Tubular Bells
Super Audio Compact Disc

Article from "Studio Sound" magazine
After 25 years on the shelf, the 4-channel mix of Mike Oldfield's classic Tubular Bells made by Philip Newell as a 'demonstration' for quadraphonic matrixing systems has resurfaced on SA-CD.

'It's so exposed', said Newell, hearing the finished release at Sanctuary studios for the first time since finishing the mix. The occasion saw Newell breaking from studio buiilding duties in Spain to join fellow Manor Studios veteran Mick Glossop in accepting an invitation from the album's original producer and subsequent remastering engineer, Simon Heyworth, to audition Virgin Records' seminal album and debut SA-CD release.

'It was the first Virgin album, number V2001,' noted Newell, 'and it's going out in 2001.' Playing back in Heyworth's mastering room, the recording recalled the summer of 1973 along with a host of anecdotes from its audience. The fact that Newell's mix was made on Ampex instrumentation tape - chosen at the time for making tape loops due to its resilience and low head wear - accounted for the lack of tape hiss. Heyworth further attributes the astounding imaging (part of the reason for leaving the mix at four rather than five channels) to the remarkable condition of the tape. The frank nature of the mix remains both a tribute to the music and to the times.

Where Newell had included the original hornpipe ending to Side Two (which had been discarded as out of keeping with the rest of the piece), Heyworth has chosen to preserve the 4-channel format, forsaking the centre and sub-bass channels offered by SA-CD, to remain true to the spirit of the time.

The result is expansive and involving, an obvious 'must' for Oldfield's fans, for whom there is the encouraging prospect of Heyworth having already gathered the remainder of the classic Oldfield 4-channel masters in his London studio. For Viv Stanshall, master of Tubular Bells' ceremonies, somewhere in the Oxfordshire countryside it will always be 3 o'clock in the morning in 1973.

Transcription of Liner Notes:

In 1975, I went to LA with Phil Newell who was our chief technical engineer and also recordist and mixer for the Manor Mobiles. We went to look at a control room designed by Westlake Audio and in the process I mixed the Gong 'You' album in Four Channel Surround. On our return we convinced Richard Branson that we should revamp the Manor Studios with this revolutionary design (4 speakers!). Some time later when Phil was working on Ommadawn, and had already completed a quad mix of that album, it was decided to do some quad mixes of Tubular Bells. Phil had complete freedom to do what he felt worked.

What he discovered was that there were some instruments missing from the 16 track masters and actually had to play the odd piano part himself! It transpired that when we did the original recording not everything did end up on the multitrack because we simply ran out of space, so mixed sections down to a 4-track machine to give more tracks. At the end of Side 2 is a never before heard version of the Sailor's Hornpipe. It features a march around the Manor itself which we wired up with microphones in a number of places, for that 'surround' feel! When Phil later played the finished Four Channel Surround Mix to Mike, he was expecting to be asked to make lots of changes, but Mike felt it was fine, so that was that.

In November 1999, I was at the AES in New York and heard some wonderful recordings done using DSD technology. The guys at Sony and Phillips were planning multitrack recordings for 5.1 Surround. I said what about we try mastering Tubular Bells and their enthusiasm was immediately very clear! Tubular Bells was a ground breaker in Stereo and the mere fact that a multi-channel mix was done in 1975 makes it all the more extraordinary. When I was mastering the Quad version in Colorado at Airshow, I realised Tubular Bells is in many respects a perfect piece of music for this format and shows off the virtuosity of Mike as a multi-instrumentalist. It's fantastic to hear the 'air' around the acoustic instruments and to be witnessing a 'performance' and all played by the same guy! When I heard the finished result at Abbey Road Studios I knew that this recording medium was set to bring back the detail, feeling and pleasure of listening to music which has appeared absent for some time in our oh so digital world. And by the way, this disc will NOT play on 'old tin boxes!'

