Hi Tom
I didn't mean to imply that ALL the Beatle Stereo recordings were recorded in this manner, only the very earliest. My first experience with stereo Beatles was a European LP, (on Odeon if I recall correctly), indicating that these singles were being released for the very first time in Stereo, and they were all hard left/hard right versions. It was kind of fun being able to pan one way and hear only the voices and pan the other way and hear only the instruments, but to my ears, listening in Stereo didn't give any feeling of a stereo sound stage. I have a very strict personal criteria of what constitutes a proper stereo recording, (and let me be clear, this is personal, for me only, I don't expect everyone to agree with me and I don't impose my requirements on anybody else, except recording engineers who are working for me). I require that every source of sound be clearly positioned between the speakers and located at an angle that corresponds to their position in the original performance, or, in the case of stereo constructions from a multi-mike studio recording in their intended positions. Ideally, I like to be able to close my eyes and mentally visualize the sound stage without sensing that the actual speakers are the sources of sound. I particularly don't like the ORTF, (or the many "sort of" ORTF recordings); with those pick-ups, the speakers are always clearly the sources of sounds with very little accurate imaging between the speakers. I once heard an ORTF recording of a solo viola and standing between the speakers, the viola clearly seemed to be coming from BOTH speakers. I have little faith in "accidental stereo". I have heard several such recordings of Toscanini and while they sound spacey and roomy, they aren't stereo. Toscanini ALWAYS had his first violins on his left and his second violins on his right. This effect cannot be created artificially so if you can't hear this division, it's not stereo!
db
P.S. Someone was mentioning earlier about the "LP" designation; as anyone who is sharp-eyed may have noticed, my rule, (and once again this is only me, I don't expect everyone else to jump in line), is that if it's a Long Playing record from any company except Columbia, it's an "LP". If it's a Columbia product, it's an "Lp", just because that's the way they write it.
On Wednesday, June 24, 2015 7:11 AM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Dave:
What you say isn't fully accurate. There have been volumes written about the Beatles, including a
massive book about how they recorded their songs. Only for the first two years or so were they
laying down music to 2 tracks. In those cases, you could say the stereo releases were about as you
describe. After that, they were doing more complex things and the stereo mixes tended to reflect
more what was bounced to where on the 4-track machines, or what was recorded last at the same time a
track or tracks were bounced. The stereo spread is not hard-set in that era, up to The Beatles (the
White Album).
After they evolved to 4-tracks and increasing amounts of overdubbing and bouncing, George Martin had
to make stereo mixes out of whatever he could with the last 4 tracks standing. So sometimes bass and
drums ended up on one side, sometimes vocals ended up on one side, etc. For the UK version of
"Rubber Soul," Martin allegedly threw up his hands and didn't make the stereo mix (he did make the
stereo mix released on the 1980s CD, which is different from the 1965 stereo master mixes, which
were subsequently released along with the mono master in the Beatles In Mono CD box set). It's been
widely written that the Beatles didn't attend most stereo mix sessions until around the time of "The
Beatles" (the White Album), but I tend to think they weren't completely hands-off, just because they
were so involved in all other aspects of their recordings. But, for sure, the mono master mixes were
what the Beatles and George Martin slaved over and what they knew would be their face to the world
via singles and radio play (and later, when they curtailed singles releases, they knew most people
would buy the mono albums).
It gets interesting, though, because the US was by far the largest single Beatles market, and
Capitol had their own ideas about how Beatles albums should be sequenced (up until "Sgt. Pepper")
and how they should sound. Capitol pushed stereo albums on retailers harder than EMI seems to have
outside the US, and Capitol made available stereo albums from the "Second Album" release (I think I
read somewhere that "Meet The Beatles" was not available in stereo until several years after its
initial Capitol release, nor was the material originally released on Vee-Jay). The Capitol mono
albums often sounded somewhat to quite different from the UK first releases, based on what I've
heard myself and what other Beatles enthusiasts have written. Capitol tended to hype the upper
midrange and sometimes crunch the dynamics even more than they were already crunched on the masters
(the Beatles and George Martin were not the least bit shy with dynamics compression, they wanted
their songs to sound LOUDEST on the radio). And of course, Capitol vinyl was not nearly as quiet as
EMI UK vinyl, and Capitol would sequence albums for 25-35 minutes total length whereas the UK albums
tended to be 40+ minutes. In its defense, Capitol was also pretty good about scooping up singles
into LPs that usually made musical sense like in the case of "Yesterday and Today" (and, to my ears,
it was crazy for the Beatles and Martin to start the UK "Rubber Soul" with "Drive My Car" and to
bury "I've Just Seen A Face" on side B of "Help").
