http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/ http://www.eblah.com en http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1230696890/ http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1230696890/#num1 (and that horrible Cheese & Onions thing I did, sounds like trash now )

This is just a short simple experiment with trying to replicate Automatic Double Tracking. I decided just to put all the examples in a zip to save time and space.

1. Raw Acoustic Guitar sample from Raw Tracks.com, I do not know the brand or what microphone was used.

2. A V72 preamp impulse response was used, followed by a Pultec style EQ, then a LA-2A style compressor,
and lastly several tape saturation plugins. While a V72 is no REDD 47 preamp, and Pultec is close to the REDD 51 Pop EQ, and the LA-2A being listed as sounding close to the EMI RS123 Compressor in that an Altec Compressor is built quite similar to a LA-2A, but EMI extensively modified them, and tape plugin of a Studer at 15 ips.

3. Previous track, with 2nd copy pre delayed to 40 ms while also being "timed stretched" to 10 cents faster.
This is a key element I often overlooked. While having a delay and modulating pitch, the delay was soon changed way out of sync, but by "time stretching" the plugin, the delay always remained at 40 ms but with a altered pitch. A Wow & Flutter plugin set to a very light and subtle setting was used on the delayed track.
The effect is some what "Dear Prudence" style intro.

4. This is a kind of extra, a Magical Mystery Tour type Chorus. While trying to get 2 delayed copies to pan in volume to simulate the true effect of ADT, having the delay alter ahead and behind, I decided just to put both on full volume and a kind of warbly "ROLL UP" effect happened, so I decided to share it with you all.

"AcGtr Raw" is 1.
"AcGtr Beat" is 2.
"ADT" is 3.
"ADT Chorus" is 4.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ttxtn0hylmu

Come to think of it, by vari speeding the pitch before hand, recording it, and then time stretching it, might have actually made the truest replication of ADT I think is available for a Digital Audio Workstation. It might be able to arrive ahead or behind and still remain delayed. I'll post that result next time. If anyone is interested in this feel free to send me any recording you'd like done, I do this out of love, me in my wannabe white EMI lab coat
P.S. All mixed in glorious Mono.

"Whatever it is that will please you, I'll do it"]]> Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:14:50 Mellotroniac http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1229666186/ http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1229666186/#num1
http://www.youtube.com/EdTurnerNumber9]]> Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:56:26 Kirkwood http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1228940045/ http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1228940045/#num1

Abbey Road Studio 2 is 60'L x 37'W x 28'H reverberation time is listed as 1.2 seconds. I guessing thats without accoustic screens? A dozen bass traps(large wooden boxes) designed to eliminate excess bass rumble on all 4 walls. Accoustic quilts placed throughout walls. 3 Indian rugs placed across the far end of studio to create "dead end", a more accoustically dry space with less echo and reflection. This is end is most often used by The Beatles. Uncarpeted "live end" of room often used for brass & string overdubs. Swing out partitions each 10x20 create temporary walls to box group in. Covered in acoustic tile maked absorption/diffusion effect. This provides more intimate less echoing sound. Thick solid wood floors,non-resonant, but solid surface made sound acoustically warm & pleasant. Painted brick walls had a acoustically reflective sound; however bricks had been deliberately laid irregularly to aid in sound dispersion. What appeared to be a high ceiling was in fact a large structure of decorative rectangle supports with thin panels of cloth strung in the frames. Sound actually reached false dropped ceiling first, travelling through it and into the rafters and ductwork above the studio which served to diffuse and trap it. The room's sound was an interesting blend of of reflection (from the hard surface floor and painted brick walls) and absorption (from the quilt, bass traps, ceiling and rugs). Its sheer size & acoustic properties give it a warm reverberant quality & a short, distinctive "hum" that resonates on any low-mid note produced in the room. While it has neither the bright reflections of a concet hall nor the low rumble of a basketball court, it is far more acoustically neutral. The room adds a dark coloration that emphasises notes & harmonic content.

