A Hard Day's Night - speed corrections

© Bettmann/CORBIS

You might recall that one thing the new edition of A Hard Day's Night DVD/Blu-ray didn't address, was the speed issue. The film was shot at 25 fps and played back at 24 fps, but they neglected to speed up the tracks during filming, and as a result the songs sound slower in the film than on the records.

Music Radar interviewed Giles Martin about the speed issue.

MR: I read that the mixes of the songs in the film were slower than the album versions. Why was that?

GM: “Yeah, and that’s something I asked them to change. When I was working on the Martin Scorsese-George Harrison film, I noticed it. And I Love Her was a semitone down. It’s got to do with frame rates. I asked them, 'Can you change the frame rate of the film?' and of course, you can’t because that would speed up the film. Pitching the music but keeping it at the same speed might have worked, but then you’re going into a digital world that’s kind of unpleasant. It’s a bit like plastic surgery, and you don’t want to be doing that, putting a new face on something. The thing about And I Love Her in the film is, it’s a different mix. It’s not a double-tracked vocal, whereas the original is.”

Now, a friend of WogBlog has released speed corrected versions on YouTube. Done in computer at 106% playback speed, these versions match the speed of the 09 remastered studio tracks, but with the audio from the film.

And I Love Her

If I Fell

I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

Finale Concert