It's hard to believe that a band that broke up in 1969 won a Grammy in 2017 for the Best Music Film.
It's Enough to Make You Wanna Scream
Nowadays bands have the sound systems necessary to play stadiums and festivals, but when the Beatles were touring America during the height of Beatlemania, their equipment was the equivalent of taking a pocket knife to a gun fight. They were no match for tens of thousands of screeching teenage girls.
When the Beatles heard the tapes, they rightfully nixed the idea of a live album -- complaining that the music was drowned out by the screams. Thirteen years later producer George Martin reworked the tapes and a live album was released, but this album was never re-released as a CD. A few years ago the original tapes were re-discovered in the Capitol vaults and sent to Abbey Road Studios in London to see if technology might be able to salvage the music.
Giles Martin, son of producer George Martin, working with systems analyst James Clarke used their own proprietary software and recording software to painstakingly isolate each instrument from the original tapes. They describe it as being as difficult as taking a blended smoothie and trying to isolate the various fruits and ingredients.
James Clarke developed a method of creating a spectrogram of each instrument -- a graphic representation rather like a wave form -- and then using software to extract those frequencies from the original recording. Low frequencies like the bass guitar and bass drum were fairly easy, but the screams are in the same frequency ranges as the vocals and instruments. In the end they were able to eliminate 95% of the crowd noise, but left enough in the final product so that the atmosphere wasn't lost.
Synchronicity
Just as this was happening, Hollywood director Ron Howard was planning the documentary film Eight Days A Week with the aim of capturing what the touring experience was like. There was a wealth of new unreleased video material, but the audio quality was a problem. Giles Martin was hired and charged with the task of enhancing the audio.
Check out the quality of the above enhanced versions of well known clips
I vividly remember watching Ron Howard's film on DVD for the first time, and being blown away by the audio quality. I recall one scene when they showed a girl in the audience yelling and they isolated her voice, and for the first time, you could actually hear what she was yelling.
Understandably, people aren't expecting Beatles "news," but if you are a fan and haven't watched this film, it is definitely worth checking out.
Also, in our decentralized world there are a lot of technically savvy people working on their own to enhance the quality of existing video.
Shout out to Dave Nevins for the above video.
Photos are YouTube Screen captures, collages by 
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