So, let’s see how much I have to say about A Hard Day’s Night, the first album the Beatles recorded on four-track equipment. It’s also the first album to contain exclusively Beatle-penned songs and the only album in the entire catalog to contain nothing but Lennon-McCartney compositions. There are no covers, and no songs written by George or Ringo.

The album is the soundtrack for the movie of the same name, or at least half of it is. When originally released, the first side of the LP contained the seven songs that were included in the movie, and the second side contained songs that Lennon and McCartney had written with the movie in mind, but were never actually included in the film.

Let me just say right off the top that putting in A Hard Day’s Night after listening to Please Please Me and With the Beatles is a bit like watching the middle part of The Wizard of Oz, where it switches from black and white to color. The depth of the mixes here is leaps and bounds above those of the first two albums. I know some people still prefer the mono mixes of all the albums that were released that way, but this stereo mix of A Hard Day’s Night is, to my ears, bloody awesome.

Right from the iconic opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” (which I was tickled to read has recently been analyzed by a computer science professor at Dalhousie University here in Halifax), I knew I was entering a different world with this album. The simple fact of having vocals in the middle of the mix and the instruments separated behind them is like putting 3-D glasses on your ears. The sound is much more immediate and present, and you feel like you’re inside the song.

Add the digital remastering to the equation, and you have an album that sounds like it could have been recorded last week. The sound is incredibly clean, all the instruments are fully audible, and distortion and muddiness are scarcely to be found.

I think the thing that really stood out for me on this album were the songs that used acoustic guitar: “If I Fell”, “And I Love Her”, and “I’ll Be Back”. The sound is warm, clear, and rubbery. It’s hard to explain what I mean by “rubbery”, but it’s a good word in this context. You’ll have to listen to tracks to understand what I mean. “And I Love Her”, in particular, just oozes warm acoustic guitar goodness. I want to wrap myself in it.

Also stand-out on this record are the vocal harmonies, particulary in “If I Fell”, in which John and Paul harmonize, and “Things We Said Today”, which features a double-tracked Paul harmonizing with himself. The vocals in general are top notch (except for the falsetto bit in “Tell Me Why”), and when you strap on the headphones and really dig into the mix and listen to the individual instruments, right down to the strum level, you begin to realize… “These guys are good.”

That may seem an odd thing to say, but how many of us really listen to the musicianship in the recordings of the Beatles? We love the songs, and we know they were dynamite songwriters, but when you have access to something as painstakingly produced as these stereo remasters, you gain the ability to really comprehend how talented and versatile the Beatles were as vocalists and musicians. They’d been playing together a long time before they ever started recording, and that tightness is more than evident on the songs presented here. They weren’t just a lucky bunch of lads who happened to be in the right place at the right time. No… They were good.

The next album, Beatles For Sale, bears this out unequivocally. This stereo remaster is just as bright and clear as its precedessor, and the instruments pop out just as distinctly, if not moreso.

Despite the crisp sound and the bang-on performances, however, the album has a bit of a personality disorder. While it’s clear that John and Paul’s songwriting ablilities are evolving beyond the straight-ahead rock’n'roll/R&B roots evidenced in songs like “Please Please Me”, “Love Me Do”, and “I Saw Her Standing There”, Beatles For Sale goes back to the formula of earlier albums by including a whopping six cover songs. Again, the performances are great, and the mix is fabulous, but I’ve never been as fond of the Beatles’ cover tunes as I am of their originals.

There’s also an unmistakeable country-ish flavour to this album, which, while not unpleasant, is a little disorienting. The inclusion of two Carl Perkins tunes (“Honey Don’t” and “Everybody Wants to Be My Baby”) leaves no question about his influence on the group, but the songs are starkly simple, especially when compared with the likes of “No Reply”, “I’m a Loser”, and “Baby’s in Black”, which lead off the album and give a clear indication of the direction John and Paul’s songwriting is taking. “Honey Don’t” is a terrible track, and Ringo sings it really badly. Thankfully, his vocal participation in the group is destined to be limited.

But even “I’m a Loser” and “Baby’s in Black” have a slight country-ish feel to them, especially the guitar solo in the former. It’s possible they were experimenting with styles, just as they were experimenting with recording techniques and overdubs in the studio.

While the album lacks a certain flow, it was certainly nice to revisit great songs like “Eight Days a Week”, which predicts the addition of the sitar in later recordings with it’s unusual jangly guitar fade-in, and “I’ll Follow the Sun”, a pretty, melancholy song that is easily Paul’s sweetest vocal performance up to that point.

The remastering process has brought new life to these albums, and believe me, I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the collection. And I’m going to subject you to the same microscopic analysis of each one as I experience it. I have a good ear, and I’m enjoying the process of immersing myself in each album and then writing about it. So, brace yourselves.

