It’s been
A Hard Spring’s Year, to twist Ringo Starr’s comment-turned-song- album-movie
A Hard Day’s Night by the Fab Four more than 50 years ago.
The Beatles inspired a generation back then and their legacy continues to inspire music and musicians to this day.
London’s Abbey Road studios, The Fabs’ spiritual home and crucible for almost all of their recorded work, was both home and home school to Alan Parsons. Alan went to work at the studio as a lowly tape op on what would become the albums
Abbey Road and
Let It Be and emerged a decade later having engineered
Dark Side Of The Moon and produced a string of hits for countless artists including himself as The Alan Parsons Project.
Talk about an inspiration.
So this month, to give you something to watch, do, read, enjoy and work with, we’ve put together a media mix of Abbey Road related goodies and slashed its price by over 60%!
First, the watching and learning…
Downloadable Videos
In 2015, we spent two weeks at Abbey Road hosting a pair of recording sessions and master classes produced by Alan Parsons in Studio 3. Everything was filmed and we subsequently released two lengthy Video On Demand videos that give you immersive, blow-by-blow insight into an Alan Parsons recording session. If you want to know how a professional recording session is conducted—what happens when, who does what, how long should you spend on…? This is how to find out. These are unapologetically lengthy videos that don’t gloss over any aspects of a session so, perfect things to watch when you have a bit of time on your hands.
Abbey Road Video On Demand Session 1 (8 hrs 46 mins)
Abbey Road Video On Demand Session 2 (9 hrs 37 mins)
Now the doing…
Raw Multitracks
Load the actual raw session files from these two Abbey Road sessions into ProTools® direct (or load the raw wave files into any other DAW) and get to work! The two artists at the above sessions were Edward, an interesting folky / rocky band from Sweden led by singer, writer and pianist Johan Lagerstrom Pollack and Fish On Friday, a prog rock institution in their homeland of Belgium. At the session the band was augmented by bass monster Nick Beggs and British prog rock stalwart John Mitchell on guitar.
These two premium “Session Files” not only let you climb inside an Alan Parsons session but also into the ’sound‘ of Abbey Road and comprise the folder of 88.2kHz wave files, .ptx file, full track sheet with instrumentation, microphones used and session notes and photos from the session.
Getting behind the wheel on sessions like these you’ll find is a highly educational and also exhilarating experience.
Session File Dogs by Edward
Session File The World’s A Stage by Fish On Friday
Some light and enjoyable reading…
Book
If the downloadable videos and raw multitracks give you a bird's eye view into how Abbey Road looks and sounds today, Kenneth Womack’s brilliant book
Solid State,
The Story Of Abbey Road And The End Of The Beatles transports you back to the 1970s where their time making Beatles music was coming to an end but their legacy and enduring influence began to take shape and take off.
With a foreword by Alan Parsons, who was there working with The Beatles at the time, Womack captures the tone and tenor of the era like you’re in the room, as the world’s most captivating recording artists' conjoined careers come to a close.
The total price for all of these is a worthy $338.64.