George Martin: 50 Years In Recording

Пробегая в Милане по аудио-точкам увидел японский вариант этого 6-тидисковика Джорджа-живого, который выпущен ЭМИ в его честь. Покупать пока не стал, тем более, что он продавался запечатанным и снаружи увидеть что бы то ни было невозможно. В Сети узнал, что песней Битлзов там в общем немного, не знаю насколько это новые тейки, вообще хотелось бы узнать что-нибудь дополнительное об этом юбилейном издании. И совет: стоит ли начинать не него копить деньги.

Это Антология звукорежиссёрских и продюсерских работ Джорджа Мартина, во всём их богатстве.
Аннотацию на английском и список композиций можно посмотреть на http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Afs8gtq4zpu43

Produced By George Martin: Highlights Of 50 Years
release on 06/11/2006

Theme One - The George Martin Orchestra
I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles
Anyone Who Had A Heart - Cilla Black
Ferry Cross The Mersey - Gerry & The Pacemakers
Do You Want To Know A Secret? - Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas
Live And Let Die - Paul McCartney And Wings
Goldfinger - Shirley Bassey
She's Leaving Home - David & Jonathan
A Hard Day's Night - Peter Sellers
Melody On The Move - Tommy Reilly
Wormwood Scrubs Tango - Spike Milligan & Orchestra
Goodness Gracious Me - Peter Sellers And Sophia Loren
A Transport Of Delight - Flanders & Swann
Elizabethan Serenade - Ron Goodwin & His Orchestra
The Pepperland Suite - George Martin
From Russia With Love - Matt Monro
Alfie - Cilla Black
Can't Buy Me Love - Ella Fitzgerald
Get Back - Billy Preston
Come And Sweep My Chimbley - Tom Jones
Tin Man - America
Diamond Dust - Jeff Beck
Summertime - Larry Adler Featuring Peter Gabriel
Here, There And Everywhere - Celine Dion
Friends And Lovers - George Martin

Вспомним..

Нашёл наконец-то старый журнал ...

... в электронном виде, но там отсутствует первая страница интервью:

A: I always thought that your having done the Goon Shows was probably the source of a lot of the crazy sound effects on the Beatles' records.
M: Yeah. That, of course, was great fun to do, in those days. We had to create everything for ourselves. And it was like painting pictures in sound, which was great. And it was very useful experience. In fact, to be quite brutal about it, I don't think Sgt. Pepper would have existed without Peter Sellers.
Things always rub off, you know. And when the Beatles first came along, I think one of the things that they liked about me was the fact that they knew I made these kind of records. 'Cause they were pretty zany too.

A: Do you have any "influences" as a producer? Did anybody's records stand out in any way to you?
M: Well, obviously, I like lots of records, but I really don't think I've ever been influenced by another producer's record. Producing's a pretty lonely job-you know, you don't know what another guy does. You never see another guy producing. You just develop on your own lines. You know, it's no good sort of "studying" other people's techniques, because you can't really know for sure how it's done. Unless you're actually there. All you can do is ... you know, if you like a record, you can think how those particular things were achieved, but I think it's much better not to inquire about other people's, but plow your own furrow. You try and find out things for yourself.

A: How about your arranging? Would you say that you're of any particular school or orientation?
M: Well, orchestration and arranging for instruments varies with the kind of performance that's going to be made. So, for example, you will do a different score for a pit orchestra behind the musical from the kind of score you will do for a film, or the kind of score you will do for a gramophone record. Each one depends upon how it's going to be performed.
There are some fantastic orchestrators of the past. Ravel, of course. Tchaikovsky was a great orchestrator. Debussy was pretty good. And these are the kind of people whose scores I studied. Stravinsky is fantastic. And I would find out how they did things ....
I mean, when I was 15, I was enormously turned on by going to a symphony concert in England, where they played L'Apres-midi d'un Faune by Debussy. I don't know if you know this particular piece of music ....

A: I'm going to have to look up the spelling.
M: Afternoon in the Life of a Fawn. And its just a tone poem – an orchestral tone poem – and the sounds that I heard, as this boy of 15 sitting in this auditorium, I could not believe what those ordinary human beings in front of me were making! It was just so beautiful, so fantastic – they were gorgeous. I was so enthralled by this I thought "Well, how does it work? How do they do it? How did the guy write that music? I must find out."
And I got the score of Debussy's L'Apres-midi d'un Faune and I studied it and I looked at all the notes and I saw what instrument was on which and so on. And even today, many years later, I can still listen to that same piece of music with awe, because I know how it works, I know what is done and I can write music just like it now, but I know exactly how beautiful and how brilliant they were.

A: Can you name some other compositions that influenced you?
M: Well, of course, Bach is an old favorite of mine, and he was a pretty pure guy – he didn't have orchestration techniques because there wasn't much of an orchestra in those days.

A: Pure in what sense?
M: Pure musically.

A: Who would be "impure"?
M: Well, that means two things in music, doesn't it? There's the way in which it is put over, i.e., orchestration – the coloring – and then there's the pure notes themselves, whether it's done on a harmonica, a synthesizer, or a symphony orchestra. The actual musical frequencies and notes that go out are the original musical creation, and what you do with it and the way you color it is another matter. They're two distinct things. The design – the actual design of the music – is like a blueprint. And you don't need to hear it – you can look at it and you can admire it. You can hear it in your mind by looking at it.

