RIP George Martin

[Estonut]

George Martin, Producer and Arranger for The Beatles, Dies at 90

[earendel]

George Martin, Producer and Arranger for The Beatles, Dies at 90

There was a story about this on NPR this morning. Aside from the Beatles, Martin also worked with the duo America, Shirley Bassey and was responsible for Elton John's Candle in the Wind remix.

[T_Bone0806]

If anyone deserved the title of "Fifth Beatle", it was him. He was the one who heard enough of a spark to take a chance on The Beatles, after numerous record companies had turned them down. He became their miracle worker, translating the ideas in their heads into recorded reality. For instance, he scored the string quartet for Yesterday, played the piano solo on In My Life, speeding it up to make it sound like a harpsichord, and cut up a tape of carnival sounds into various lengths, threw them up in the air, then spliced them together at random to create the mad circus music in Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite. Perhaps the greatest example of his problem solving was with Strawberry Fields Forever. John had two different takes that he liked, the first half of one and the second half of the other. He asked Martin to put them together. Problem was, they were in slightly different keys and tempos. Lennon wasn't concerned..."you can fix it, George", he said.
After some tinkering, Martin found that, by speeding up the first part and slowing down the second part, the two takes matched up perfectly in key and tempo. George had "fixed it."

Sir George, thank you for everything you did to help make my favorite group.....well, my favorite group.

[ghostjmf]

BBC did a good piece on this this morning.

But the interviewee re Strawberry Fields said "the 2 parts were sort of in different keys" & I politely spoke to (OK, not so politely spoke up to) radio, saying "you can't be "sort of" in diff keys".

I also may not be the only person who read the death notice & thought "uh oh followers of that series will never know how their story ends". 1st of all, tv has already written ahead of the author, & 2nd of all, a couple "R"s missing.

[Bob78164]

I'm glad you didn't mean George Rafael Raoul Martin. It would drive me nuts knowing that I'd never find out how things played out in Westeros. --Bob