The Complete Beatles in One Hour

Run For Your Life (MP3) by Steve McLaughlin

All The Beatles UK LP releases compressed at 800% into a one-hour MP3.

Here's the album list (all the UK LPs):

Please Please Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles (White Album)
Yellow Submarine
Abbey Road
Let It Be

You'll notice that Magical Mystery Tour is missing as Mr. McLaughlin claims it was released in the UK as two EPs.

WFMU Listener Editor B took portions of the file and decompressed them back to tempo. They sound amazing:

Julia (MP3)
I Will (MP3)
Revolution (MP3)

And here's one from Lee R:

Tomrrow Never Knows (MP3)

Comments

[Rory Murray]

How can us mere mortals decompress these files? Please break it down for us.

[Kenny G.]

Evidently Editor B simply loaded the file into an editing program and stretched it out by 800%, thereby canceling out the compression factor.

On the air, I had suggested that if Beatles fans wanted the entire Beatles catalog for free, that they were welcome to decompress the file and chop it up into dozens of three-minute tracks. However, the results -- as shown to us by Editor B -- can be somewhat different than the originals!!!

[Lee R.]

"Tomorrow Never Knows" sounds pretty interesting slowed back down too..

http://www.badongo.com/file/4657497

[gerardo]

wow, it's simply amazing! (and a great john lennon's birth celebration post ;))

i invite everyone to enjoy a somewhat oblique approach on the same topic

http://www.zshare.net/download/37000141a79ddc/

[gerardo]

(sorry, moderator, i forgot to write my email address in the previous comment[beatlesilences]. now it's there)

[Jeffersonic]

Good to know Editor B is still alive. I thought maybe Mayor Nagin had him liquidated after B yelled at him.

[Anonymous]

Remember how the Grey Album drew attention to the harmful effects of copyright law, in that it is/was a (good and listenable) derivative work that EMI declared to be illegal to distribute?

This piece does the opposite. It is nearly enough to make me (a devout copyfighter) think there might be some merits to ol' (C) law after all!

IOW, NO NOT WANT!!!!

[DJ Toner Low]

About Magical Mystery Tour...
It is on 2 ep's. I listened to my copy earlier today in honor of Lennon's birthday.
If you notice on the U.S. release, the page numbers don't match up with the comments in the booklet. This is because side 2 of the LP was made up of songs that had not been released in the U.S., where they had been previously released in the U.K.
I know, I've spent too much time collecting Beatle music...

[iburl]

Listen to what three letters it sounds like they are saying at 59:02 and 59:03 and right around that.

[Þórr]

whooooop

[Wesley Tanaka]

Playing several of the albums simultaneously might be similarly wonderful

[wowBeatles]

where can we get the editing software ?

or you could just buy them from michael jackson

[cnorsl]

Cincinnati artist Kendall Bruns did a similar thing to this a few years ago. He left out Yellow Submarine and compressed the remaining albums to fit on a 70 minute CDR, so it's a bit slower.

Link to the Sgt. Pepper's section:
http://kendallbruns.com/mp3/KendallBrunsSgtPep.mp3

[In Crowd]

More decompressions, please!! Editor B, anyone - - ? More please!

[The Contrarian]

I have a sudden urge to ingest psychedelic drugs and listen to that decompressed version "Tomorrow Never Knows" for a few hours. Thanks for posting.

[The Evolution Control Committee / TradeMark G.]

Thought I'd take a stab at one -- uncompressed Lucy In The Sky, but used a different tool (Melodyne) which is a much smarter time stretcher:

http://evolution-control.com/mp3/Lucy%20In%20The%20Stretch.mp3

[Marc]

OK, now, 'fess up...who actually listened to the whole hour and ENJOYED it? What's the point? If I want a similar experience, I can play a Beatles CD on my player and hit the play/fast forward button. Not that exhilirating. In essence: Big Fucking Deal.

[N]

I played the Revolution one under the original song. Started it when the lyrics on the original started. it worked out really well.
Those all sound great, can't wait to hear more.

[Editor B]

Thanks for posting this, Kenny. I've added one more track, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, which has the virtue of showcasing different decompression effects in its different parts.

You can get it here:
http://b.rox.com/2007/09/27/slowness/

Also, last year a co-worker of mine had a CD with the entire Beatles catalog as one giant WAV file. I guess that was making the round of the darknet. Audio quality not so good but still kinda cool to have all in one place. I wonder if that was the source material for "Run for Your Life"?

[Steve McLaughlin]

Editor B: I didn't use that WAV, I just downloaded their catalog via this torrent:
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3664488/The_Ultimate_BEATLES_Torrent_(Complete_Discography_-_MP3)

Then I used the handy little app iTunesJoin to make each album into a single file, sped them up separately, and connected. Incidentally, I couldn't find any Mac software that speeds files up with a reasonable degree of accuracy (that is, preserving fine details -- not chopping out huge chunks). After trying Soundtrack Pro, Ableton, Audacity, and Soundbooth with disappointing results, I booted Windows and Adobe Audition worked like a charm.

[Alan Morse Davies]

Good! Let's hope no-one get's sued like Gnarls Barkley's DJ Dangermouse for the "Grey Album". Beatles aside, this just shows what can and should be done with earlier music, which should belong to all of us once it's been released into the public domain and the original artist has made some money. It allows everyone after to be creative, and forces those before not to be lazy.

[Tony]

See MY Free "BEATLES MOVIE PAGE" With video clips fromm all the Beatles Movies

[Maurice]

Holy not crap, Mark/ECC--the "Lucy" time-stretch is incredibly gorgeous.

[Radon]

This track "Please Please Me" I like. But this "Help!" I dont like.