And Bach, of course, was a fantastic designer of music. The purity of his music is incredible, and, in fact, it's so contemporary in many respects. A lot of the pop songs that we have today are based on Bach's ideas.

A: Would you say that Paul Buckmaster has some Bach influences?
M: Was he influenced by Bach, do you think? Possibly. I guess, like me, he's been influenced by pretty well everybody.

A: I'd be interested to explore the string quartet as a form. Was that always a favorite permutation of yours?
M: Well, I like four-part writing, and ... string quartet writing does teach you something. It teaches you to be economical, for a start, when you've got four lines to play with. It teaches you the way to dispose those lines together, and, in fact, if you write well for string quartet, I believe you write well for strings.
A lot of people make mistakes when they start trying to write for strings by thinking in keyboard fashion. Because a lot of people play piano, and they look at their two hands and they think "Well, if I transpose that to strings, it's gonna sound okay." But it doesn't work that way. You've got to think in contrapuntal terms of four lines working together. And once you've got that into your system, then you can write, I think, very well for strings.

A: Where might writing a string quartet on piano be wrong? Not as fluid an orientation?
M: No, no, it's not that. It's a question of the grouping of the notes. That the tendency for a pianist, when he starts out, is to write a bass line and a group of things in the top. Like his two hands. The left hand is the bass line, and the right hand is a bunch of chords. And they tend to write like that – the violins and violas are up bunched together, and the cellos down by themselves. And that really doesn't work too well, I don't think. It doesn't make for an evenspread sound.

A: Is there any order in which the parts of a string quartet traditionally are written?
M: Not really. I mean, you've got to think of the music as an entity, without thinking too much of the instrument which is natural to you. I mean, if you are a pianist, or if you're a guitar player, you are ... imprisoned by what you play, so you tend to think the way your fingers go. That's why so many pop pieces of music written by guitar players have kind of ... whole-tone slides. Because they do that on their frets – they find a particular chord position, and by moving a couple of frets down, they get another whole tone of the same chord, and a lot of compositions are dictated by that.

A: Well, just the physical aspects of the guitar will tend to give you degradations off D, G, and C chords, but not in B, say, because there's no B in the open position.
M: That's right, exactly. And similarly, a pianist will do particular things that fit his hands which, in turn, influence his writing, but what I'm trying to say is that any guy who's writing music should try and free himself of those fetters. Because writing music is cerebral – it's something you think about – and you shouldn't really be influenced by the physical aspects of your body, you should think of your mind.

A: Who are considered the preeminent string quartet writers?
M: Oh, I don't know – I really couldn't answer that. You mean amongst classical people and all? Well, almost all the classical composers have written them. Beethoven's string quartets are probably the best of all.

A: Let's talk about your horn arranging. I always saw, for what it's worth, "Beatles Brass" as sort of a subgenre of horn arranging.
M: I mean, do you think that's distinctive? Do you think that the Beatle brass is distinctive?

A: Yeah.
M: Do you really?

A: You know It Don't Come Easy? That was Beatles Brass.
M: Mmm, I think it's very ordinary. I've never really regarded my ....

A: You're not as staccato. I think you write longer, more melodic lines, rather than just "punctuating" like most people.
M: Right. This probably, though, is a drawback rather than an asset, I don't know. I mean, it's just the way I tend to write. I've never been particularly proud of my pop brass writing. It works all right ....

A: I always saw you as the standard there. You probably are. As far as horns go, don't you think?
M: No. Well, I don't consider it my best aspect, put it that way.

A: Well, whose brass influenced you? Anyone in particular?
M: Not really, no. I don't play any brass instrument, and I just write, you know, in the way I think it should sound.

A: All things considered, who do you think you write most like?
M: Oh, I don't know. Like me, I guess. I really don't know the answer to that question. I guess one tries to have as distinctive a style as one can.

A: Let's talk about EMI back then. How did the company work, basically? What was the A&R Department like?

Да, действительно интересно что такое стиль Джорджа Мартина. И чем скажем, продюсирование "Rubber Soul" отличается от продюсирования "Revolver"-а. Не говоря уже о продюсировании Белого Альбома.

M: At that time? There wasn't an A&R Department of EMI – there was a label which had its own people. And EMI consisted of HMV, Columbia, Parlophone, and I guess Regal-Zonophone. And then the import labels like Capitol. Now HMV and Columbia were the big boys – they were the big labels – and their pop labels and their classical labels were handled by different people. The pop label was handled by the head of production – the guy who ran the label, in fact – and he was also responsible for importing stuff from, in the case of HMV, RCA Victor, and also making his own records. And the same with Columbia – they had input from CBS, and they also made their own records.
In the days when Oscar Preuss was my boss, Leonard Smith was head of Columbia, and Norman Newell was his assistant. And Wally Norman Newell became head of Columbia, and Wally Ridley was head of HMV on the pop side. The classical end of those two labels was done by other people – Walter Legge and David Bicknell and so on. On the Parlophone half, it was such a small label – much smaller than the big guys – that there was no other person for the classical end. We were the classical end, so we did everything. So that on our label, it was me, and that was it. And I had an assistant eventually, by the name of Ron Richards, who later became my partner. And the whole label was run by four people – me, Ron Richards, my secretary Judy Lockhart-Smith, and Ron's secretary Shirley Spence. And that was it.

