Welcome to NaBloPoMo! National Blog Posting Month. This year I have decided to throw my hat in and attempt to post every day this month! If you want to learn about NaBloPoMo, I encourage you to visit their site. Click the banner above to get to their site and learn all about it. Each month they usually have a theme that people can write about (although totally optional) but in November, which is the big month, they leave it up to people to write about whatever they feel. Being that this is my first attempt at being involved, I have decided to go to my roots and write about the Beatles. Of course if there are any important updates about Avi or anything else, I will have extra postings.
In the meantime, let’s get started! On September 9th, EMI records released new digitally re-mastered versions of all of the Beatles albums. Back on September 15th, I wrote about the release of these albums and a little about the two sets that were created, the stereo and the mono. I don’t want to write all of that again, so here is a link back to that posting and you can read it there first. After listening to most of this material it struck me not only how different the new mixes were but how some songs were better on the stereo mix and some on the mono mix. So my goal of this month is to post my picks of which songs are better on which mix. There are 14 albums in the official Beatles canon. From earliest to latest they are: Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, The Beatles (the White Album), Let It Be, Abbey Road and Past Masters. The first two were only done as a mono mix, Yellow Submarine, Let It Be and Abbey Road were only done as stereo. Finally, Past Masters, while done as a stereo mix, many of the singles that were used to create the album were originally done in mono.
So with these re-mastered albums, all but Yellow Submarine, Let It Be and Abbey Road were created in both a Stereo and Mono Mix. Please Please Me and With The Beatles appear in Stereo for the first time and Past Masters for the first time in Mono (called Mono Masters). That of course leaves 11 albums in both the Stereo and Mono mix. Two of them are double albums so that leaves us with 13 disks. My plan each day is to post my comparison for ½ of each album. 13 albums 26 days. I will work on something special for the final four days.
One final note. Neither stereo nor mono is superior to the other in any way. It is just a different way of mixing the music. And what we call stereo is not really stereo anyway. True stereo would require two microphones or inputs from each person or instrument. Still to this day we record with one mic per person. So what we do is take each track and put some of all of it through one side, (right or left) to simulate a stereo sound. As you will see this will make some stereo songs superior, and some not so superior.
With all of that administrative work now out of the way, here is my comparison of the first half of Please Please me.
I Saw Her Standing There – Mono wins. In creating the stereo they chose to put all of the vocals out of the right side and some of the instruments out of the left. I find that a bit distracting. Perhaps having lead vocals on one side and backup on the other?
Misery – Even. Vocals out of right only on Stereo, but the guitar sounds much cleaner in the stereo.
Anna (Go To Him) – Stereo wins. Lead vocal out of right and backup is in both sides. The Creative use of drum in both sides makes the stereo edge over the mono.
Chains – Mono wins. I find it a fuller sound than the stereo and I prefer the vocals in the middle here.
Boys – Mono wins. The left side has almost nothing out of it until the guitar solo, which does sound better in stereo, but as a whole mono is better.
Ask Me Why – Mono wins. There is almost nothing out of the right side at all.
Here are the two versions of I Saw Her Standing There.
Enjoy!
Mono
[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aMmwV1q7VI]
Stereo
[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM81BvrQX_c]