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Technology


THE TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS THAT MADE ABBEY ROAD SO GOOD

What modern recording artists can learn from the studio's early days

By Justin Lancy

Justin Lancy
October 23, 2014
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On a cool, English Sunday afternoon, there was a crowd loitering on the
sidewalks of this wealthy London neighborhood called St. John’s Wood. Some
people were waiting to use the zebra crosswalk made famous on the cover of The
Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album. Others were using pens to scrawl messages on the
front of Abbey Road Studios, where that album—and many others—had been made.
Things like “Imagine all the people,” and “John Lennon Lives!”

I was there because of the music, too. In a rare public event, Abbey Road
Studio’s most famous room was being opened to the public for a lecture by Ken
Scott, an engineer on The Beatles' seminal “White Album.” I had assumed that the
topic, a look at “vintage recording techniques and equipment,” occupied a fairly
esoteric niche when I bought my ticket. Judging from the long line to get into
the building, though, it was clear that music nerdery (like many other nerdy
things) had gone mainstream.

Abbey Road is famous for a good reason—but it’s more than just a tourist
attraction.

Joining Scott were two younger music engineers from America, Brian Kehew and
Kevin Ryan. Kehew and Ryan are the authors of Recording The Beatles, a
500-plus-page volume created from 15 years of research and housed in a shell
designed to look like a old-school tape reel box. Recording The Beatles is, all
at once, a labor of love, a celebration of music recording culture and, quite
likely, the most detailed historical compendium of photography and information
about the Fab Four’s time in the studio. The book is also a subtle illumination
of the dynamic relationship that occurs between people and their tools, a
constantly shifting balance which can either enable—or thwart—inspiration.



Abbey Road is famous for a good reason—and each year thousands of visitors flock
to take photos and scrawl messages on its walls. But it’s more than just a
tourist attraction. It’s a building full of history lessons that could help
creative people working today.

The sanctum sanctorum of Abbey Road is Studio Two, the room where the majority
of The Beatles' recordings were made.

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