A: I'd be interested to know some of the specifics of the Beatles' deal with EMI.
M: I signed them to Parlophone Records for four years. I actually signed them for one year, and with three options by EMI – on the EMI side – to sign them for a further three years. So it was a four-year deal.

A: Were there any advances or guarantees?
M: No. I mean, they were unknown people, and they were lucky to get a chance, you know. And the deal – for them – was pretty rough. They didn't get much money at all out of it. On the other hand, it was the kind of thing where I said that, you know, if you have anyone who shows promise, then obviously you change the contract. It was as simple as that.

A: Your signing them was pretty much sticking your neck out, wasn't it?
M: Well, if you ran a label, you stuck your neck out every time you signed anybody. You know, I had my responsibilities – I had to sort of sign who I thought was right.

A: Weren't the Beatles like the first of those kinds of groups to get a record deal?
M: Yes, and in fact they'd already been turned down by every other record company in the country. But that doesn't mean much, does it? I mean, the kind of deal I signed them to wasn't gonna break the bank if they didn't work. And I needed something, and I thought they were good. So I signed them.

A: Were the Beatles considered the best Liverpool band at the time? Were they the logical band to be the first to be recorded?
M: Not really. If you look at the bill posters of the time, they were kind of way down the list. You've got other people above them in the billing.

A: Because I remember, an early question posed to them by American reporters was "Why you guys and not the other 148 bands?" and they always said "We don't know."
M: That's right. Well, the answer is, of course, pretty obvious, but at the time we didn't know.

A: I always saw a real musical unity in the so called "Mersey Sound." The Beatles, Billy J. Kramer, Gerry and the Pacemakers – there's a definite flavor and style to it. Would you characterize it at all?
M: I wouldn't be able to analyze. ... It's for you to analyze the things we do. But I think the answer – why Liverpool happened to be the place – was that Liverpool was probably the busiest port in England, outside of London. And these guys in Liverpool rubbed shoulders with all the sailors coming off the shore. It's very much a dock area, and it's very much a ... seafaring town. It's also the sort of focus of all the Lancastershire industry – Manchester and Birmingham sell all that stuff through to Liverpool, and it's kind of a connection point, if you like. Rather like Hamburg was, and I guess influences came that way.

A: What were the first tunes you ever heard of the Beatles?
M: I can't remember.

A: Were they on a demo?
M: The very first demo I had was a tape which Brian brought to me, which I thought was interesting. And then I got them down for an afternoon in the studio – it was a recording test, in fact. And I spent an afternoon with them, and they played through some of the stuff they did. Which was sort of standard things. There weren't many of their own compositions – they were things like Yer Feet's Too Big by Fats Waller, and Over the Rainbow and things like that. I don't remember the actual tunes they played, but I know there were a lot of things that ... were fairly recognizable.

A: What did you think of their writing initially?
M: It was okay, but I wasn't knocked out by it. It wasn't very good, actually. I mean, it ... didn't show the enormous promise that came later.

A: How did you use to hear their new songs?
M: We would generally spend some time together, and John and Paul would just stand in front of me with their guitars and sing them to me.

A: Do you think you influenced their writing, even if only by saying "Yes, that's good" and sort of reinforcing them to do more of this here as opposed to that there?

M: I should think the only influence I had on them at that stage was to tell them to go and do better. Because after Love Me Do, I looked around for a hit song for them and I found one, written by Mitch Murray – who was one of the writers of the day in Tin Pan Alley – and I told them to record it. And they weren't very happy about it. They did record it, and the tapes are still there. In fact, there was a radio station that had been playing it. How Do You Do It was the title, and they came to me after we made the track and they said "Look, we can do better than this," and I said "Well, I don't believe you can, but ... show me". And they came back with Please Please Me, and I admitted that they had a super record, a super tune. That was what I was looking for.

A: Did they have any kind of sense of their best tunes at all? Did you find that generally you and they would agree as to their strongest material?
M: Oh, sure. I mean, when Please Please Me came along, we all ... I mean, I knew it was a hit. And I told them so after we'd finished the thing – I said "You've got your first #1 record." And from then on, that spurred them on to writing more.

A: Generally, how were the tunes selected for the first three or four albums?
M: I would listen to what they had to offer, and I wasn't very impressed with it. I mean, the very first record I issued – which was Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You – was the best of the bunch they had. And it was okay, but I wasn't knocked out by it. I mean, it was good enough for a first issue, but it wasn't the big one I was looking for. And that was borne out by the success of things, 'cause it only reached #17 in the charts.

A: Did you hear One After 909 back then?
M: I think I probably did. I really can't remember. I think it's more than likely. I've no doubt it'd be written down somewhere.

A: For the first album, about how many tunes were vaguely under consideration?
M: Well, I already knew their material when we did the first album because I'd seen them up in the Cavern and I'd seen them performing. And their first album – a lot of which is issued on the Rock 'n' Roll album now – was a matter of expediency. 'Cause we had a #1 single hit, and I wanted an album out quickly to cash in on it. So I got them down to the studio and I said "Right. We're gonna do all the stuff you do at the Cavern. And I want you to knock it out quickly." And we started at 10:00 in the morning, finished 11:00 at night, and that was the album. Not much art in it, but it worked. It had that raw gusty thing that we wanted.

