Sidebar: The Beatles Remixing History
Until The Beatles
Love soundtrack album in 2006, the group's songs stood pretty much as they were recorded and mixed between1962 and 1970. There had been original LP releases—both EMI's "official" mono and stereo versions and Capitol's USA mono and stereo versions. The first CD releases, in 1987 by EMI, were UK sequences and from "official" master tapes. The non-album singles and EP tracks were collected into two
Past Masters anthologies.
To produce the sound for the Cirque de Soleil's 2006 Beatles-themed
Love show, the band's original producer, George Martin, worked with his son Giles and returned to the band's multitrack tapes. The Martins digitized certain sounds and sequences from the tapes and remixed them with original songs into new sound-collages and mashups of songs, to which Cirque de Soleil acrobats perform in the wildly popular show, which is still on-stage in Las Vegas.
In 2009, EMI produced remastered stereo CDs and issued the Beatles mono masters on CD. In 2012, Universal Music Group acquired most of EMI including The Beatles' catalog, and soon after released the 2009
stereo digital remasters on vinyl and then an
AAA LP box set of the original mono masters.
From there, the next step for UMG was to revisit the Beatles catalog with an eye on surround sound. Thus began the remixing, by Giles Martin, which culminates (for now) on the new reissues of
1962-1966, aka The Red Album, and
1967-1970, aka The Blue Album. Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones said all of the songs from
Revolver backward to the band's first recording session in 1962 have been or will be put through the "de-mixing" process and remixed by Giles Martin.
Here is a summary of the remixing so far.
2015: Giles Martin, building on his experiences with
Love, worked with Abbey Road engineer Sam Okell to remix The Beatles' #1 singles for both stereo and 5.1 surround, released as
1+. For the stereo mixes, Martin used multitrack tapes where available, often tightened the stereo spread, and sometimes changed the tonal and instrumental balances compared to prior releases. For surround, Martin placed two full-range speakers in Abbey Road Studio 2 (where most of the songs were originally recorded) and set up microphones along the wall. He used this ambient "live in the room" audio for the rear channels (footnote 1).
2017: Giles Martin and Okell remixed
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and some contemporary singles. The press release for the reissue describes the remixes. "To create the new stereo and 5.1 surround audio mixes for
Sgt. Pepper, [Martin and Okell] worked with an expert team of engineers and audio restoration specialists at Abbey Road Studios in London. ... [The] new stereo mix of the album ... was sourced directly from the original four-track session tapes and guided by the original, Beatles-preferred mono mix produced by [Martin's] father, George Martin."
2018: The Beatles, aka The White Album, was remixed in stereo and 5.1 surround by Giles Martin and Okell, "sourced directly from the original four-track and eight-track session tapes." The accompanying press released noted the new mix was "guided by the album's original stereo mix produced by ... George Martin."
2019: Abbey Road was remixed in stereo and 5.1 surround by Giles Martin and Okell "directly from the original eight-track session tapes," again "guided by the album's original stereo mix supervised by ... George Martin."
2021: Let It Be and some contemporary songs were remixed in stereo, 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin and Okell. The stereo remixes were "guided by the original 'reproduced for disc' version by Phil Spector and sourced directly from the original session and rooftop performance eight-track tapes." Peter Jackson's WingNut Films provided "de-mixing" technology used in the accompanying
Get Back documentary series (which streams on Disney+).
2022: For the remix of 1966's
Revolver, Giles Martin and Okell went all-in with the de-mixing/remixing method. From the album's press release: "Newly mixed by producer Martin and engineer Okell in stereo and Dolby Atmos (footnote 2) ... the album's new stereo mix [was] sourced directly from the original four-track [session] tapes. The audio is brought forth in stunning clarity with the help of cutting edge de-mixing technology developed by the award-winning sound team led by Emile de la Rey at Peter Jackson's WingNut Films Productions Ltd."
2023: Thirty of 38 tracks on the
50th Anniversary expanded reissue of
1962-1966, and seven of 37 tracks on the anniversary expanded
1967-1970, were newly mixed in stereo and/or Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin and Okell, aided by WingNut Films' audio de-mixing technology.
Footnote 1: see
https://bit.ly/402iPq5 for a detailed Giles Martin interview about
1+.
Footnote 2: starting with
Revolver, Beatles deluxe reissues will not include a Blu-ray disc with HD stereo and surround/Atmos audio, according to Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones. Thus the only Atmos listening option is lossy streaming. See As We See It in the December 2023
Stereophile.
