And used AI to make Revolver better than ever.
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Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Bandto 1970sLet It Be.
But the newRevolveralmost never happened.
The problem was in its master tapes.
Pepper, the Beatles recorded most of their instruments and vocals to separate tracks.
But on earlier albums, the band often combined a few sounds to the same track.
Non-audiophiles may ask: Who cares?
The originalRevolversounded good enough to top lists of thegreatest albums ever made.
Did it really need the overhaul?
(The Beatles themselves preferred the mono mixes, which are harder to find these days.)
Its been reported tocause dizzinessin headphone listeners.
For 56 years, there was no way to separate those instruments and rearrange them across the stereo field.
But then Peter Jackson took up the case.
Martin wondered if Jacksons software could also be used to isolate the sounds on the Beatles early studio albums.
At last, the most valuable music catalogue in history will be AirPod compliant.
Unbaked cake i.e., the high-resolution separation of overlapping sounds has long been one of audios holy grails.
(Maybe hed just hired a cover band to recreate the bands raw tracks?)
But Lukin tells me Jacksons system probably works as advertised at least on the Beatles.
I do think Giless quote that no one else can touch Jacksons team is an overstatement, he says.
Jacksons team is likely more successful with sounds of the Beatles than others due to access to extra data.
But I dont think theyre even on the list of contenders for generic music de-mixing.
(Martin and Jackson declined to comment for this piece.)
High-quality results usually only become possible after about a million examples, Lukin says.
But Jacksons system, Lukin speculates, mightve also had the benefit of the Beatles own isolated tracks.
Squeezing money out of the Beatles intellectual property may seem like the easiest job in the world.
And yet for over a decade, film directors have made it look hard.
Jacksons assignment withGet Backwasnt to tamper but to recontextualize.
Jackson did take some creative license, though.
asks Paul, solemnly.
It smells like George is here, jokes Ringo at one point.
(The tears were presumably transplanted from another moment.)
But now theres an eight-hour docuseries that argues Pauls case better and less humbly than he ever could himself.
Gen-Xers and older millennials may have identified best with John, a rock-and-roll antihero and Cobain-esque martyr.
Thanks to Jackson and his tech, the Beatles legacy is in better shape than ever.
And why stop there?
Now that the Beatles can take themselves apart, they can put themselves back together any way they want.