A: How much recording experience did the group have before Love Me Do?
M: None.

A: Well, they'd done that thing in 1961 with Tony Sheridan.
M: That's right. With Pete Best. It was before Ringo came on the scene.

A: Did they know pretty much what to do? Did they understand what was going on, or did they just say "Take care of it"?
M: Well, they didn't know anything about recording at all in those days. They knew that a microphone was a thing you sing into, and that was about it.

A: Did they have any ideas before you started recording about who or what they should sound like?
M: Well, they wanted a very driving sound, a very powerful sound, sure.

A: Do you think the early records captured that?
M: No.

A: What ideas, if any, did you contribute to their early recorded sound?
M: Oh, God, I don't know.

A: Was that considered a lot of drums – level-wise – for those days?
M: It's difficult for me to answer these questions, 'cause I'm not on the receiving side, you know. I don't know, you'll have to ask somebody in the street there. I didn't think so. It's difficult for me to answer. I don't know how it was received.

A: I'm told there's a Capitol of Canada version of Love Me Do that's radically different from the one we got here.
M: We did make several versions of Love Me Do, but ...

A: How did all of them get out, or as many as did get out, get out?
M: Well, there couldn't have been more than about two or three. You say "many of them" – there weren't that many. I don't know, people pinched tapes, didn't they? Only one was issued, that's for sure.

A: Were Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You actually recorded in mono? I don't think there are any stereo dubs of that.
M: Every single was issued in mono. It was never thought of as being stereo, because there were no stereo singles in those days. But the facilities I had in the studios were very primitive. We didn't have 4-track – we had stereo machines and we had mono machines. And I used the stereo machine because it was better than the mono machine. And I used to use it as a twin track – I used to put all the backing instruments on one thing and all the voices on another.

A: I see where you said those early sides were never intended for stereo release.
M: That's right. We'd never think about it then, you know. I don't think people realize today how primitive life was in the recording studio in 1962.

A: Why in England was it customary for the singles not to be included on the albums?
M: Because we thought it was better value for money. First of all, if you're gonna make a single you should make a single, and if you're gonna make an album you should make an album. And if you did include a single in an album, it should be an addition to the album rather than part of the album. Right? So that if we included a single in an album, we would make it a 14-track album instead of a 12-track album, and the extra two tracks would be the single.

A: I thought 14 was the standard.
M: Well, sometimes we used to do 14 anyway. But we always tried to make a single separate from the album, so that .... Because we thought people will buy both. And eventually, they would probably aggregate the singles into album form. But the singles market in those days in England was different from the album market.

A: Why do you think that we in the United States got so many mono versions of tunes that appeared in England in stereo? As so many were also single sides, I always surmised that what happened was that Capitol would get the singles as mono dubs and not reorder the stereo dubs for inclusion on the albums.
M: Well, in the early days, Capitol did some very strange things, and we didn't like what they were doing at all, but we had no control over it. And I got very uptight about it all.

A: It's a wonder it went on as long as it did. Sgt. Pepper was the first album not to have been tampered with.
M: Well, as I say, we had no control over it. Capitol then in those days was run by guys who thought that they knew all the answers. Anytime we'd complain, they'd say "Well, you don't know the American market. We do." And what can you do from England 7,000 miles away?
And whenever I came over I was an embarrassment to them anyway. I was sort of kept in the background.

A: Capitol even went so far as to change running orders and B-sides. In England, the single was I Want to Hold Your Hand/This Boy, but in America it was I Want to Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There – both uptempo rockers – presumably to enhance its chances of hitting. And when the album came out, the first three songs were I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, and This Boy.
M: Well, I guess people were trying to justify their existence. As I say, we had no control over it – we didn't know what was being done. We knew later when it was done, but the answer always came back "We know this market better than you do. So stay out of it." And they took the credit for it too. I got very uptight when I'd see records that I'd produced, and I'd see an American version of it and it said "Produced by George Martin in England and Dave Dexter in America." Look at some of those early albums – you'll find it that way. In fact, on the first album it was just "Produced by Dave Dexter."
And Alan Livingstone, who was head of Capitol at that time ... he would sort of hog all the limelight. I remember a press reception, and somebody kept me in a back room, 'cause I was there. And I was never introduced to any of the press or anything.

A: It seems to me that the feeling at Capitol was that this was a transient sort of phenomenon, and we'd best cash in on it right now.
M: Well, everybody thought it was a transient phenomenon anyway. Even at EMI – everybody did. They'd say "It couldn't last."

A: At what point did you realize what you were on to?
M: I never did realize ... I mean, I just knew that I wanted to make something, and I didn't want it to stop. And I wanted to keep going. I didn't really think about it being a transient phenomenon at all. It was just something you did.

A: In addition to different selections on the American Beatle records, wasn't there some re-EQing and remastering done as well?
M: I never really heard the stuff until I came over and bought records. They never sent us the stuff. I didn't know what was going out.

