How should The Beatles be mixed for surround sound | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Bongo said
Not sure I’m understanding what your saying, but I agree the Beatles should be in Surround Sound, where possible.  

Hard to do with mono, but most songs are in stereo!    

Actually, most of the original multitracks survive, so another way to mix it would be to have each track have it’s own dedicated channel. Here’s how many tracks each album was aloud to have: (Actually, the stereo versions of Please Please Me and With The Beatles are just the original multitracks)

Please Please Me through With The Beatles : 2 (The Love Me Do and She Loves You singles only survive in mono, this also explains why the stereo versions of these albums have no center and why there preferred in mono, although I think that it’s cool that you’re essentially just listening to the original multitracks)

I Want To Hold Your Hand through Revolver : 4

Sgt. Pepper ‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band through The Yellow Submarine Sessions (Hey Bulldog and Lady Maddona): 4, although some songs, for example Fixing A Hole , were recorded at other studios, which could have had 8 track machines and some songs, such as A Day In The Life , synched 2 4 tracks to make an 8 track

The Beatles: 4 or 8 (about half and half there, despite how the sound of the album sounds almost nothing like Magical Mystery Tour (hence ruining the smooth transitions from album to album), the sessions started out using the same equipment used on that album)

Abbey Road and Let It Be : 8

I wonder why they didn’t make any Beatles albums in Quad back in the 70’s (the only Quad albums I had were Tubular Bells and Paranoid)

Ron Nasty said
Let me be blunt, and I apologise if I offend but it’s just an opinion.

What is it with all this billhooks about making the Beatles something they weren’t. They barely recorded in stereo and yet people want them in surround. A Hard Day’s Night  was filmed in black and white but people argue for a colourised version.

You know, I get the idea of 5.1s for the film soundtracks and something like Love, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I’ve bothered with the 5.1 of Love.

George, when stereo was coming in, famously said something along the lines of, “Two speakers? Why would you need more than one?”

Surround mixes can only ever be fakes that bear no relation to what The Beatles wanted. In certain circumstances it has its place, but sorry no interest at all in seeing the audio catalogue remixed for surround.

For me, it’s not “How Should The Beatles Be Mixed for Surround Sound?”, but “Why Should The Beatles Be Mixed for Surround Sound?”  

Thanks for saying what you feel and not being afraid to hold back because it pisses me off when someone is to scared to say something they feel needs to be said.

As for colorization, I think it’s great as long as they keep the original monochrome negatives in tact, although I do wonder why the skin tones always look off. If there are 7 films I’d like to see colorized, it’d have to be Steamboat Willie, A Hard Day’s Night , Ed Sullivan Show 2/9/1964, Clerks (don’t know why the hell it’s not in color to begin with), the Flip The Frog shorts (I’m an obscure film geek as well, I made this page on Lost Media Wiki http://lostmedia.wikia.com/wik…..confirmed)), the Universal Monster movies, and the diarrhea brown scenes from The Wizard Of Oz, so to that I say “let them draw on those films with their crayons”. Trust me on this one, colorizing something like Steamboat Willie or Citizen Kane is nothing like pissing on the Mona Lisa.

Come on, even if you wouldn’t want to see a 5.1 of Sgt. Pepper , The White Album , or Abbey Road , it would at least not make them look worse than Dark Side Of The Moon and A Night At The Opera audio channel wise.

John also famously gave Beatles fans a porno in the form of an album cover, though I digress because I don’t want to get too vulgar.

They may bear no relation to what The Beatles wanted, but you can do a 4.0 surround with most of the songs without messing around with the EQ.

Why not mix The Beatles for Surround Sound.

Ron Nasty said

@sgtpepper63 said
[snip]
…and the diarrhea brown scenes from The Wizard Of Oz…
[snip]

So you want to colourise the scenes set in Kansas? The whole point of the “diarrhea (sic) brown scenes” is to show the difference between Kansas and Oz. It is an artistic decision by the director which is meant to convey a message, and you want to take away the director’s vision because you’d prefer those scenes looked the same as the rest of the film when they were not intended to look same? Instead of understanding what the director was doing, you’d prefer to do away with the director’s intent?

This is where it fits in with surround mixes of the Boys – the ambition to take a piece of art beyond what the artist created, and believing that still has anything to do with the artist.

What you’re saying when you want the parts of The Wizard of Oz colourised that aren’t colour is that the director got it wrong rather than you’re not looking at it right and understanding the director’s intention. I understand what he was doing, and to colourise those scenes would destroy the film.  

I understand damn well what the creator was trying to do and I think the use of sepia tinted black and white to distinguish from happiness and sorrow. The main part I think should be colorized should be the outro because even though she’s happy to be back in Kansas, the world’s still brown, making it feel like “not another shitty day in poopy town USA” instead of “I’m so happy to be home again”. Also, colorizing those scenes wouldn’t destroy the film. That would be like saying “the special edition of Star Wars makes me hate the original version”. If someone wants to alter something while keeping the original negatives/acetate in tact, why should we stop them, colorizing The Wizard Of Oz or Steamboat Willie isn’t going to ruin the past but rather altering a copy of the film, for better or worse.