And don’t forget to leave the light on.

This time around I’m going to start talking about the remastered music itself. The set I have is in stereo, but there’s also a mono box set—called The Beatles in Mono—that includes the ten albums that were released in mono in the UK (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let it Be were never given a separate mono mix) along with Mono Masters, which includes the mono mixes of the singles and EP tracks that were not included on the albums.

Why all the fuss? What’s the big deal about mono? Isn’t stereo better? Well, you might think so, but remember, back in the early sixties, stereo was a relatively new phenomenon. Mono was still the preferred format, and stereo mixes of LPs were usually only purchased by true hi-fi enthusiasts.

As a matter of fact, I’ve read in several places that the Beatles themselves participated in the mixing sessions, but only for the mono mixes. They apparently didn’t care about the stereo mixes and went home once the mono mixes were done. I’ve also read comments from other reviewers that the mono mixes are better than the stereo versions, even on an album as complex as Sergeant Pepper.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s back up and start with the first two albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Both of these albums were recorded on two-track tape machines at EMI studios in London. The main reason for using two-track machines was to capture the vocals on one track and the instruments on the other to allow for at least some control over the balance between the two.

But this works best on a mono mix. In stereo, you basically get the vocals on the right side and the instruments on the left. Adding some reverb to the mix helps to blend the two together, but the tracks are still essentially separated spatially.

Listening to the stereo remasters bears this out. For example, the first track on Please Please Me, “I Saw Her Standing There”, has the vocals and one of the guitars in the right channel and the drums, bass, and second guitar in the left. The separation is marked, and there’s nothing “in the middle”. I tend to listen with headphones, which makes the division even more dramatic. It’s a good thing they recorded one of the guitars over with the vocals, because if they hadn’t, there’d be nothing on the right during the instrumental break.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The sound is incredibly clear and crisp for something that was recorded forty-seven years ago. You can hear every note, every strum. You can almost hear the boys breathing. Well, almost.

This is good most of the time, but it does offer some interesting anomalies. For example, in “Misery”, the second track on Please Please Me, George Martin overdubbed some piano phrases in between some of the vocal lines in the song’s bridge (or middle eight). With my headphones on, I can actually hear the change in ambience when those piano bits kick in. The piano is primarily in the right channel, but there’s a weird echo of it in the left. The rest of the song is pretty well separated out, though I must say the vocals sound a bit muddier than they do on “I Saw Her Standing There”.

Now, I don’t have the mono box set, so I can’t really do any kind of real comparison, but two of the tracks on the stereo release of Please Please Me are in mono, so that affords at least a glimpse into the other world. The original twin-track tapes of “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” (the A and B sides of the Beatles’ first single) were lost, due to the common practice at the time of wiping and reusing master tapes once they had been mixed down to mono, so there was nothing available to the engineers of the remasters that would allow them to create a stereo mix. Hence, the mono mixes of the two songs are included on the remastered stereo CD.

And I’m glad they’re there, because the difference between mono and stereo here is quite dramatic. I found “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” to be much punchier than the other tracks on the CD. The bass is more audible, and everything’s in the middle, which means the sound is much more balanced.

Sigh. I may at some point have to get a copy of the mono box set.

The rest of the tracks on Please Please Me have pretty much the same acoustic characteristics as “I Saw Her Standing There”, though it’s worth mentioning that “Chains” has a bit of distortion here and there in the left channel, which is oddly charming, really, and “Boys” has the drums on the right channel, which is probably due to the fact that Ringo is singing lead vocal.

The stereo mix of the second album, With the Beatles is very similar to that of Please Please Me, except there are no mono tracks. Interestingly, I actually found the right and left channel separation more irritating on this album than on Please Please Me, which may be due in part to the fact that I listened to the two albums back to back in preparation for this post.

Again, I found the instruments, particularly the guitars, really crisp on this second album. “It Won’t Be Long” has an escpecially clear, and deliciously rubbery, guitar sound, and the acoustic guitar on “Till There Was You” is rich and smooth.

Two of the Beatle’s lesser known songs, “Devil in Her Heart” (a cover) and “Not a Second Time” (by Lennon/McCartney) are two of the best balanced tracks on the whole disk. I’m not sure what was done here, but the left and right separation doesn’t seem as pronounced on these tracks, and the blend is really nice.

Again, little things come to the forefront. There’s a bit of distortion on the bass drum in “All I’ve Got to Do”, which isn’t nearly as charming as the distorion in “Chains” on the previous disk. “All My Loving” is notable for its complete lack of instruments in the right channel. Other tracks have this lack, I’m sure, but here it was obvious. “In your face” obvious.

