PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Best of YouTube The mixing mastery of George Martin. Was he the real "Fifth Beatle?"

Some people believe he was. Sound coming from everywhere!

Happy Xmas - ultimate mix

In the early days of the Beatles, they didn't have a body of work to dig into that would carry up to the next level and maintain their tremendous popularity and demand. This gap in material was bridged by the groundbreaking studio magic and imagination of George Martin, Glyn Johns, Alan Parsons and others. The Beatles arrangements were more complex and dynamic and the focus was on the melody followed by unusual chords and progressions mixed into layers of sounds (multi tracks) much of which had not been heard in pop music before the Beatles.

At that time, the Beatles themselves were clueless to multi track recording techniques and were George Martin's pallet, not the other way around as it it eventually evolved.

Charlie

Interesting take on the matter, Charlie.
I have tried to imagine the musical mind that would be composing, humming along the melody, "..and so this is Christmas, and what have you done? another year older; a new one just begun..."
and then somehow layering in that hook that we can only call a secondary chorus, "war is o-ver, if you want it," right on top of the melody and (this is the unusual thing) having it sound good! No problem for J. S. Bach; but for a rock band? Most unusual behavior.

I have to point out that "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" is not a Beatles recording, and was not produced by George Martin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Xmas

The early Beatles songwriting weren't lyrically layered. Very simple stuff and they had a long list of cover songs more so than original material. They also had zero skills recording in a studio. On the other hand, the recording company had to find a way to keep their recordings fresh and new to record buyers and fans because the musical skills of the Beatle members was limited as recording or what session musicians are use to creating and playing. They were a tight group that could play what they had learned and arranged to play live but they were not very experimental like they evolved into during their recording career together as a group.

A lot of advanced techniques that are common today started with Beatle recordings. There were also classical recording techniques used on Beatle recordings that had never been included on rock/pop songs. Many multi Track processes became prominent with Beatle recordings such as multi-mic drum kits, advanced overdubbing like doubling vocals, varying tape speed, looping tape and doing a lot more bouncing and layering the few available multi tracks in the studio. That all resulted because of the studio engineers and producing, in the beginning, none of that came from the individual Beatles. It was all studio magic to the Beatles. When the Beatles started recording, it was nearly universal to record a band as a live recording with no overdubs, except to re-record mistakes or to put a soloist part in the middle 8 overdubbed onto the vocal track when the vocalist was not singing.

Even with early Beatle recordings, the studio engineers and producers made the Beatle recordings 'bigger than live' (larger than a 4 pc band) to increase the density and dynamics of their recordings with bouncing so additional instruments, percussions, vocal doubling, thickened BGV's and even orchestration so their cover songs were not only different in arrangement but didn't sound like a 4 pc band recorded live.

Although recorded on 3 and 4 track recorders mixed down to mono, even early Beatle recordings were 8-16 track mixes. George Martin was responsible for the arrangements beyond what the Beatles knew how to play as a live 4 pc band. Adding piano, additional percussion, piano and strings as well as stacking BGV's were all things John, Paul, George and Ringo weren't savvy about in the beginning. That was all the doings of the studio engineers and production techniques of George Martin. Not only was the sound of the Beatles playing and singing different, their arrangements and song productions were unlike any other rock/pop recordings being done at that time.

Unless I am mistaken, Charlie, at the same time the Beatles mixes were a hot item, advanced electronics in the way of televisions, radios and record players by manufacturers such as SONY and TEAC were turning up in homes and college dorm rooms. The audio reproduction from the vinyl LP was clearer than anything we had ever heard.
That fidelity, combined with stereo, produced listening experiences that mesmerized music fans. Of course, these innovations were then in the hands of engineers and studio producers such as Phil Spector and others. Motown was a player in the game, with its legendary "backup" vocalists.
So, yeah, the Beatles came along and became grist for the mill. I remember hearing one track that sounded like distant voice, gradually growing louder, until it reached full volume. The effect was riveting; never could have been achieved with the former 45 rpm disc technology.

"Happy Xmas" was actually produced by Spector, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, using the same "wall of sound" approach he'd applied to the original version of the Beatles "Let It Be". History has not been kind to his bombastic efforts on that album (Paul McCartney even released "Let It Be Naked" to show what the non-Spectorized recordings sounded like) but John gloried in that big sound and it works magnificently here.

From Wikipedia: