Reddit reviews Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick released a book called "Here There and Everywhere: My Life Recording The Music of The Beatles." I read this while listening to the songs he was talking about recording, and the stories behind the sessions made the songs that much more powerful to my ears.

http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690

Look at Geoff Emerick’s Here, There, and Everywhere, My Life Recording The Music of The Beatles. Emerick was the engineer on many Beatles albums.

Those sounds on "O&O" may have been due to the fact that the Abbey Road studio equipment used on an early Pink Floyd album ("Piper at the Gates of Dawn") as well as the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. Yes, SGT. PEPPER.

Plus, they had Geoff Emerick as an engineer, who did amazing work for many of the Beatles' albums.

Edit: Now I have to listen to "O&O" this evening. "Care of Cell 44", "Brief Candles", "Maybe After He's Gone"....all so brilliant.

I second the recommendation of reading his book, an easy, fun read for both anyone involved in audio, as well as engineering. Might be the best $15 bucks you ever spend! I am reading it slowly, as I just don't want it to end. As I stated in an earlier post, while working with the Beatles, they discovered loops. In fact each Beatle got themselves a two track recorder (Studer, I believe) and, especially paul at first, were bringing in bags of loops. During Revolution # 9, they had every tech, who wore lab coats then, using pencils as spindles with loops going around them, Now, looping is it's own music form. Geoff Emerick broke EMI's (abbey road) strict rules - he got away with it because the Beatles got anything they wanted; they brought in more money than anyone else EMI, or anyone, had. They always wanted to outdo themselves in writing and relied on Geoff (though George Martin took the credit), to make them sound different as possible on each recording. Sometimes, in outlandish ways.

He suggests that Revolver, Pepper and others of that era, where best mixed in Mono and recommended it you wanted to hear the best mixes, get the mono versions of the album. The Beatles generally attended the Mono Mixing but hardly the stereo mixing sessions, for the most part, as Stereo was new and there weren't too many Stereo Players out there. Therefore the mixing techniques you described were actually just a quick mix with not nearly as much care, not extreme for they were trying new sounds; they were just getting it over with quickly, for they didn't even know, at that time, if Stereo was a fad or not.

Geoff went as far as taking really expensive mikes, where the prescribed edict in EMI was X feet away minimum ( to protect the mic, mostly) and putting them up close and limiting them greatly, for an in your face sound. Listen to the horns on "Got He would record strings, which up until Geoff where recorded with overheads, with mics inches from their instruments. One of the stuffy orchestral musicians said to him, "You can't do that, you know!", but, yes he could, and did. The musicians were afraid that ANY slight mistake would stick out, and they would, as you can hear the bow and resin on the strings, not just the sound emanating from the F holes! Now, it's common micing practice with mics and bridges to accomplish it. Even Violins without ANY sound holes, just relying on close mixing of the strings.

Same with Brass. He stuffed mikes right into the horns. He very easily could have blown out the condensers in those really expensive mics, due to the pressure, but he did it, heavily limited the signal. First heard on "Got to Get You Into My Life" and again, that's standard Brass micing techniques we do today.

As Paul got into the practice of adding the bass lines in as the last, or almost last overdub, He would bring the amp into the middle of this huge, plain vanilla studio to take advantage of the cavern like space (as in overly large, not as in the club, The Cavern). He also figured out that, since a mic and headphone are both fundamentally transducers, he would use a large speaker in front of the Kick and an inefficient mic, but with a signature sound that a mic would have trouble reproducing. Look up a Side Kick, not a bunch of google data on it, but it's essentially a speaker being used as a mic and are really common. You've probably seen it, it looks like a snare drum slapped onto a kick. . Quality aside , basically a transducer is a transducer. You can make a recording plugging your headphones into your mic jack, without any harm, to prove it. Please don't plug your mic in to use as a speaker. Though it wold work, your mic might never be the same :"

Geoff has his biases in his book, he couldn't be more pro Paul (almost always nice, reasonable and diplomatic ), or anti John (angry young man) or paint George as stand-off-ish and suspicious of so many things, and repeatedly pointed out that George had difficultly playing his leads and they were often pieced together. I have respect to George's playing, personally. Paul and John always rolled their eyes when Geroge presented a song he wrote and generally treated him like a tag-along little brother. And Ringo was just being Ringo. Quiet, but when he had an opinion, he spoke it and they paid attention. They always wrote a song for Ringo, one brilliantly, with only five notes (help from my friends) to accommodate his vocal limits. but did Gorges songs because they had to. Fun Fact, at the end of, I believe it's Helter Skelter, it is Ringo yelling about Blisters on My Fingers - Everyone I spoke to, as well as I, always thought it was John.