A: Can you talk about the Beatles' harmony sound? Did they generally supervise all the parts being worked out?
M: They had their own basic sound, which I elaborated on. Whenever they wanted anything new worked out, we used to work it out together. It was a team. I mean, eventually, when it became as complicated a track as Because – which was three sets of three harmonies .... When we worked out those harmonies, I would sort of go down to the piano and say "Right. John, you sing this. Paul, you sing this." And Paul would then say "Well, can I sing such-and-such?" You know, that was the way we worked it out.

A: Did you notice any sort of standard "slots"? When, say, John would take the lead – assuming a standard I-III-IV harmony – would George usually take the third and Paul the fifth? Did they have some basic starting point?

M: The basic starting point was the song. It was a tune, and they would add harmonies to it. As they felt like it. I mean, depends on what period of their development you're talking about – 10 years, you know. In the early days? Then it was obvious just to add a third above or below the voice – the main voice – according to which way the chords were. You know, it was very elementary stuff. But then, you don't need me to tell you this – you know, if you listen to the record, you can find out for yourself.

A: What exactly is ADT? Isn't it just a high-speed tape delay?
M: ADT is Artifical Double-Tracking. It was a thing that I wanted to be done in the early days, and it was developed by Ken Townsend, who's now the head of EMI Studios in London. At that time, he was a backroom boy – you know, one of the maintenance engineers – and he knew exactly what we wanted, and he worked out the way of doing it. Well, it's a pretty obvious thing now – it's done quite a bit. Although it isn't done much in this country. The normal thing over here when you go into a studio and you ask for automatic double-tracking – if you ask for a double-tracking voice without having to double-track the voice – they'll give you a digital delay. Which is not the same thing at all. Cooper Time Cube I don't like – it gives a very .... Well, it colors the sound, for a start.
The ADT that we use is taking the signal off the sync replay and bringing it into line with the recording head by means of another tape machine, and putting that tape machine on variable speed, so that you can bring it in and out of phase with the original signal. And by varying the time difference, it goes straight from being locked in exactly the same, through phasing, through a kind of funny "telephone box" quality, to a kind of ADT thing, to a tape delay sound. There's all those variations, depending on the range you get. You have to find the exact right space for a really good ADT sound, which is, in my experience, 'round about 27 or 28 milliseconds. And then, the sophistication of using tape rather than digital delay is you can then vary the speed of tape very slightly. So that it drifts between say 24 and 30 milliseconds all the time – constantly. You control that on the VSC, manually.

A: Would you do this live?
M: No, in the mixing. You can't do it live. You have to do it mixing, because you have to do it only after the thing's recorded – you can't do it any other way. And by doing that, you're varying the frequency as well as the time difference. In other words, you're altering the pitch of the voice – if it's a voice – as well as the actual timing. So that it actually does help, and it does make it a slightly different quality of voice.

A: Do you think you were the first to use this?

M: I think we were. As far as I know. I said to Ken "Wouldn't it be nice not to have to keep doing these voices over and over again?" And he went away and thought about it and came up with this idea, which was great. Well, the strange thing is, working in this country, people don't know about it. Whatever studio I go to, I say "Let's do this," and they say "Really that's .... Wow, that's great." And they actually do it over here now.
The interesting thing is that that particular idea is very useful in stereo, because I hate having all the voices coming up center with the main voice – I like to spread them around a bit. So if you have an Artificial Double Tracking thing on the backing voice, you can put one each side. The other interesting thing is that when you do that, the one that is late by say 28 milliseconds is about 4 dB down in apparent sound. The ear always hears the earlier sound louder than the later sound. So you have to compensate for that by boosting the Artificial Double Track by about 4 dB.

A: Just any kind of delay, the ear hears as behind – spatially – the original signal if it's noticeably lower in level.
M: I've never noticed that. It certainly gives a very strange characteristic which I find very useful in recording. There you go – that's ADT.

A: I'd be interested to hear you talk about the "wound-up piano."
M: I used that basically on Billy J. Kramer – that was the kind of sound that we gave to him, when he came along. I call it "wound-up piano" because .... Everybody does it now occasionally. It's just taking the track down half speed, putting a piano an octave down, and then bringing it back to normal level. It gives you a kind of harpsichord-y effect, 'cause all the decay of all the notes is halved, and the vibrato is doubled.

A: With some compression?
M: With a lot of compression, and equalization.

A: What kind of limiters were you using then?
M: I think they were Fairchilds, I wouldn't be sure.

A: Do you think you were the first to do non-standard speed recording?
M: Probably, I don't know.

A: Had you ever heard of anyone else doing it?
M: No. Oh, yes, I had – Les Paul.

2adh:

>Да, действительно интересно что такое стиль Джорджа Мартина.
>И чем скажем, продюсирование "Rubber Soul" отличается от продюсирования "Revolver"-а. Не говоря уже о продюсировании Белого Альбома.

Может быть он об этом говорит в другой раз. :)

<–– Автор Paul Laurence здесь http://www.gammaelectronics.xyz/audio_05-1978_interview-george-martin.html не указан.

The Beatles' producer tells the true story about why the first Beatles' CDs weren't issued in twin-track mono.

George Martin prefers not to look back. As a rule, he'd rather dwell on what's taking place today and what he might make happen next week. About six months ago, however, The Beatles' first producer was thrust into the past when EMI Music Ltd. solicited him to give a quick stamp of approval to the first four Beatles records to be released on Compact Disc (see our review elsewhere in this issue). https://www.beatles.ru/postman/forum_messages.asp...um_id=0&msg_id=1210&cpage=last#3101745 Finding the test tapes of Please Please Me, With The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale to be, in his words, "dreadful," Martin agreed to go back into the Abbey Road Studios in an effort to do the
music justice.
In the process, Martin has had to sail a narrow course between the twin perils of doing too little and doing too much, showing the recordings in the best possible light while sticking to the truth of the originals. Achieving the latter has meant living with the shortcomings of the recording technology of the early '60s: Martin's first major decision was to convince EMI to release the four discs in mono, as they were originally recorded. This choice has caused a stir, but Martin remains adamant that it was the right thing to do.
Today, Martin remains involved with the CD release project, which will see eight more discs brought out by the end of this year. He is also working on a 24-part television series based on his book, Making Music. In the middle of a workday that had started at 7 a.m., he recalled his early studio experiences with The Beatles and reflected on the problems that technology has solved for the music industry – and those it has created.

Susan Borey

Did any of The Beatles have a hand in putting their music out on CD?

No, not at all.

Do you know how any of them feel about it?

Well, I haven't seen George because he is in Los Angeles. I had dinner with Paul last Friday; he has just gotten back from holiday. I asked him what he thought about the CDs. He hadn't heard them, but he said he's delighted they're putting them out this way.

How satisfied are you with the results so far?

I'm delighted. I'm very pleased with what I've heard so far. I think I shall be more delighted as we go through. Those early ones are very interesting, and historical, but I think that the real value of CD is going to be when you hear Revolver, Pepper, and beyond.

How did you become involved with putting The Beatles on CD?

In December [1986], the managing director of EMI rang me up and said they were going to put The Beatles out on CD, and would I like to hear them? I said yes, and they came along and played me the tapes that they intended to put out. I thought they were dreadful, and I told them so. I said, "Okay, you have come to me and asked for my opinion, and I've given it to you, but I can't be quiet about it. If you say you're going to go ahead with this, I'm going to tell people I think they're terrible." So I put the managing director on the spot, and he said, "Well, what do you suggest we do?" I said, "Well, get some jolly good new ones," because he was planning to put out these first albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles, which were turned out on twin-track, in that ghastly fake stereo which was perpetrated without my authority years ago. You had all the voices on one side and all the backing on the other, and all the dirt in between them. They were never intended to be issued like that. They were mono records done on a twin-track machine, and I told them so. I said, "If you want to do The Beatles a favor, issue them as they were made to be, in mono." They said, "You can't have a CD in mono," and I said, "That's the way to go." I spoke to Bhaskar Menon, who's the head of Capitol, and he agreed with me completely. And that's how they were put out.
Having done that, EMI then asked me if I would take a look at the quality of the albums from then on. I've been listening to them and actually remixing – not to change them, but just to clean up the sound.

How can you clean up the sound. by re-equalization ...?

Yes, and by actually turning down the tracks when there is dirt on them, In those early days, when we just put out mono, we didn't pay a tremendous amount of attention to stereo. I was learning how to handle stereo in those days too. Some of those early stereo mixes I did were rubbish, but I didn't think anybody was listening. In 1963, the percentage of stereo players in this country was about 4%. Everybody listened to popular music on mono back in those days.

Has there been a big difference between what you've had to do with, say, With The Beatles and with Rubber Soul?

Well, I didn't do anything with the first four. I did do something with Rubber Soul and with Help, which was in rather awful stereo. I had to do something to tidy up the low end of the bass and the leaking of sound from one track to another. In the early days we didn't use headphones for dubbing. We used a loudspeaker, so the separation went right out the window. For example, when we listened to "Yesterday" again – as you know, that was done with just Paul playing guitar and singing at the same time. The performance was of him playing and singing two times, and then I went away and wrote the string quartet. So the 4-track consists of Paul's voice, Paul's guitar on another track, strings on another track. On the fourth track, I attempted to gild the lily, if you like, to get Paul to sing a better performance than he did when he sang with the guitar. In fact, I did use a little bit of that fourth track, but only in one tiny sequence, the last four notes of the first chorus. It was a sequence that I thought I had deliberately double-tracked. But it wasn't double-tracked! When I went back and listened to the tapes, I said, "No, you didn't double-track. What you did was use a little bit of the alternative voice track." And on the alternative voice track, I found that the leakage from the speaker playing the original track at the same time he is singing the new one gives the effect of double-tracking. I took out the main vocal and brought in the alternative, but the main vocal is still in the background.

Do you think that the new Beatles CDs are valuable in part because they bring he listener closer to the recording process, to hear how the recordings were produced?

I think the interesting thing is that you are hearing them now as I heard them in the studio years and years ago, without anything getting in the way, without the fog of bad reproduction which we've always had. Now you hear the full range, you hear everything, all the mistakes included.

I have heard you say that making a record is like painting a picture. Can you draw CDs into this analogy?

