Production Characteristics of a classic album

The Beatles - Abbey Road

Abbey road was the 11th studio album from The Beatles, this album was released on the  26th September 1969 in the UK and on the 1st October in the US. The recording session for the album was the last on that The Beatles did before the band dissolution in April 1970. It wasn't the last album released though as their last album was mostly recorded before Abbey Road.

Abbey Road was a rock album with mixes of Blues, Pop and progressive rock as well. It makes use of the Moog Synthesizer and the Leslie speaker, Side two contains a medley of song fragments edited together to form a single piece. Although Abby road was an immediate commercial success and reached number one in the UK and US, it received mixed reviews, with some critics describing its music as inauthentic and bemoaning the production's artificial effects. Many critics now view the album as the Beatles' best and rank it as one of the greatest albums of all time. The name of the Album comes from the the recording studio that the majority of the album was made. The album's cover features the four band members walking across a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios and has become one of the most famous and imitated images in the history of recorded music.

Abbey Road was recorded on professional eight-track reel to reel tape machine rather than the four-track machines that were used for earlier Beatles albums such as Sgt Pepper, and was the first Beatles album not to be issued in mono. The album makes prominent use of the Moog synthesizer, and the guitar played through a Leslie speaker. The Moog Synthesizer is very prominent in the album. The Moog is prominently featured, not just as a background effect but sometimes playing a central role. Starr used the Tom-toms at one of the main roles as well and later after the album was released he said it was "tom-tom madness"

This was one of the instruments that they used to make this album. The Moog Synthesizer is an modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer system. These are cheaper and more reliable than Vacuum Tube based synthesizers. Moog Synthesizers came in modules and these could be added together to make different sounds depending on what the artist wanted. Also they could be combined with a keyboard that meant you could play it organ style as well. The synthesizer recorded in mono audio with is 1 track recording which was pretty standard for the 1960's and 1970's. All of the ports on the Moog  where 1/4" Mono jacks and this mean that modules could be easily added to it to make different and unique sounds. 

In November 1968, the TG12345 was finally placed in Abbey Road’s Studio, where it made its debut on an 8-track recording by the Shadows. The following year, the new transistor desk helped shape the sound of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, which was markedly different fuller, richer, deeper than that of the band’s work earlier in the decade. Microphones were predominantly large diaphragm condensers. Valve powered condensers such as Neumann U47s and U67s were commonly used for vocals by the engineers at Abbey Road. Guitar amplifiers of the time relied on valves for their clean tones and warm distortion. The Beatles, and in fact most artists of the time, favoured the Vox AC30 as their guitar amplifier. One feature of the AC30 was its built in valve-driven tremolo effect.

I have made Made some of my recordings of my own. I have done some of these in a studio this is similar to what The Beatles did for the recording of Abbey Road. I recorded the electric guitar drums and a piano. These are similar to what The Beatles would have recorded as in the album Abbey Road they have the drums and guitars and they also had a synthesizer and this would have been recorded in a similar way to how I recorded the piano. For the Electric Guitar I used an AKG C1000 dynamic microphone, I positioned this 15cm away from the amp and this meant that i had no clipping when recording but I got load and clear sound. My recordings of the Electric Guitar were different to how they recorded the electric guitar for Abbey Road as they used condenser microphones rather than dynamic microphone. 

Research Log

I have skimmed and scanned through three Secondary sources and picked out the relevant information for The Beatles ‘Abbey Road’. I annotated the three articles and found out more information about the equipment and recording techniques used to record the album. The Purpose of this research is to enhance my knowledge of how a classic album was recorded and maybe take some inspiration for my own recordings.

Secondary Source	Relevance to my project
http://www.waves.com/behind-abbey-road-studios-emi-tg12345-consoles	This was relevant to my project because it explained the mixing desk that they used for the recording of the album.
The Ambient Century – Book 3 – Page 195	I have used this book for some more information on the instruments and mixing desk they used for the recordings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road	I have used this not as part of my secondary research but for the information it gave me about the recording of the album and the instruments The Beatles used.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/abbey-road-19691115	This was the magazine article that is used for my secondary research. It gives me an in site of what it was like to record the album and some on how the album was recorded and produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_synthesizer	This gave me an in side into the synthesizer that they used to make some of the sounds for the album.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neumann_U47	This is where I got some of the information on the microphones they used for the vocals for the album.