The Beatles - recording techniques?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mountainmirrors
  • Start date Start date
M

Mountainmirrors

kaleidoscopic renegade
Damn...I can't get over how much better Beatles albums sound than rock releases today!!
Take the White Album or Revolver. They're a trip on the ears.
One thing I notice is the severity of the panning. Barely anyone pans that hard. And it sounds incredible. Middle, hard left, and hard right.
Anyone know of any sites or books that detail the recording techniques used by the Beatles?



http://www.mountainmirrors.com
 
Unfortunately it is temporarily out of print, but if you can get your hands on a copy of "The Beatles Recording Sessions" by Mark Lewisohn; it provides a lot of details into their recordings and the growth of technology.
 
when they was recording Srg. Pepper, they would do weird things like take one of the cups off a pear of head phones, re-wire it and tape it to a fiddle and use the cup as a mic. They would also splatter vocals with tons of hall revurb and then run them through a lesie (spelling?) amp box.

One of my favs is when they was doing "For the benifit of mr. kite", Georgia Martin would record a few seconds of circus sounds, keybords and stuff like that and then he would splice that section of the tape out, through the tape up in the air, and then splice it back in revursed and stuff. that's what you hear in the close of that song.

For drums, i think they only used 3 mics. in the early days i think it was just one, but as it got on to Srg. pepper, they would use an overhead,snare and kick, and then in the white album days, mic each drum.


Zeke
 
I highly reccomend George Martin's All You Need is Ears. Its an awesome book that not only shows how brilliant George is but also shows how much the industry has changed since the begining.

I love that technique too Zeke...hehe. My favorite part of the book is the recording of "A Day In The Life." To record that huge dissonant string part at the end, he gave every instrument in the orchestra a peice of sheet music that showed the lowest possible note for that instrument and then like 90 bars later or something the highest note on the instrument that was in an F major triad. he encouraged the players not to listen to eachother so they would each be in a different place in the music. They recorded this process 4 times and mixed them all together. Then for that last piano chord, he brought in four pianos and had four people bang that chord as hard as humanly possible, and mixed those tracks together.

Brilliant guy.
 
Mountainmirrors said:
One thing I notice is the severity of the panning. Barely anyone pans that hard. And it sounds incredible. Middle, hard left, and hard right.
Click to expand...

The weird panning was done by the record companies and not Martin or the Beatles. Stereo just became available and nobody new what to do with it. If you want to hear those albums the way they intended it should be in mono.
 
A hardcover no less, I've been suffering with a softcover! Oh well, still a great read.
 
I guess the hard paning would also help give alot of "Space" that's found in a beatles song......
 
Funny - I just read in Mix Masters, there's a line in there from an engineer that says, "there's a left, a right and a center. Everything in between is shit!" - referring to how he creates space.
One question:
The acoustic guitar sound on "Blackbird". Dry with tube pre or compressed??

(I just scored that Beatles Recordings book on ebay for 35 bucks - right this minute!!)
 
I saw clips from the recording of "Black bird" on "The Beatles Revolotion" that aired about 2 years ago on NBC, and they had what looked like a dyn. mic but i'm sure it was a condinser, aimed at the sound hole about maybe a foot away. They may have used limiting, but i don't think they would have used compression. I LOVE Paul's bass sound. I'd like to get sounds like taht. I think he miced his cab. insted of runing direct.
 
montage said:
Unfortunately it is temporarily out of print, but if you can get your hands on a copy of "The Beatles Recording Sessions" by Mark Lewisohn; it provides a lot of details into their recordings and the growth of technology.
Click to expand...
Great book. I've read it several times over the years. Unfortunately, for those of us into the technical details, it doesn't go there much. It's more about what was recorded when rather than mics, mic placement, processing, etc. I'd kill for that book.

Another good book is "Beatles Gear". It mostly follows the progression of guitars and amps they used but its got tons of great stories. After they were already the biggest band ever, they would still tour England in a van with the guitars strapped to the back and often schlep their own big amps up on stage. Different times, man.

Ptron
 
For 'Revolver' and before they used the EMI REDD-37 desk... it didn't have any panning functions... your choices were 'left', 'right' or 'both'.

As for why Beatle records sound great... well... they were mostly working in Abbey Rd. which has several amazing sounding rooms... they were going to Studer 1" tube 4-tracks... they had microhones that most people can only dream about... and there was a whole lot of talent involved...
 
The Sgt. Pepper BAWWWNNNGGGGGGG

Freeform said:
Then for that last piano chord, he brought in four pianos and had four people bang that chord as hard as humanly possible, and mixed those tracks together.
Click to expand...

I believe the four guys were John, Paul, Ringo and Mal Evans... George Martin added some harmonium (that he played). On the CD version, at the very end of the chord, you can hear a chair creak, plus a shuffle of some paper.

The great thing about Beatles recordings is that we all used to listen for the slightest nuances (because they were there!). Things have changed...
 
Isn't is awesome to hear little things like that?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top