“Don’t Bother Me”, sung by George, is a bit muddier than most of the other tracks, and the vocal has a bit more reverb than the other tracks. The vocals on “Hold Me Tight” are also a bit muddy and sound a bit far away. In “I Wanna Be Your Man”, sung by Ringo, the instruments, especially the drums, sound a bit thin. Also, the drums are back in the left channel again, unlike the Ringo-sung tune on the previous disk.

And one of the oddest things I found about the album was on “Little Child”. During the instrumental break, the bass sounds like it’s in both channels. Then, suddenly, when the vocals come back in, the bass abruptly leaves the right channel and drops in volume on the left. It’s really quite jarring when you listen to it with headphones.

But really, these are all nitpicks, and likely have nothing to do with the remastering process. Recording techniques were not sophisticated in 1962 and 1963, and we can’t expect albums from that time to live up to our high modern standards. In fact, the sound on these first two remastered CDs is exceptional. Taking a two-track master tape and turning it into a digital stereo CD is no mean feat, and the engineers have given us a product of which they can be proud.

But the best is yet to come. With the next album, A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles moved from two-track to four-track recording. And that gives a digital remastering engineer one helluva lot more to work with.

That’s up next.

Stay tuned.

The Beatles Stereo Box Set (the big black box) was under my tree on the twenty-fifth, and I couldn’t have been more excited. As any of you who read my previous post on the Beatles will know, I’m a huge fan, and to own the entire album catalog plus the singles in remastered digital format is pretty much the motherlode.

I’m still kvelling.

I’m taking my time with this one. I’ve listened to the first three albums so far, and I’ve been just sitting back and taking them in, not doing anything else at the same time (which is a challenge, as I’ve been listening to them on my computer). I don’t want to gulp it all down at once, and I don’t want them to just act as background music. I want to delve deeply into the experience.

Between listenings, I’ve been doing a different type of delving: scouring the internet for information about the recordings and the remastering process. I’ve owned a lot of books about the Beatles over the years, and the individual remastered CDs themselves have booklets containing original liner notes plus historical notes and recording notes, but I still want more data! When it comes to the Beatles, there’s no such thing as too much information.

But more on that later. First off, the packaging!

My very own Beatles Remastered Box Set. Photo by me.

The box set is absolutely gorgeous. The shiny black box is protected by a shiny black boxboard slipcover. Both bear the Beatles logo above a green apple. A thin white rectangle runs around the outside of the cover, set in about half an inch from the edge. The back of the slipcover bears a description of what’s inside the box, while the back of the box itself is nearly identical to the front cover, except that apple below the logo is now cut in half with its cut side towards us. The box is kept closed by that ingenious “magnet under paper” gizmo that’s become so popular of late.

The inside of the box is divided into two CD-sized compartments separated by a black cardboard divider. The top compartment holds the first eight albums—Please Please Me through Sergeant Pepper—and the bottom compartment holds the remaining albums—Magical Mystery Tour through Let it Be—plus the Past Masters CDs and the DVD of mini-documentaries.

A cloth ribbon is attached to the bottom of each compartment, and when the CDs are all stacked neatly inside, the ribbon runs along underneath them and up and out the righthand side. Pulling the ribbon up lifts the CDs out of the compartment for easy removal. Just remember to keep the end of the ribbon outside the compartment when putting the CDs away.

The CDs themselves all look like miniature versions of the original UK-release albums. The covers are all tri-fold cardboard sleeves with a pocket for the disk itself in the righthand panel and a pocket for the booklet of notes and photos in the lefthand panel. The front cover of each CD is a replica of the original album cover, and the back cover is a faithful redesign of the original album cover’s reverse side. Any liner notes that appeared on the original back cover have been moved into the booklet. The size discrepancy between album and CD covers would make the liner notes unreadable if the back cover had been reproduced exactly.

The exception to this packaging scheme is The Beatles (the White Album), which has a four-panel gatefold sleeve inside a slipcover. The slipcover has the title (The Beatles) embossed, whereas the gatefold sleeve beneath has the title printed in gray lettering. Each panel of the sleeve has a pocket in it, two containing the disks themselves, one (the leftmost) containing the booklet, and the last (the rightmost) containing a mininature replica of the album’s poster, complete with lyrics in a small typeface on the reverse side.

The Past Masters 2-CD set contains all the singles and EP tracks that weren’t released on the UK albums. The packaging is similar to the albums, except that the three-panel gatefold sleeve has a pocket in all three panels, two for the disks and one for the booklet.

