Get Back Camera B Rolls - Box Front | Get Back Camera B Rolls - Box Rear |
Exactly what it says on the label, it is the complete recorded sound during the "Let It Be" sessions of January 25th - 31st 1969 as recorded by Camera B. A wonderful good quality box housing 24 c.d.'s.
After the covers below there is an explanation of the recording techniques that give us these "Camera B Rolls".
So see below for a summary discussion.
Clicking on each cover will take you to the full detail page.
Other than the professional multi-track equipment of E.M.I.'s mobile unit, there were two other recording devices present
at the Let It Be sessions. Recording engineer Glyn Johns had his own mono equipment present for the purpose of playback.
The final facility was the film crews own recordings.
The crew used two Nagra mono reel-to-reel tape recorders, with one being assigned to each of the two cameras that were
filming almost every moment of the sessions. These machines used short reels running at high speed to ensure better quality,
but this means each reel of tape was restricted to only about 16 minutes of sound. On the last day the reels manage 32
minutes, either they were running out of tape or they decided half-speed was sufficient for the final moments.
The rolls were started at different times so that a minimum of sound would be lost as each reel was changed, and as each
camera began filming a beep is heard on the tapes which allows for synchronisation of film and sound at a later date.
The reels of tape were numbered consecutively, and the soundman's voice can be heard as each tape is loaded when he
identifies the reel. Also one can hear "Slate numbers" being called. For the two cameras standard film clapperboards were
used and these slate calls are made as each film roll is changed.
From the slate calls we can ascertain that about 500 rolls of film were used.
For the sound rolls, the numbers were changed here and there, but we know there were about 530 rolls. So 530 times 16
minutes per roll, gives us about 141 hours of recordings !
By the way, this 24 C.D. set took a lot of analysing, in fact, at the end I had used 81 sheets of A4 paper !