And about Automatic Double Tracking-

Major summarised account of ADT=
So what was ADT, and how was it acheived? In simple terms,the process involved taking an existing recording, creating a duplicate "image" of it, and then aligning this secondary image either slightly behind or AHEAD of the original signal. Properly done, this created the impression of two seperate signals playing back almost-but not quite- in sync with each other, just like manually double tracking. One of the keys to the process (and the reason it is so hard to accurately recreate today) lies in the unique construction of Abbey Road's Studer J37 four track machines. All multi-track tape machines have 3 tape heads-Erase,Record,Playback. This is fairly self-explantory, but the Record head actually serves 2 functions. When overdubbing onto a track, the Record head also serves to playback the signal from the tracks which have ALREADY been recorded. This allows the musicians to record their new overdub IN SYNC with the existing material. Because of this function, the Record head is also referred to as the "Sync" head. Most modern tape machines have a single output amplifier per track. This amp is auto switched to play back signal from either the Sync head (when recording/overdubbing) or the Playback head (when mixing or playing back the tape). Therefor, the signals of the from the Sync head and Playback head can never be heard simultaneously. By contrast, the Studer J37 used at Abbey Road had TWO seperate amps per track- one dedicated to Sync and Playback. This meant that the signal from BOTH heads COULD be heard simultaneously. As the heads were spaced some distance apart, there was a slight delay between the time a recorded signal arrived at the Sync head and the time it reached the Playback head. This slight time offset and the two SIMULTANEOUS outputs were the vital features that made ADT possible.
Here comes some more summing up=
Take signal from off the record head of the tape and delay it until it almost coincided with the signal from the playback head, you might get two sound images instead of one. Tapping off Sync head signal from the Studer was easy, it came out of the Sync output on the rear of the tape machine and into control room patchbay, where it could be routed anywhere they pleased. What was needed was a way of DELAYING the output of th Sync head so that it was almost perfectly aligned with the signal from the Playback head. The solution was the play and record heads on the BTR2 tape machine were roughly twice as far apart as the ones on the Studer J37. It was worked out that twice one was almost one of the other, if you ran the BTR2 at 30 ips, it was comparable to the J37 running at 15 ips. This stroke of luck provided the perfect means by which to delay the sync output. Taking the Sync signal from the Studer and send it to a BTR2, there we would record and IMMEDIATELY replay it, so that that it was then delayed by the head gap between the Record and Playback head on the BTR2. This delayed signal then emerged from the BTR2 JUST as the original sound was being played back from the Studer.
Because the head spacing on the BTR2 was not EXACTLY the same as the one on the Studer-although it was fairly close- the delayed signal still required some fine tuning. To adjust the delay a varispeed was installed. Using a Levell oscillator and the Vortexion, you subtly altered the speed of the BTR2, effectively changing the delay, so you could then make this signal arrive either earlier or later than the direct signal on the Studer. This ability to have the second image appear BEFORE the main sound is one the key features the makes Abbey Road's ADT unique. Modern delay and chorus systems usually only allow for sounds to be delayed after the original signal, giving only a portion of the effect possible at Abbey Road.
Controlling the speed on the BTR2 gave engineers the power to determine just how close the two signals were to each other. I think the magic figure was 40 milliseconds recalls Gibson, if you got about 40 ms that sounded like ADT. Also contributing to the effect were the very slight motor and mechanical variations which caused the mechanics to drift in subtle ways. This drift was not significant, as these were professional machines, designed to run very solidly. But there WERE slight variations between the two machines that added richness and naturalness to the sound, making the effect difficult to accurately recreate digitally. "It was better because it was so unstable" asserted George Martin. "Someone had to monitor it all the time to make sure the tape speed was correct, which was why it was so good. Now, if you press a button, once it's there, even if its scanned a little bit, it's still alittle bit mechanical."]]> Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:14:05 Mellotroniac http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1227598623/ http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1227598623/#num1
Chaaaaaang!……
“It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog”

This first chord that starts A Hard Day’s Night is one of the most recognizable and famous opening chords in rock & roll. It’s played by George Harrison on his 12 string Rickenbacker.

The other reason that it’s famous is because for 40 years nobody knew for sure what it was. Many guitar players have tried in vain to recreate the sound but have usually failed miserably.

Well, someone has figured it out definitively - not a musician, but a Dalhousie mathematician.

Four years ago, Jason Brown was inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary - so much so that he decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to break the sound into distinct frequencies using computer software to find out exactly which notes were on the record.

What he found was interesting: the frequencies he found didn’t match theinstruments on the song. George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, John Lennon played his 6 string, Paul had his bass - none of them quite fit what he found. He then realized what was missing - the 5th Beatle. George Martin was also on the record, playing a piano in the opening chord, which accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

“I started playing guitar because I heard a Beatles record—that was it for my piano lessons,” says Brown. “I had tried to play the first chord of the song many takes over the years. It sounds outlandish that someone could create a mystery around a chord from a time where artists used such simple recording techniques. It’s quite remarkable.”

The Beatles producer added a piano chord that included an F note, impossible to play with the other notes on the guitar. The resulting chord was completely different than anything found in songbooks and scores for the song, which is one reason why Dr. Brown’s findings garnered international attention. He laughs that he may be the only mathematician ever to be published in Guitar Player magazine.

“Music and math are not really that far apart,” he says. “They’ve found that children that listen to music do better at math, because math and music both use the brain in similar ways. The best music is analytical and pattern-filled and mathematics has a lot of aesthetics to it. They complement each other well.”

So how was the chord played you ask?  George Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; Paul McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.


]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:37:03 Klang http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1227592333/ http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1227592333/#num1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRaysDZUAdU&feature=related

From there, you can see some of the other covers he has done.  (Revolver, White Album, etc)

But he is also part of the Virtual Beatles who do a decent job of Beatles covers. The singer is French and sometimes his accent can throw the song off slightly, but eh, Im not really complaining... fun to watch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gZMXAwBVaA&feature=related

]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:52:13 Casbah