Yes, I can. Because of the nature of the earlier recordings, I think they were like a black and white picture. I think mono gives you that effect. As we got better, as I got better at producing The Beatles, the albums took on more life, I think that Pepper became much more colorful. We used the stereo picture with Pepper. If you shut your eyes, you can see things, or at least I can. On CD, the effect is even more dramatic. You don't get a flat picture, you get depth as well, almost a 3-D effect.

Does the clarity of the CD present any dangers for the producer? Is the producer more exposed?

Probably, but I don't think that's a danger. I think that as far as you're doing the work, you ought to be out there. You shouldn't be frightened.

Do you feel pressured to keep up with technology by making use of everything that's available to you as a producer?

The pressure's always been there to keep up. It hasn't worried me, particularly, for I haven't found it very difficult to keep up. But I think that, in fact, technology has overtaken my desires. In my studio in Montserrat, I've got two Mitsubishi 32-track digital recorders which are linked together, giving a total of 64 digital tracks. I've got a board that can cope with that, and all the toys that can go along with it for laying down guide tracks, drumbeats, syncing back in again, SMPTE codes, all the paraphernalia of modern technology. Which makes it easier to make records than it's ever been before, but it doesn't make better music. Better music's got to come from the heart, it's got to come from creativity. I don't think it's necessary to have the extremes of technology. It's like sitting in a comfortable chair, you know, instead of sitting in a hard-back. It doesn't make you any fitter, probably less.

Obviously, the process of making records has drastically changed since the time of the earliest Beatles recordings. Do you ever miss those times?

Do I yearn for those 4-track days? The only thing I yearn for is recordings that are more spontaneous. Today everything is so clinically controlled, and everything is so meticulously accurate. Rhythms are impeccable, ensembles are absolutely precise, intonation is perfect, not because you hear it so, but because you see it on a meter. This worries me because I think the heart is going, and I'd like to get back to humanity and mistakes.

Is there something bad about the modern process of recording, whereby members of a band don't have to be in the studio at the same time to make an album?

I think there's too much of what I call layer-caking, you know, people not playing together, and technology enables us to do this. It encourages us to do this, which I think is a shame. I use technology. I have a computer here which I use a lot. I send messages, type letters, keep files, and so on. And I've got a computer at home which I think is invaluable to keep myself tidy, but I use it, it doesn't use me. I think that a lot of technology tends to tell people what to do. One of the things that I've gotten to know about is performance – people playing together, making music. The interplay of people is so important. We're forgetting to do that, and I think it's a shame.

What do you think about Compact Discs in general?

I think their dynamic range is wonderful. The loud bits you can hear without hurting and the quiet bits you can hear without background noise. Recording is merely a mirror of what's going on. The CD enables us to see it more clearly. We're looking through a completely transparent pane of glass now. Before, it was pretty cloudy.
A very interesting thing: I have a friend who's got a son of 12 who is very hard of hearing. He had meningitis when he was younger. He's always had a great deal of trouble listening to music, particularly rock or pop. He could never listen to a Walkman satisfactorily. But through a CD player – and he's got a portable now – he can listen to it on headphones. He gets a great deal of enjoyment out of it and he hears much more on CD than was possible with analog tape. It's something that surprises me because I wouldn't have thought that the frequency range was that much different, particularly for his limited hearing. But it seems to work better. It isn't just a question of range. It's a question of the kind of transients that a thing is given. The sound reproduction is much more natural. I think it's delightful.

If you were recording The Beatles today, would you record them digitally?

Oh, sure. I would certainly record them digitally. I'd use all the technology that's here. But I don't think that one can look back at things and say how different they'd be. It's rather like asking, "What would Beethoven have done if he had had an 8 -track machine?" Everybody uses the tools of their time. Bach used a very good organ, which was a synthesizer, you know. They only used an organ because an orchestra wasn't there.

Do you think there's some kind of coldness that can be attributed to digital recording?

A lot of people have said this, and certainly the earlier digital recordings were. I'm not sufficiently technical to describe it. You know, digital recording has an actual ceiling, whereas analog recording doesn't. Analog recording has a frequency range which just tapers off as it gets higher, and it goes up to 100 kHz, way beyond human hearing. With digital, there is absolutely nothing above 22 kHz, no frequencies at all. There are a lot of people who claim they can hear that. I think they're mistaken. Some say they can't actually hear 22 kHz, but believe they can hear what it does to the lower frequencies. In other words, they are listening to the frequencies at, say, 15 or 16 kHz, the top end, which are colored by the absence of what would come afterwards.

What is it that makes a recording warm rather than cold?

I don't know. To say it's a particular frequency would be wrong. There's no way to put it in words. It's a bit like John saying that he wanted a song to sound as though it's colored orange. It's up to you to define those things.

Do you foresee anything like the Beatles phenomenon happening again?

