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

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.