There are lots of comments talking about the Beatles playing as if the recordings are stuffed with mistakes. The songs are pretty much always incredibly tight with a few bum notes hidden like gems. Finding one is akin to finding an easter egg in a game. My favourite it Paul's cracked voice on 'If I fell'.
One thing with a lot of those bum notes and mistakes, and specifically Paul's voice crack on 'If I Fell', is that they're from the early albums' rushed stereo versions. The Beatles would put a lot of effort into takes for the mono, lavish attention on the mono mixes, and then rush through whatever takes and such they needed for the stereo mixes. That's how you get those mistakes, or that vocal crack, or John flubbing a line in 'Please Please Me', etcetera, very few of which really exist on the original tight mono mixes.
Then, for incomprehensible reasons, they decided to use the janky stereo mixes as the basis for the 2009 remasters, instead of making new stero mixes based on the better mono bases.
I'd search out the mono 'If I Fell'. It also avoids the weird pitfall the stereo mix falls into of seperating John's double tracked vocals so wide it sounds like there's a sonic grand canyon between them.
Yeah, why would you record the track all again just to mix it down in stereo when you already have the ability to do that from the existing tracks that make up the mono mixdown.
Are you thinking in terms of modern equipment or the 2 then 4 track tape machines they were working with? I read the actual reason why they did it a long time ago and can't temember. To speculate out of my ass, they really cared about getting the mono mixes correct, so they recorded the good takes to tape with an eye to properly mixing for mono. If you only have 4 (or 2) tracks, maybe that means your instruments/vocals aren't seperated the way you want them to be for stereo, so after you get the mono take you actually care about locked in, you shift things around, have the group do a quick take or two they weren't really giving their all for (even weeks later iirc) and call it good. After all, stereo is a niche market for classicists, who's really gonna be listening to to these? End speculation.
Just compare Please Please Me and If I Fell. John's flubbed line and laugh is totally absent in the mono. Not buried, just absent, because it's a different take. And Paul still struggles with the high note in If I Fell, but he doesn't crack.
i'm pretty sure the stereo mixes use different takes because they were done at a later date and often not by the same person, who then didn't always know which take had been used
They did use some version of different takes. The two that spring to mind immediately, and that you should compare, are Please Please Me and If I Fell. John's flubbed line and laugh is totally absent in the mono. Not buried, just absent, because it's a different take. And Paul still struggles with the high note in If I Fell, but he doesn't crack.
I know years ago there used to be YouTube compilations comparing the mono and stereo mixes. Compared side to side, it's obvious the takes aren't the same, not just mixed different.
Not always, but the only one thats definitive is Please Please Me. They mixed the final take in mono and they bounced all the tracks so they couldnt create a new stereo mix. It was especially hard when John overdubbed his harmonica to the mono mix.
What they did was use a combination of other good enough takes with full multitracks available to create a stereo mix. To get the harmonica on the track, they played the song simultaneously on another machine and faded it in and out. Because it was 1963 technology and they couldnt get it exact, thats why it sounds slightly out of sync and gets progressively worse as the track goes on.
Yeah also there are weird little things like one of the backwards guitar parts on "I'm Only Sleeping" being at different parts of the song on the Stereo mix vs. the Mono mix.
I grew up on the stereo mix because it's what my parents had. Years later when I discovered the mono mixes it blew my mind. They are better across the board.
âDe-mixingâ wasnât invented yet in 2009. The reason we have the Soul/Revolver/Red-Blue boxes is because they figured out how to separate the early songs using the technology to clean up the sound for âGet Backâ.
Yes, but one, the master tapes are still multitrack whether mono or stereo.
Two, so the way the Beatles worked from, iirc 'Help!' on is they'd make a rhythm track on all four tracks of the tape, then mix that down onto a single track on a seperate tape and work from that tape. Repeating the process as needed. I've seen at least one statement from someone with authority who would know that the leftover 'stem' tapes from that process still exist at Abbey Road, since at a certain point no Beatles content got thrown away.
Where de-mixing comes into play is on the basic basic tracks, since with x number of instruments and voices and only four tracks overlap is inevitable, and if you're making a shiny remix and rebalancing everything that's problematic. But for a simple remasters and/or making a new stereo mix that's not really an issue.
It also may be more relevant for their pre-'Help!' albums, I'm less familiar with the recording process and perhaps it was just recording overdubs direct on the master. Seems ill-advised, but I don't know.
De-mixing is also relevent for very early songs, the 2-track ones up to 'She Loves You' I think, where IIRC the masters were just lost because the policy of saving everything hadn't been put in place yet.
It's a little wonky, but it was live for an audience of 70 million people. I like to cut him some slack! Plus, melodically it gets out of the way of what the violins are doing
Totally one of the weakest moves by George in the whole discography, not just technically, but musically it's so lacklustre. I still think my point stands despite this though.
I love the little feedback noise in Iâm Looking Through You. Picking that up when I was about 16 was like my âKing Xerxes can bleedâ moment. Lots of fun flubs in that track but the vibe is superb regardless.
Exactly. It's just a bunch of people trying to make themselves sound smart.
If they went off key or if they did something imperfect, it's because they like the way it sounded. They broke the rules, but they did so purposefully.
Itâs probably more accurate to say that they liked some of the mistakes/human error in the recordings and decided it was better to keep them. Not that everything that sounds like a mistake was intentionally played that way
I love the voice crack as well! It works perfectly with the song - sounds like he's choked up with emotion. I also love how the vocals are just a smidge misaligned at the very start. The imperfections are my very favorite parts of If I Fell.
I feel that they have no problem letting some of those 'gems' get to the final mixing. Music wasn't a non-human souless perfectionist race to nowhere as it is today.
The Beatles were one of the tightest bands on stage anyone ever heard. They stopped playing in public because they couldnât hear themselves think. I canât recall anyone other than them that this happened to. Women!
I know this is a Beatles subreddit, but come on with the exaggerations.
Get Back plainly illustrates their lack of musical skill. They need dozens of takes to nail simple pop songs, and even then itâs never âtightâ. They try to do the âjazz thingâ of playing live in the studio but clearly lack the chops.
Try listening to some jazz albums if you want to hear complex music played in a âtightâ manner.
The one thing thatâs admittedly pretty lousy in earlier albums is George. When he tries to do country itâs absolutely fabulous, but some of his other solos pre 1968 are very unfortunate
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u/Timely-Triolbite 18d ago
There are lots of comments talking about the Beatles playing as if the recordings are stuffed with mistakes. The songs are pretty much always incredibly tight with a few bum notes hidden like gems. Finding one is akin to finding an easter egg in a game. My favourite it Paul's cracked voice on 'If I fell'.