I do hope so. I really do hope so. I don't see it at the moment. There has been no evidence to say that, you know, Wham, or George Michael, is the new Beatles. It just doesn't add up. It's lightweight stuff.
It's awfully sad that the majority of people who are accepted as being musical giants are old men. By "old" I mean we're talking about Eric Clapton, Elton John ... even Mark Knopfler is getting up there. But they're still giants, and they're great. Amongst the kids, the 18- to 20-year-olds, there must be some great talent. I wish we could find it and encourage it. There's no evidence of it happening, however. The majority of stuff coming from young people hasn't yet benefited from the background that they have. I wonder if any of them have listened to a Cole Porter song?


http://www.gammaelectronics.xyz/audio_06-1987_martin.html

Re/p, 01/02–1971

GEORGE MARTIN at A.I.R. STUDIO LONDON by William Wolf

bw: What do the letters "A.I.R." stand for?

gm: Associated Independent Recordings.

bw: Has A.I.R. done any independent production – locating the talent, etc. – as yet?

gm: Yes, but not much. We left our respective companies just over five years ago – three of us left EMI and one left Decca – and we had to do a deal with EMI which lasted five years in fact; it ended about a month ago. This was basically an independent deal but it also covered the servicing of artists that were contracted to the company anyway. Obviously the Beatles came under that, and other artists that we handled – there were quite a few. So we had to maintain those artists and so our time for finding other artists was obviously limited. But at the same time, as the years went by it became more and more difficult to get new artists – not because they weren't there but because the deal that we had with EMI was limited to an overall royalty which gradually became – well, in fact, very quickly became out of date. So that by the time the contract ended we couldn't possibly hope to secure any artists because we couldn't offer them any money. We were bound by that and we couldn't do anything about it. Now that we're free we can really look around – sniff the air – which is what we intend to do. But we decided, in fact, before we did that, to build a studio.

bw: Several of the studios I've visited in England are equipped, as is A.I.R., to handle visual material as well as audio. Do you feel that there is a potential in integrating the pop music field with visual technology?

gm: Actually there aren't all that many studios here that also do visuals. There are far more – fewer sound ones. But the tendency is, of course, to open up the visual side – mainly because, I think, this is inevitably the future. You're bound to have video recordings – they're on our doorstep.

bw: What are your feelings about four channel sound?

gm: We haven't built it into our boards mainly because it's a very new development and most people in this country don't know anything about it. We know about it because we go to your country. I honestly don't believe it's a very important development. It's quite nice; it's pleasant; it's a very nice gimmick, but I can not imagine the average person going to the elaboration of fixing up four speakers in their room so that they can hear the ambiance of the concert hall behind them ... You could have circular sound, of course, but when I was introduced to quadrasonic sound my comment was that if you're using four speakers the ideal is not one in each corner of the room, but it is three in an equilateral triangle below you and one above you so that you're in the center of a tetrahedron. Then you've really got all around sound, in all manners – you've got up and down as well. But this is being idealistic and I really don't think it's for the average man. It's very nice, but I can't imagine Mrs. Jones of Wiggum or in your case Mrs. Bloomfield of Connecticut taking the trouble of fixing up her drawing room or ... whatever you call it ... the lounge with four speakers.

bw: Is there stereo radio transmission in England?

gm: Yes, there is, but it's very limited. It's third programme stuff; that is, you get classical concerts occasionally broadcast in stereo and occasionally you get stereo record broadcasts. I should think the number of people in England who listen to it is about .001 per cent. And also, people don't listen to radio much anyway. The average man in this country is glued to the television set.

bw: Would you describe what you feel the responsibilities of the producer are on a "rock" date?

gm: Yes. I'm glad you defined that because a producer's responsibilities do vary an awful lot. For a rock date I think he's got to get to know the group musically and obviously psychologically he's got to know the people. He's got to get into their minds and he's got to try to find out what they're trying to express and if he can find out, it's then his job to realize it in terms of sound. So, his function is not to impose his will upon the group and produce his sound using the group as his puppet, but more to draw out from the group the best sound he can possibly get, and get them to play the best possible music.

bw: Then you feel that sound, as well as music, is a major responsibility of the producer?

gm: Yes. That's the way I see it. It's also psychological. I think you've got to learn how to get the best out of people – find out when they're going past it and so on.

bw: How would these responsibilities vary for a CLASSICAL MUSIC session?

gm: Well yes, they vary enormously. To begin with in the classical session, unless it's chamber music, you've only really got one person's ideas to deal with, and that's the conductor; and then, from the amount of classical recordings that seem to take place today, it's more a question of the diplomatic handling of that conductor and trying to get the best out of him rather than the technical details of a good sound. The classical producers of today, and I'm not calling myself a classical producer, seem to leave everything to the engineer and just act like a kind of ... what shall I say ... host to the conductor. I don't think they interfere too much musically, which I think is a pity. I think that classical music could be in fact improved by adapting certain pop techniques to it. I wouldn't mind having a go at recording something classical in a different way.

bw: Would you, for example, use close miking?

gm: Yes. Most classical records are made like photographs of concerts, if you know what I mean – aurally speaking. The ultimate aim is to reproduce as naturally as possible the sounds of the orchestra as created in the concert hall. Now I think this is terribly limiting. I mean it's been done, and it continues to be done better and better because engineers and acoustics and recording techniques have advanced enormously. But I think we're missing out on something. I think that if Beethoven or Bach were alive today, they would call that a very timid approach, and I think they would go back to first base and say, "You've got tremendous tools here; let's use them." And I think if you go back to the actual music and adopt, really, very modern recording techniques and produce a work of art which is different from what you hear in the concert hall, and not necessarily inferior which most people might think.

bw: Then the rock producer presently has more room for creativity?

gm: Unquestionably. That's what appeals to me.