Music sounds really lopsided.

[Gert]

So I have been listening to a lot of Beatles lately, but the instuments come from the left and the vocals come from the right. Is it my headphone the music itself. Is there and software or hardware fixes

Thanks, Gert

[defunkt]

That would just be how the music was mixed.

[Elven]

@Gert

 

Hey. As @CreepingMoth said. It was how it was recorded. If it really does bother you, I guess you could take the track and duplicate the track in another channel and reverse it  :lol:

[AMICLG]

This^^^

[ZetZet]

If everything else sounds fine how can it be your headphones? Sorry just couldn't follow your logic..  :lol:

[MegaDave91]

They didn't record music back then like today (drums have their own track down the middle, guitars each played separately left and right and center, bass & vocals down the middle). They likely just placed a microphone in the room and recorded all the instruments that way; just vocals had their own track.

[defunkt]

If you really don't like it you could just listen to it in mono.

[ShearMe]

Mono is the way to go for super old songs.

[antiquoob]

Dozens, if not hundreds of books and articles have been written extolling (ironically!) the technique/artistry that resulted in the Beatles recordings, which are giving you lop-sided problems. Early Beatles (and Doors/Stones) recordings were done in mono. Around '66-67 four-track recording came into the scene; on the consumer side "the stereo hi-fi". Ppl didn't listen to (aside from the musicians tracking) to music with headphones back then. Hearing Abbey Road on headphones is IMHO some kinda felony! It's amazing though...listen to to the stereo recording with speakers at a proper distance and...whoa!

Being able to pan sounds hard left/right (with proliferation of stereo) was like...the difference between playing the black and white version of Pong (the one with the adhesive plastic) and playing crysis 9 with 100 SLI. That's an understatement too. Why? We (most of us) have 2 ears. So in the 60s when the tech came out, sound recordings could finally, after almost 70 years be heard...in stereo. Granted, a "true" stereo recording isn't tracked/panned; it's recorded live, usually with two mics in an "x/y" or "mid-side" technique.

4 tracks enabled the producer/musicians to explore sonic shit which was, well- a first for humankind. I can understand how that stuff would sound screwy in today's context.

Megadave is right- he's referring to the late 50s early 60s rec technique, made popular by Phil Spector with "the wall of sound".

That takes a ridiculous amount of skill, I couldn't imagine.

Recording engineers today have tried for decades to reproduce those classic recording styles; to the best of my know it's all "fail".

Try listening to the stuff thru speakers(?)

Also, it's cool panning those Beatles songs hard r/l, you can hear the instruments in the raw aka the antithesis of today's mega processed stuff