During 1974, Virgin Records began toying with the idea of quadraphonic vinyl disc releases and in the summer of 1975 rebuilt The Manor as its flagship quadraphonic studio. Concurrently with this rebuilding, Mike Oldfield was recording his Ommadawn album with the equipment from the Manor Mobile No 2 installed in his house on Hergest Ridge during an eleven month period. After completing The Manor re-build in August, I went to spend three months with Mike, completing the recording and doing the stereo mixes with him. About a week after finishing the stereo mixes, we went to The Manor to mix the album for Four Channel Surround release. After hearing the quad versions, Virgin's A&R department decided they wanted a boxed set of four albums, which would also include Mike's two previous albums, Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge plus an album of 'singles'. Virgin asked me to arrange to get the mixes done, so I booked The Manor for a couple of days and decided to start with Tubular Bells. I had been "around" in various capacities during the recordings so I knew the multitrack master quite well. I was also aware of the many emotional discussions which had gone on at the time, and Mike's sensibilities. Mike was lukewarm about the whole idea, especially after some abortive attempts at an earlier Four Channel Surround re-mix in Abbey Road. Mike didn't want to do the mixes but I could not imagine him letting the control of them out of his hands. I therefore decided to do a "demo" mix and take it to him to see what he wanted changing. I could then either re-mix the sections or the whole thing either with him if the demos rekindled his enthusiasm or without him but under his instructions.

As the first mixes were only intended to be "demos", I approached them with the attitude that I was going to enjoy myself and recruited Alan Perkins as mixing engineer. This allowed me to concentrate on the music whilst he twiddled the knobs. Virgin didn't want me to spend too much money on the demos, so we had about three or four days to do everything. On playing the 16 track masters we found several things missing. Perhaps during the Abbey Road attempts (nobody is now quite sure) the original tubular bells track had been erased and replaced by another recording with a different set of bells. Attempts to find and re-record the original set of bells proved futile. They had apparently been destroyed by Mike attempting to get a "different" sound by hitting them with coal-hammers, so we finally had to work with the bells on the tape. Other things were also missing and, most importantly, a piano chord held over an edit, which had actually been put on the original stereo master by a "sound on sound" process. I had no option but to transfer the tape onto a 24 track machine, go into the studio to play the piano myself, record it on the 24 track machine in the spaces which existed between the wider track spacing on the two-ince 16 track format. So what, there were only demos! To keep costs down, I recorded the four channel mixes onto some half-inch Ampex 748 or 741 instrumentation tape. We had bought a load cheap from Ampex as an end of line sell-off at about £1 a reel. These were the days when digital delays were in their infancy and of dubious quality, so we still used variable speed capstans on some old 4 track tape recorders to make the tape delays, especially on the sends to the steel-sheet "echo plates". At high speeds much audio tape was ruinous to the tape heads, so the ultra-polished, very thin instrumentation tapes were ideal. They were a bit noisier than the highest quality audio tapes, but with the DBX noise reduction systems this was no problem. I had to use the DBX because that was what Mike had installed in his quadraphonic studio in his new house in Gloucestershire where I would have to take the mixes for him to hear. The choice of tape proved extremely fortuitous because this old instrumentation tape was free of the degradation problems which blighted most audio tapes from the same era. The tapes were found to be in pristine condition when resurrected 25 years later. All in all, we had two days to repair and re-mix each side, in which time I made dozens of razor blade edits on the four channel master tapes because we mixed it section by section. We had a very crude (by today's standards) Allison Research/API automated mixing system on the Helios desk, but nothing that could cope with the amount of changes required during the entire album. In fact, the 16 track masters were not in a continuous form.

A few days later, I took the tapes to Mike and played them in his studio. After hearing them, he said, "Hmmm... OK." "OK what?" I asked.... "What do you want changing?" He sort of shook his head and said, "Nothing!" in a rather nonchalant manner and walked off to the house. I was totally dumbfounded! I had taken liberties with the mix because it was intended to be a demo and although keeping an ear on the original mix, I had really mixed it to give myself the most pleasure from it. There are a few instruments in the four channel mix which were not used on the stereo mix such as extra acoustic guitar at the end of side 2, but we really tried to keep the spirit and general balance of the original. One other lucky break is that these "demo" mixes were not intended for vinyl disc. Before the boxed set was released, the mixes were "mastered" to control the dynamics such that they were suitable for transferring to vinyl and passed through a quadraphonic matrix encoder, but the original four track masters were intended to restore Mike's wearing enthusiasm as well as to give myself a "buzz", so only by digital release can they reach the public in their original form.