The Technical Constraints That Made Abbey Road So Good

Interesting article about Abbey Road Studios:
 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-technical-constraints-that-made-abbey-road-so-good/381820/
 

I paused when I read that paragraph too, Dave! It brought to mind the numerous times I've begun to record a part in tense 'safe mode', made a mistake a few seconds in, think to myself, oh crap, I'll just write this take off, keep going and re-record it later. At that point, all the nervousness about making a mistake is gone and some cool things happen that never would have otherwise.

Music may be applied mathematics, but it is the slight imperfections and playing one line off another that make it ... interesting. (note this is coming from a horrible musician)  Bit's example is a good one, but even the biggest of the pros use it.  On "I saw her again" by the Mamas and the Papas the male chorus line comes in early and stops after "I saw her."  A mistake in the grid centered world of pop.  They decided to leave it in because it worked, and Lennon said it was pure genius.  Little things that knock music off the grid of expectations can make the music - at least non-classical music. When I happen to hear the radio/TV and the picture perfect timing and pitch it is like looking at American Gothic w/o the wrinkles.  As Wm. Burroughs said, "That's the point, don't you see."
 
@ 

Well as the resident Abbey Road expert, (yes a big call, I know but Jeff Evans might actually back me on this one) I pretty know how every Beatle recording went down, both The Complete Beatles Recordings by Mark Lewisohn and Geoff Emericks book are the go to tomes for the budding young producer or engineer. 
 
A lot of The Beatles majik was in the neumann microphones, which were tubes, The Beatles vox amps, which were solid into the original Redd (EMI made) mixing desk which was also tubes, so you got tube EQ's and limiters.  Basically you were getting the perfect mix of odd and even harmonics or this is the theory I have bandied around.  This changed with Abbey Road the album, when the Redd desk went solid state and you can hear it in the bass of Come Together and I Want You.  Of course it was the music too, the tech stuff would have meant nothing without the music.  Interestingly enough you can hear the same combo's in Pink Floyd's music and Queen's.  So I think there must be something to the odd/even harmonic combo.  Want further proof...Britpop Oasis and Blur, I think used a similar combo to get that sound.  Hell Lenney Kravitz brought an EMI Redd desk, I'm not sure if it was solid or tube for that sound.
      
Now I'm musing, I would have been a great producer, if they still existed today.  I know the techniques, (Ringo's towel drums, variespeed, tube harmonics, Pages...Bonham sound...Bowie's/Visconti Heroes' vocals. Fripp's measured feedback for Heroes, Frippertronics, on it goes oh even the technique used for Queens harmony vocals).  Now here is the kicker, and I will be kicked...we can emulate it now all for a few hundred bucks and a DAW.  I am in no doubt, that the various emulations, with tube and transistor front ends for the real stuff...vocals, guitars and drums, you can get that sound.  It takes technique, historical understanding and perspective.  And an understanding of digital recording technique, which is different to analogue but just the same in Sonar...Huh. 
 
It's hard to emulate, or it was, analogue recording techniques in Pro Tools, no gain stage built into every channel.  This is important because most of the time, and again I'm waiting to be kicked most of the analogue stuff was recorded to a level to get some sort of saturation.  To get this in digital land a minimum of -6 db level is required...note a 6db level minimum.  Using the gain on the channel when you go to mix, allows you to set the gain proper when you mix. 
 
The Pro Channel console emulator is just as good for this too, I know the current paradigm of using it last is all the rage...but I think this is a mistake, I use it first.  This is because if you were going to feed a track out of a mixer for recording then it would be first in signal chain.  Actually it's not a mistake to use it last, it just depends on which paradigm your using.  Because I am using the mix as you go technique, rather than mix it off the tape technique, I'm aiming for a different sound.  Hmm I just worked this out.  Again musing. 
 
Of course you guys are probably all wondering about headroom on the master buss, particularly if I am recording or even bouncing or freezing, this is where the analogue idea comes in...its all about summing.  30 odd tracks means you have to sum about -15 db on the master buss for the appropriate headroom.  It works too.  But I will leave it to the boffins to fight it out and tell me I'm Capt chump. ;)
 
Ben           

bitflipper
Good post, Ben! One element you left out was the Fairchild 670 that they (Emerick, Smith and that other guy) put on pretty much anything and everything. It's the Fairchild that's responsible for Ringo's signature ride wash. An example of forget-the-rules improvisation, as that compressor was was designed specifically for mastering and re-purposed in the name of creative license.
 
