 1760 hz. While strictly, it may be true that an octave doesn't count as a harmony note, it is doing different things in the audio spectrum and generating different partials, which may (or may not be) perceived as different harmony notes. In some ways, it might depend on the listener's ability.

 

I don't think "Nine-Part Harmony and Counterpoint" was ever listed as a course at the college I went to

 

I suspect you won't anywhere else, either.

 

You won't find a source where he says he did it, but he did do it (below is quoted from a previous post of mine which I had linked in this thread but has since been deleted)

Giles has used the outtro of the song to artificially double track the intro, one channel has the original performance but the outtro is flown into the other channel:

The four tracks are, in order:

Outtro from Rockband stems
2018 remix left channel
2018 remix right channel
Intro from Rockband stems

Note that the spectral plot of the outtro matches one channel of the remix and the the true intro matches the other channel!

 

Albums aren't remixed because there is something wrong with the official mix. They are done simply as a fresh listening experience.
It's not worth getting upset over.

 

EPK on the way!

 

I haved liked what Giles Martin has done so far with the Beatles, so much so I wish someone would let him fix the Iron Maiden output in digital.

 

Why does he continue to do this kind of crap on these remixes? It's unneeded. Even ADT is unneeded and pointless when the original mixes don't use it ("Good Morning, Good Morning"). Again, THANK GOD he doesn't ruin the outtakes with this nonsense.

 

I agree, we have the original and the polished-up remaster. Now we get to enjoy (or not) the remix. I personally am very intrigued and excited to see what dynamics or nuances might be revealed in this project. If I don't like aspects, well so it goes. There are always the outtakes that I never imagined I might get to hear; if it doesn't include my long treasured bootleg tracks in improved quality that is a fair trade-off for the new treasures. Colour me bright pink in anticipation!

 

Interesting - can you give the X-axis time frame you used?

I'm reserving my opinion until I can zoom in a bit more.

Cheers,
Paul

 

They’re REMIXES! He can do whatever they pleases with them and the Beatles do approve! Who cares if the original uses it or not. Remixes aren’t supposed to be the originals. Period.