HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios, which has seen the likes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd create legendary albums there, is celebrating its 90th birthday

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Abbey Road Studios is not only a pilgrimage for music fans across the world, but remains a pilgrimage for artists and creatives energised by its unique and powerful history.

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Source: ABC News on Twitter, 25/11/2021

Abbey Road Studios

The World’s First Recording Studio

The story of Abbey Road Studios is the story of recorded music.
In 1929, when recordings were still being made acoustically through a large wooden horn and a wax disc, the Gramophone Company were looking for a location to dedicate to this new industry.
They found a nine-bedroom house with a large garden for sale in St John’s Wood, North West London, and bought it for £16,500 before spending two years building the world’s first purpose-built recording studio.
Opened in 1931 to enable music creativity & recording innovation, Abbey Road continues to welcome & support creators across the globe.
By the time the studios opened in 1931, the Gramophone Company had merged with Columbia to become Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI).
EMI’s recording facility had three studios of different sizes, which all remain in place today.

Studio Three, the smaller room, is the only one to have undergone major changes, even having a mirrored drum room in the late 1980s. It wasn’t until 1980 when Abbey Road built its next studio, the Penthouse, and in 2017 two new smaller studios, the Gatehouse and the Front Room.

Abbey Road was officially opened with a seminal performance of Sir Edward Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory on 12 November 1931.

It was a suitably grand opening for a studio that would go on to host legends of the classical and orchestral world including Sir Thomas Beecham, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Maria Callas, Geoff Love and Daniel Barenboim to name a few, as well as Paul Robeson and Fats Waller.
Within its first decades, Abbey Road had become the centre of popular music.
Dance and jazz artists including The Joe Loss Orchestra and Glenn Miller made their mark on the studio floors from the 1940s, and when the pop charts began in the 1950s, the music made at Abbey Road dominated record sales – from Ruby Murray, Shirley Bassey and Adam Faith to Cliff Richard and the Shadows.

The 1960s was a rich period for pop music with numerous hits being recorded here by artists including The Hollies, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas, Cliff Richard, Ravi Shankar, The Zombies, Little Richard, Mary Hopkin and Billy Preston.

The Beatles recorded 190 of their 210 songs here between 1962-1970, working with EMI Parlophone producer George Martin.

Before naming their last album after the street they’d spent the better part of the decade at, the Beatles changed the studios and its culture forever.
The strict three-hour session times turned into all-nighters, the engineers’ formal white coats disappeared, and both the engineers and artists pushed experimentation and creativity to the limits.

90 Years of Sonic Innovation and Creativity

Indeed, as the birthplace of stereo, technological innovation has always been at the heart of the Abbey Road.
 Alan Blumlein, a master inventor who worked for EMI, patented ‘binaural’ (literally meaning ‘relating to two ears’) in 1931, though it took until the 1950s for stereo to be fully explored.
The Record Engineering Development Department (REDD) was created by EMI engineer Len Page in 1955 to respond to the needs of the artists and producers using the rooms, developing the first mixing desks.
Abbey Road engineers themselves were constantly pushing technological boundaries –  Ken Townsend is credited with inventing studio techniques such as Artificial Double Tracking (ADT).
The pioneering spirit of the REDD department’s innovations from the 1950s continues today with Abbey Road Red – Europe’s first music-focused technology incubator.
Mastering has long been part of the expertise of the Abbey Road engineers, and the studios house a number of specialist mastering suites, combining an unrivalled selection of classic analogue and modern digital gear.

Recent mastering projects through  include music from The Beatles, Sam Smith, Sade, ABBA, The Big Moon, Paul McCartney, Black Midi, Olafur Arnalds, Fontaines D.C., Goat Girl, Johnny Marr, Krept & Konan, Roxy Music, New Order, Frank Turner, Queen, Brian Eno, The Rolling Stones and Mogwai.

Legendary and ground-breaking records have always been made within the walls of Abbey Road.

The 1970s and ‘80s saw George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Kate Bush’s Never for Ever, Fela Kuti’s Afrodisiac and Live! And more recent history has seen artists from Blur, Travis, Massive Attack, Oasis, Radiohead, Nick Cave, Kanye West, The Spice Girls, Take That and Lady Gaga choose to record here.
For the last 40 years, Abbey Road has become one of the world’s premier destinations for film scoring, with projects including Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, many of the Star Wars and Harry Potter series, Black Panther, 1917, Avengers: Endgame and Oscar-winners such as Gravity and The Shape of Water.
With the addition of a Dolby Atmos Premier accredited Mix Stage, built in 2017, Abbey Road is now the only facility in the UK to offer both scoring and film sound post-production.

Abbey Road Studios has announced  details of the celebrations for its upcoming 90th anniversary.

This November, you can step inside Studio Two to discover 90 years of music history, as part of our 90th anniversary celebrations.

The Studios that Became a Legend

(3 Abbey Road NW8 9AY NW8 9AY  London, UK)

The Studio is  just a few minutes’ walk from St John’s Wood Underground station on the Jubilee line. When you leave the station, cross the road onto Grove End Road and walk down the hill until you reach Abbey Road. Turn right and the iconic zebra crossing is immediately in front of you. Alternatively, the 139 or 189 buses stop directly outside the Studios.

Running across 11 & 12 November, Abbey Road will welcome some of the leading players in the UK music industry, including the likes of Island Records, Universal Music Publishing, Pitchfork, The Ivors Academy, Abbey Road Institute, Spotify, PRS for Music, The MMF, AIM, Sound On Sound and Mix With The Masters as part of an event entitled Abbey Road Amplify.

Over 11 & 12 November, the Studios will open its doors to the next generation of artists, engineers and creatives for a free, two-day festival featuring masterclasses, interactive sessions, practical workshops, Q&As and live performances. Alongside the Abbey Road team, some of the music industry’s leading names will share career insights from their personal journeys, as well as advice for upcoming talent and a range of live performances and showcases.

Participants will be able to attend for free by entering a ballot and the festival will also be livestreamed.

Sources : Abbey Road Studios website,Abbey Road Studios on Twitter, Y

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Last Updated on 25.11.2021 by iskova

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