THE BEATLES RECORDING SESSIONS
The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962-1970
This book is required reading for all Tape Op readers. Writer and researcher, Mark Lewisohn, also wrote the highly informative liner notes to the Beatles Anthology series of CDs (while he helped compile them) and had studied the vaults of recordings previously as he was compiling this book. It runs chronologically, explaining who did what on every day of recording at Abbey Road. Sometimes it's amazing, going into detail for the Sgt. Pepper's... recordings, and other times it's depressing, watching the end of the Beatles through the fragmented recording sessions of Abbey Road and Let it Be. It's mostly just amazing to see how they progressed from simple little pop songs to understanding what could be done with the new recording technology and how George Martin brilliantly let them explore these ideas and came up with so many of his own. I guess, what I'm trying to say, is that even if you hate the music, this was the band that really took recording in new directions, even existing as a "studio-only" band for four years. It should be obvious that the history of the Beatles in the studio would be of interest to anyone who records any kind of rock/pop/indie music. And it's an amazing read.
MICROPHONE MANUAL
Design and Application