© Dinosaur Album Guides 2011
e-ALBUM GUIDES FOR MOBILE MUSIC FANS
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About Dinosaur Album Guides
Imagine having the history of The Beatles recording career in the palm of your hand? The Dinosaur Album Guides app takes you through the story of the creation of each Beatles album one by one, with no stone left unturned.
Dinosaur Album Guides plans to deliver a series of interactive electronic album guides, available for mobile devices, to accompany the classic Beatles UK studio albums 1962-1970. Forget about having to collect a library of books to discover the story and technical aspects of the Beatles recordings. Dinosaur Album Guides go where no other publication has ventured before in compiling a guide to each album, by focusing equally on the concept, production and background of each Beatles studio album.
Starting with ‘Please, Please Me; The Album Guide’ Dinosaur Album Guides will launch a guide for each of the Beatles UK studio recordings in a series of exciting, interactive and entertaining apps/ebooks. These releases will coincide with the approaching 50th anniversary celebrations of each seminal album.
Our guides will be available from the App store for iPhone and iPad and from Amazon for Kindle
A Note On The Instrumentation Credits
Few Beatles publications have previously discussed the group's instrumentation in the recording studio. This is a pity, but probably no accident. Piecing together a history of any subject is a difficult task. That task is increasingly challenging when the subject in question has little written or visual evidence to go on. Sadly, Beatles recording session notes did not include exact instruments used, but merely, 'bass', 'guitar', and so forth.
If these guides were a study of the Beatles' tours, we would have a rich archive of photographs and video footage to consult when discussing which instruments were played at which concerts. A study of the instrumentation used at Abbey Road however is an entirely different challenge. There were many photos taken of the Abbey Road sessions through the years 1962-1970. However these were private working sessions for a group that enjoyed very little privacy, so these visual documents are limited. Another issue is that a photograph may be scrutinized to tell its approximate place and date, and therefore which session, and perhaps even which recording it was captured during. Very often however, although they are helpful, a photograph cannot be relied upon, with any real accuracy, to tell us which song was being recorded at the moment it was taken.
Interviews can also be helpful in investigating sounds and instruments on recordings. Unfortunately these are also few and far between. Interviews and memoirs must be treated with caution, as the mists of time can render them questionable. Ex-Beatles have been known to contradict each other, and even to credit songs to the wrong albums.
What we do have is the primary sources themselves: the records. Analysing these aurally and determining which instruments are being used is an equally difficult and challenging task however. All the more so given the Beatles' interest in collecting guitars, drums and effects, and their relentless pursuit of creating new sounds by making instruments sound unlike themselves.
Aural analysis of Beatles records is a contentious issue and is always going to charge great debate. And naturally enough, some fans may differ over the interpretation of one sound, and one instrument over another. This is normal.
What we intend to do is to gather all the evidence available; photographs, interviews, books, and of course an aural analysis of the records themselves, and based upon this, make an informed opinion on what instruments have been played on which records. This is not an exact science unfortunately, and of course we understand that not everyone will agree with every one of our conclusions. This is ok. We welcome your feedback and your input to the great debate.
monostereo info!