Anyway, I've never bought in that the UK release sound and sequence is the SET IN STONE way everyone
should learn about or listen to the Beatles, but it's how it's ended up because that's how George
Martin and the surviving Beatles made it for the CD era. My point is, the US market was huge,
Capitol sold millions and millions of their albums, and all of us "second listeners" came up with
the Capitol albums, sound and sequences. In my iPod, I've resequenced all the songs to reflect the
Capitol albums I'm used to, but used the MONO tracks through "The Beatles" (White Album) because
they sound better in headphones/earbuds. I'll never prefer the UK sequence of "Rubber Soul" and I
like the movie-soundtrack snippets in "Help," and I love the way the songs flow in "Yesterday and
Today" even though it's a collection of "singles and scraps." For the early albums, particularly
"Second Album" and "Beatles '65," I think the US sequences are more powerful, they cut it down to
less than 30 minutes of music that leaps out of the speakers, and probably sounds more like a
Beatles live show before they got famous. The early UK albums sometimes wander because they Beatles
were still learning songwriting and were also trying to market themselves to different tastes. The
result is too little focus in too many minutes. As you can tell, I'm not as down on Capitol
executives' rethinking things for the US market as some "purists" are, 50 years after the fact.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "DAVID BURNHAM" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Zombies classic
> When comparing the Beatles Stereo releases with the mono releases, it is often observed that the
> mono versions are more satisfying. It must be remembered that many of the stereo releases aren't
> stereo at all; they have the instruments on one channel, the vocals on the other and the rhythm in
> the middle. These seem to have been designed for subsequent mixdown into mono and were not
> intended to be listened to in stereo.
> db
>
>
> On Tuesday, June 23, 2015 9:33 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> Lou, thanks for posting both mixes. Someone my age (49) grew up mostly exposed to "greatest hits"
> compilations of the 60's British Invasion groups. As such, almost all of the exposure was to the
> stereo versions (because, by 1970s and 80s thinking, if it's stereo it's BETTER). The "first
> listeners" were almost always exposed to the mono singles, which was a different experience. I
> think
> this is why the Beatles mono reissues resonated so strongly among some of us "second listeners."
> When I discovered the Beatles back around 1977, a kid in suburbia generally had one choice -- the
> Captiol USA stereo records (the Captiol mono records were long out of print by then, and mono
> records just weren't sold in the typical E J Korvette or Harvey Sound store). Totally different
> listening experience from the EMI monos!
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lou Judson" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 8:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Zombies classic
>
>
>> Good post Tom!
>> Anyone who remembers the song (I do very well, owned the 45 as a teen) should compare the mono
>> and
>> the stereo remix after reading the article:
>> Mono:
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXj16uy8qLg>
>> Stereo:
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3pAm_u0_5k>
>>
>> Ignore the stupid videos, it’s the music!
>>
>> Hearing tunes from our youth puts me back where I was then, remembering friends and places… Like
>> that Beatles song said…
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY7FDN4XWFE> again, ignore the pix.
>> <L>
>> Lou Judson
>> Intuitive Audio
>> 415-883-2689
>>
>> On Jun 23, 2015, at 3:14 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Not the flesh-eating kind
>>> http://www.mixonline.com/news/classic-tracks/classic-tracks-she-s-not-there-zombies/424710
>>>
>>> -- Tom Fine
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
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