rockyraccoon.co.uk

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Time: 6pm – 9:45pm ¹
Studio Name and Room: EMI Recording Studios, London – Studio 2
Songs Recorded: Please Please Me (takes 1-15) ², Ask Me Why (takes 1-6) ^{3 4}
Studio Personnel: Producer – George Martin, Balance Engineer – Norman Smith, Tape Operator – Unknown
Musicians (instruments played): John Lennon (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Paul McCartney (bass, vocals), George Harrison (guitar, vocals), Ringo Starr (drums)
Primary Tracking Machines:
Twin-Track – 1/4″ EMI BTR3
Mono – 1/4″ EMI BTR2

During most of the Beatles era at EMI, the centrepiece of each studio control room was an EMI REDD mixing desk.⁵ The REDD.37 mixing desk in use until 17 January 1964⁵ had a feature known as Delta-Mono which allowed for simultaneous recording to both a twin-track tape machine and a mono machine.⁶ Many Beatles recordings were made this way for a period of time from 6 June 1962 to 13 March 1963. The engineer could monitor either the twin-track mix on outputs I and II being sent to a BTR3 tape machine or the delta-mono mix on output III being sent to a BTR2 tape machine. The twin-track recordings were initially sort of a safety net in case the straight-to-mono mix wasn’t suitable.⁷ Although twin-track could be (and was) used to make stereo mixes, the intention was to allow for more control over a mono mix at a later date. As George Martin states in The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions⁸
“The reason I used the stereo machine in twin-track form was simply to make the mono better, to delay the vital decision of submerging the voices into the background. I certainly didn’t separate them for people to hear them separate!”