Geoff is also quite frank in the book, sadly describing the implosion of the Beatles, the changes they went through, the constant fighting that got so bad, he couldn't take anymore and quit as their engineer. Even as they looked to the ground in shame, and John nicely and sincerely pleaded for him to remain, he couldn't take it anymore. Though he did help out on problematic technical issues, as a favor to not only the Beatles, but producer George Martin (who I once had the pleasure of meeting). He would later be hired by Paul for Apple and things got somewhat better.

Too, he described how Pepper was mostly Paul and the White Albume as mostly John. Fun Fact: as he was hired by Apple, he took part in the White Album. When they decided to continue recording at EMI/Abby Road, Geoff was looked at, and treated as an intruder, though he gave EMI many years of Blood, Sweat, Tears and sleepless nights. Some of the other assistants refused to work with the Beatles too (can you imagine!) so they brought in a young assistant by the name of Alan Parsons. Wiki him, amongst other things, such as the Alan Parson's Project ( Listen to I Robot), he is responsible for the sound of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

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I could go on about Geoff Emerik forever, as you see. Geoff influenced, significantly influenced, the art of recording, the way Hendrix influenced guitar playing (Hendrix had everyone saying, "I have a guitar, but it don't do those things"). At 19, you've heard Hendrix's influences both in and out of Rock Genre, for the sounds are available at the push of a button for us now. PLEASE: listen to 'Machine Gun' on the Band of Gypsies Album, where he protests the Vietnam war by making the theater a sonic battlefield, live! Listen to Little Wing on Axis Bold As Love album, the most beautiful progression the guitar ever kissed. That along with other songs on that album: you can't find a line dividing lead and rhythm.

They both stood their art on it's head, changed it forever and did so without the equipment available, which now replicates much of their sounds, in a pedal or plugin, many which are standard stuff, without anything depicting its lineage to Geoff or Jimi.

Get the book!

Celebrate his life, as you see fit,

Get the book

Be grateful for the passed down knowledge, techniques and technology created so we may utilize his discoveries.

And, if I didn't mention it, GET THE BOOK

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Warmly,

Mr-Mud

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There is a pretty nice book he wrote about his whole beatles experience you may want to check out..

Theres a book from their sound engineer Geoff Emerick that is really good. It's his auto-biography, but it's really cool if you're into the behind the scenes recording aspect. http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690

http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396194521&sr=1-1&keywords=geoff+emerick.+here.+there+and+everywhere+my+life+recording+the+music+of+the+beatles

Seconded on this one, probably the best resource on what you're looking for. Another one that I enjoyed was Geoff Emerick's Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles.

It's not as easy like a direct answer, but you can look for books like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690
In this case, the sound engineer of many The Beatles recordings narrates all the process. For example, sometimes he explains how many hours took to record a song, how many people worked on it, what equipment they used... Maybe you can extract a lot of data.
Oh, and the book is amazing hehe.
Hope it helps and excuse my english.

Have a read of,

https://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473871458&sr=8-1&keywords=geoff+emerick

and

Have a read of,

https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Man-Recording-Rolling-Zeppelin/dp/0147516579/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473871458&sr=8-2&keywords=geoff+emerick

It's hugely overblown. Check out the book John. It's by his first wife Cynthia. I haven't read it in a long while but I remember that she said that John hit her once, was extremely, extremely regretful and never did it again. Geoff Emerick (who also has a good book Here, There, And Everywhere), Paul, and George Martin have all kinda said that his "macho" attitude was more bravado than anything. Even John said it in an interview once – I think with Dick Cavett.

Geoffrey Emerick, who would go on to win the Grammy award for engineering for Abbey Road wrote an enjoyable book called,

Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles

Good read if you're a Beatles fan.

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592402690/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_NKXrxb4EHPW44

Ken Caillat's Book

Glyn Johns' Book

Slyvia Massey's book

Michael Beinhorn's book

Ken Scott's Book

Geoff Emerick's Book

> John was certainly every bit as talented as Paul

I disagree with this statement. Lennon may have been a better lyricist (I think so, anyway), but McCartney's ear for arranging horns and strings was (and still is) truly otherworldly.

EDIT: It helped, obviously, that Paul had George Martin as a mentor. This is a great book on the topic, if anyone's interested.

Record a full album. A lot of press won't cover EP's. I look at this way, at this level you don't know if you'll ever record again due to many factors. Why not just go for broke?

Buy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-There-Everywhere-Recording-Beatles/dp/1592402690

It'll really expand your mind on what you can do when recording and how there are no rules by the guy who helped break all the rules when recording.