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Preparing The Beatles’ songs for Rock Band was a significant technical
challenge for Harmonix. The band’s earlier songs, recorded on two-
and four-track equipment,needed to be reworked into a multitrack format
that is essential in providing feedback to players. Each of the game’s
four instrument parts need to have their own“stems”—for
example, when a player misplays a note from the guitar track, the guitar
audio for the song will be temporarily quieted, leaving the other instruments’audio
unaffected. Such isolated tracks were not available through the new 2009
remasters, so the team started with the original master recordings.
The development team was able to bring Giles Martin aboard as the game’s
music producer. Martin had recently completed co-production on the 2006
Love project with his father George Martin and was already familiar with
The Beatles catalogue.Through that project, Martin created digital back-up
copies of all the original tapes,which aided his work on The Beatles:
Rock Band. Using audio forensics software,Martin and his team were able
to extract the audio of individual instruments by isolating sounds at
certain frequencies with digital filters, thus assuring multitrack capabilities
for The Beatles’ master recordings. This process, conducted at AbbeyRoad
Studio 52 with the help of Paul Hicks and other Abbey Road recording engineers,reportedly
took months to complete.
During the game’s development, Harmonix only used low-fidelity
versions of the remasters, which were sufficient for programming and note
charting; Apple Corps feared that the leak of any high-fidelity remastered
track from Abbey Road studios would lead to the unauthorized use of samples
of The Beatles’ music in remixes.High-fidelity versions of the songs
weren’t implemented until the final publishing of the game. Harmonix
performed very little additional remixing upon receipt of these remasters;
in some cases, three different guitar parts—lead, solo, and rhythm—were
brought into a single cohesive guitar part, slightly raising the volume
of the specific guitar track that was used in note tracking to make it
easier for the player to follow in the game.[5] The ability for up to
three players to sing vocal harmonies,a feature not present in previous
Rock Band games, was designed and implemented as an optional feature so
as not to be overwhelming to players.
While live recordings of songs, such as “Paperback Writer”
at the Budokan, were available, Martin believed some of these renditions
were sloppy and would not been joyable to play. Instead, he took the studio
versions and added audio effects from the live performances to create
a “live concert” ambiance. In several instances, the team also
opted to slightly restructure the endings to certain songs, particularly
those that fade out. Differences in editing between the album versions
and in-game versions of songs continued with the release of downloadable
content, notably the inclusion of a once-missing final chord at the end
of the Abbey Road closer “Her Majesty”.
Dhani Harrison has stated the game will include “stuff that has
never been heard, never been released.” Some of the new material
includes band chatter and instrument tunes taken from recorded performances.
This audio plays during the loading screens or bookends certain songs.
Within the Abbey Road studio, Martin recreated some of the incidental
sound, played through speakers but capturing the acoustics of the studio
room. In one instance, for example, this process involved recording four
people miming the act of drinking tea. The entirety of the game’s
credits are also made up of this band chatter and studio takes.
In coordination with the art team, sound programmers attempted to realistically
map the game’s note tracks relative to the real performances by The
Beatles. For guitar parts, colored notes were selected not necessarily
to match tonally with the music, but to replicate the movement and finger
positioning used by the original performers. These were then matched against
ten different strumming animations to be used for the virtual depictions
of the guitarists. The “Expert” difficulty drum tracks attempt
to match every single drum beat that is performed in a song, including
some peculiar rhythms brought about by Starr’s ambidextrous drumming
habits. Vocals were slowed down and broken into phonetic segments, allowing
the art team to determine the appropriate facial movement for the virtual
characters to go along with the lyrics.
The Beatles: Rock Band
By Viktor Paedia.
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