It was also Emerick who broke EMI's explicit rule against sticking expensive microphones right up next to drums, thus pioneering what has since become standard practice. Of course, few are brave enough to put a vintage Neumann an inch from a tom tom; we use $99 microphones for that nowadays.

Thanks Bit...for a change I didn't piss you off.
No I never forgot the Fairchild, paramount for that Beatle sound.  I already mused enough I thought, all I do is piss people off with my musing...lol.  Actually the UAD Fairchild is amazing, combined with Rings Beat kit in session drummer three and a hi-shelving down to about 2khz for the tea-towel sound, if anyone is interested and want to emulate Ringo's playing.  Get The Complete Beatles song book, which has drum transcriptions and you'd be amazed at how close you can emulate Ringo's drums.  What would be an even more amazing experiment is the new Abbey Road waves emulator's stuff.  I should not be such a tight wad and purchase.
 
Ben 
 
PS Anyone want to experiment and turn a speaker into a microphone, ala Paperback Writer and Paul Mc's bass sound. 

I'd like to second the general tone of this thread, and I hope I (we) don't sound stuck in the past.
 
A well-known author who has published several "handbooks" for recording, mixing and mastering engineers has a habit of posting on his blog isolated tracks from old hit recordings, for example, the drum and bass track of The Beatles' "Hello Goodbye." With the rest of the mix stripped away, he always finds some little musical or technical anomaly, and goes on to say something like "...if this had happened today, we would have fixed it."*
 
The idea that you could "fix" something that was good enough for George Martin, Paul, and Ringo at the time, on a record that millions of people still love 50 years later, just seems wrong to me. I mean, doesn't the word "fix" kind of include the notion of "improve?" I think the musicians and technicians working at Abbey Road in those days must have understood that concept, too.
 
Even with all the tools I now have at my disposal to fix stuff, I believe that music should be organic, and as such a little hair growing off the side of it is acceptable, if not downright desirable.
 
*To be fair, after I repeatedly challenged this author he finally admitted that he doesn't mean it should be fixed, just that it would be fixed. Considering that there are a lot of budding engineers reading his books, I think he should make that disclaimer on every one of his "isolated tracks" posts.

BenMMusTech
The Beatles vox amps, which were solid

 
Are you sure about that? The AC15s and AC30s the Beatles used in their earlier recordings were certainly not solid state, nor were Vox's early louder amps, the AC50 and AC100.
 
Brian May uses valve AC30s by the way. Not sure about David Gilmour. I associate him mostly with Selmer in his early years then Hiwatt DR103s, at least as his main amps.
 

There's a lot of confusion over 1969s Vox amps, probably because the Vox-badged amps made in the States by Thimas Organ had little in common with the (original) Vox amps built in the UK by Jennings Musical Instruments other than cosmetics. The (Thomas) Beatle and Super Beatle are pretty much unknown in the UK.

The JMI Voxes were mostly valve, including the AC50 and AC100 developed in the mid 60s when 30 watts was no longer enough to cope with the increasing size of audiences (not to mention the screaming that greeted the Beatles). A cranked AC30 is remarkably loud and bright, in the painful to stand in front of class. I can't imagine what the audience noise must have been like when it got so bad the Beatles gave up gigging. JMI did build some solid state and hybrid stuff but it was never a mainstay of their range or regarded in the same light as the class A(ish) EL84-powered AC15 and AC30, the bass amps perhaps being the exception, though Marshall pretty much had the UK bass amp market at the time. The Beatles would have had access to anything of course, Harrison and Lennon certainly used Fender and Marshall amps as well as Vox.

I'm not sure what you mean by May's amps being "resistor". His AC30s were and are definitely valve. He did some work with Derek Rocco of Watford Valves a few years ago to find a good modern valve set for the AC30. The result was gain-rated JJ made Harma STRs, often cryogenically treated. Very good valves on a par with old Mullard, Sulvania and Phillips. May did often use a little Deacy solid-state amp in the studio as well.

I think you're right about the combination of solid state and valve blended together creating a very musical sound. A transistor Fuzz Face running into a valve amp still takes some beating, and just about every distortion/overdrive pedal is solid state of course. Personally I prefer transistors after valves to be simple, clean amplifiers rather than adding clipping of their own. Valves can smooth out solid state clipping while solid state clipping on top of solid state clipping gets very harsh and tiring.

I remember someone telling me a long time ago that the Beatles Vox amps actually had Fender guts because they had a contract with Vox which obligated them to have Vox amps when they played live. Was that a myth?