Pulling the CDs out of their sleeves reveals yet another nice touch: Replicas of the circular inner labels found on the vinyl LP disks. The labels are larger than the originals and take up the entire top surface of the CD disks, but there’s no doubt what they’re supposed to be. It’s a brilliant addition to an already fantastic packaging design.

One other nice thing about the disks themselves—and this is more about content than packaging—is that each one contains a mini-documentary with pictures, clips, and sound bites related to the making of that album. The disks need to be put into a computer CD drive in order to access these documentaries, but the box set also includes a DVD with all thirteen mini-documentaries on it, so you can watch all the videos at one go if you like. The video quality is better on the DVD too, so that’s another bonus.

So, I’m pretty much in love with the packaging of this set. I think the attention to detail is phenomenal, and with the booklets containing additional historical notes and recording notes, you get a lot of bang for your buck here.

And I haven’t even gotten to the music itself yet.

As I said, I’m taking my time with this collection, savoring it slowly, and I’m going to do the same with blogging about it. Next time around, I’ll talk about the first two albums—Please Please Me and With the Beatles—which were both recorded on two-track equipment and originally mixed for mono. I’ve found a lot of information on the internet about the whole mono vs. stereo issue, and I’ll get into that a little bit too.

Until then, don’t forget to leave the light on.

(Here’s the official promo for the box set, followed by clips from the “Help!”, “Hello, Goodbye”, and “Get Back” videos. The way the first part of the ad is put together is incredibly slick and clever.)

But that's okay, because I don't play video games that much anyway.

But I digress.

I'm fairly tickled by the fact that both The Beatles: Rock Band and The Beatles Remastered were released on September 9th, 2009 (or 09/09/09). It would have been even cooler if the actual time of the release had been 09:09:09 on that date as well, but given that the world has at least twenty-four time zones (some sources claim as many as thirty-one), trying to release a game and a set of CDs at a specific time would have been problematic at best.

But now I'm doing worse than digressing; I'm just being silly. That's actually quite appropriate, though, if you stop to think about it, as the Beatles themselves were known to get rather silly on any number of occasions. All one has to do is listen to "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" to get a taste of that famous Beatle silliness. So, I'll be silly if I bloody well want to.

But back to the 09/09/09 thing. It's no coincidence, I think, that this date was chosen for these releases. A lot has been made of the significance of the number nine to the Beatles, and to John Lennon in particular, and while I don't know how much of it is true, and I don't personally care, there's no denying the fact that two of the Beatles' songs are titled "One After 909" and "Revolution 9" and that John Lennon recorded "#9 Dream". I leave it to my readers to decide for themselves whether this warrants even the small bit of attention I've paid it here.

The Beatles are back in a big way. There hasn't been this much attention paid to the group since the release of The Beatles Anthology CDs, book, and documentary series back in 1995 and 1996. I have the three Anthology CDs, and I was inspired the other day to pull out the first disk of Anthology 1 and give it a listen. It contains the really early stuff, including some performances with original bass player Stuart Sutcliffe and original drummer Pete Best. The sound quality of some of these recordings is, of course, pretty inferior, but the sound of history being made is incredible no matter the recording equipment.

Spectacular Coincidence of the Day: As I wrote the previous paragraph, the radio was tuned to CBC Radio One, and the show "Q", hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, came on. In his opening "monologue", Ghomeshi talked about "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and its origin in a painting that John Lennon's son Julian made of his classmate, Lucy. A lot of people seem to think that this story is a sham and that the song is simply a big ole drug reference. Well, the story is actually true, and at the end of his monologue, Ghomeshi informed us that Lucy O'Donnell Vodden, the woman who inspired Julian's painting, died on September 22nd of complications associated with Lupus.

This blog entry is becoming rather psychedelic in its own right. I'm finding it hard to connect all the pieces together with any kind of flow. So far it seems to be just a bunch of "Beatle bits" strung together with no real coherent thread. But, again, as with the silliness, it's appropriate, as this is the Beatles we're talking about, after all.

I've been a Beatles fan for a very long time. I own all the LPs—the British releases, thank you very much, not those hodgepodgey U.S. albums—and have bought more books on them than I can rightly remember. I know who Martha is, I know that Paul has an Ontario Provincial Police badge on his Sergeant Pepper uniform, and I know that if you play the mumbling at the end of "I'm So Tired" backwards, it sounds like John saying "Paul is dead, man. Miss him. Miss him." In short, I'm a Beatles geek, and I'm glad as all hell that the remastered albums and the video game are out. It brings the madness to life yet again.

And what a sweet madness it was.

Mind the gap.

(In honor of Lucy O'Donnell Vodden, here's the video of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" taken from the Yellow Submarine animated film. Hope she's looking down on all this with her kaleidoscope eyes and a wry smile.)